As soon as she saw the tiny head covered in black fur pop out from amongst the cardboard on the conveyor belt, Melissa Kruse immediately turned off the baling machine she was operating.
The head belonged to one of four kittens that had been placed in a plastic bag and dumped in a cardboard recycling bin at the Westview Co-op grocery store.
Workers from the Mountain View Regional Waste Management Commission had picked up the bin on the morning of Nov. 4 and brought it to the Olds waste transfer station and the cardboard, along with the plastic bag, ended up on its way down a conveyor belt towards the baling machine.
Kruse said the bag was under the cardboard and the kitten had managed to break free of the bag and make its presence known to her “less than a minute” before the bag of kittens would have wound up in the baler.
After turning off the machine, Kruse retrieved the bag from the conveyor belt and found two living and two dead kittens inside.
The animals were covered in feces and urine, she said, and shivering from exposure to the cold.
Since the recycling bins are picked up from the Co-op on Fridays and Mondays, the kittens could have been dumped in the bin any time over the weekend of November 2 and 3, Kruse said.
She added the experience of finding the kittens in such a manner made her feel “freaked, panicked, sorrow, pissed off.”
“They're helpless animals in situations like that. I believe people, if they don't want to have kittens or an abundance of them, they should get their animals fixed,” Kruse said. “I was definitely in anger and awe. I was crying too.”
While a secretary at the station called a local veterinarian and Karen Zaretski, the Town of Olds' community peace officer, Kruse and co-worker Matthew Payne bathed the two surviving kittens in warm water, fed them and held them until the peace officer arrived to pick up the animals.
The kittens were lively and affectionate, she said, and went immediately to the food and cream that was put out for them.
“They were in on that food like quick,” she said.
Zaretski said she picked up the kittens and transported them to the Olds Pioneer Veterinary Centre.
Had workers not picked up and emptied the recycling bin at the transfer station that morning, she added, all of the kittens would have died.
“If they didn't save them that day they probably would have froze to death.”
While she has seen animals abandoned in apartments or purposefully left in front of veterinary clinics in the past, Zaretski said she has never come across a case of someone dumping kittens in a plastic bag to die in a waste bin before and the experience left her shaken.
“I was appalled and sickened. There are measures if people don't want to raise the kittens. There are many agencies that will accept cats or dogs like the SPCA.”
Dr. Curtis Luzi, a veterinarian at the Olds Pioneer Veterinary Centre, said the kittens were “emaciated” when Zaretski dropped them off on the afternoon of Nov. 4.
He and his staff were able to determine the kittens are female and roughly five to six weeks old.
They were named “the minions” and clinic staff fed and hydrated the animals and de-wormed them.
And although cats and water usually don't mix, the shivering kittens welcomed the warm bath they received at the centre.
Thanks to the actions of the transfer station staff, the peace officer and the clinic, Luzi said, the kittens are expected to live.
“Their prognosis is good,” he said.
Luzi added he would expect this kind of animal dumping in larger cities but not in Olds and he could not come up with an answer as to why someone would condemn the kittens to such a cruel death.
“Some people are just apathetic. Some people just don't care.”
If people have animals they can no longer care for or no longer want, he directs them to contact the SPCA or other adoption agencies.
Renee Roe, a veterinary technician at the clinic, said the centre also has an arrangement with a local pet store where the clinic will vaccinate and de-worm kittens it receives from the town and the pet store will sell them.
As for the minions, Luzi said the clinic is trying to find them homes.
If you'd like to adopt them, contact the clinic at 403-556-6882 or [email protected].
Zaretski said the town also has a new spay and neuter program for cats to help cut down on the number of stray and abandoned animals where the town will help pay a portion of the cost of spaying or neutering a cat.
To learn more about the program, call 403-507-4859.
