A five-week-old kitten was rescued Wednesday from inside a plastic garbage bag, where he had been thrown away like the Doritos wrapper, cookie box and the empty soup cans he was found with.
The two full garbage bags were found dumped at the Black Road mailboxes in the morning of May 23. A woman who came to check her mail heard the kitten crying frantically and opened the bag to find the grey tabby inside the garbage.
The woman recognized immediately that the kitten, who has been dubbed Pip (short for Pipsqueak), had an injured front right paw, so she rushed it to the Shuswap SPCA for care.
“SPCA staff assessed the skinny kitten and decided it required urgent medical care,” says Barb Gosselin, a Shuswap SPCA staff member. “Thanks to the vet clinic, Pip received x-rays and a splint as well as oxygen for his lungs which had been stressed by the ordeal.”
X rays also uncovered an previous injury to his front right wrist.
Pip is now recovering at the Shuswap branch of the SPCA and is being bottle fed until he is able to eat on his own.
“He’s a little thin and a bit exhausted from his ordeal but he has a great, friendly and exuberant personality, says Gosselin.
Another staff member, Kelsey McKnight, immediately went to Black Road to check if any other kittens had been abandoned, but Pip was the only one.
“She searched through everything to see if we could find any bills or clues about who might have dumped the garbage, but we found nothing,” adds Gosselin.
The Shuswap SPCA is looking for assistance with upcoming medical costs that may be incurred and will accept donations to the local branch in Pip’s name.
As well, if anyone in the Black Road area or the Shuswap recognizes the kitten or has more information as to who may have thrown out this young pet in the trash, contact any BC SPCA. The local branch office number is 250-832-7376.
This is one of a number of animal abandonment cases being investigated by the local SPCA branch.
In January two kittens were found dumped at the mailboxes outside the Cedar Heights Community Centre in Blind Bay just before noon. The kittens, estimated at between three to four months old, spent some cold hours outside before some volunteer painters spotted the box and contacted SPCA volunteers.
On Jan. 12, an orange tabby cat was found left taped inside a cardboard box at the end of someone’s driveway in the Tappen-Notch Hill area, and a week earlier a three-month-old kitten was left in a box at Hillcrest school.
