Almost 2 years ago we found some kittens living under a pressure vessel outside of the machine shop at school. It appeared that the mother had abandoned the kittens so we decided to take them in. There were three of them which we ended up naming Dorian, Spider and Mowgli. Dorian because he was gray (which I know is a bad play on words), Spider because he liked to climb all over you and Mowgli because it is a unique name (from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book). We estimated that they were about 2 weeks old when we found them and one of the PhD students agreed to take them home and take care of them. For the next month or so she took care of the little kittens. She fed them and cleaned up after them she even helped them go to the bathroom (since the mother cat usually helps with that). During the day she brought them into school so that we had office kittens. They would sleep a lot of the time and the rest of the time we played with them.
About 3 weeks after we found them Mowgli got really sick. She tried to save him but the little guy passed away. It was hard for all of us but mostly for her. A couple days later, while my friend was visit her mother, Dorian got really sick as well. They took him to a 24 hour pet clinic where he was placed in a oxygen tank and then the waiting began. For the first day or two he was unconcious most of the time but eventually he woke up and recovered. Initally I was going to take Dorian and another grad student was going to take Spider but we both decided that if our friends mother wanted to take them we wouldn’t be disappointed. She ended up taking the little rascals and giving them a good home (with their two other cats). From time to time we here stories about the two of them. I guess Spider has become a handful and Dorian is a little scrapper but they are happy.
I really miss having office kittens. They were a lot of fun.