Naming Mama Fang
Mama Fang is one of our resident strays. She used to arrive each afternoon to wait for her 6pm meal, and her 9pm snacks with 2 of her many daughters, Rusty and Spicy. Then she’d disappear. These days, she stays all day and all night either sleeping under a large bush in our garden, or in the cozy boxes on my front porch when it’s rainy.
We first met Mama Fang in 2017, when we saw a small pregnant cat foraging for food in the neighbourhood. We left food out for her, and didn’t see her for a while. 6 months later, we saw her again, pregnant again. And another 6 months passed before a tiny kitten appeared in our garden and we adopted her – she looked exactly like Mama Fang – same coloring, same face, similar funny tail. We named her Jessie and she is one of our beloved residents.
Twice more we saw Mama Fang on the streets, always pregnant. Finally I decided I had to do something about this poor little cat who had given birth to so many litters of kittens in such a short span of time.
We visited neighbours in the houses near where she hung out and asked them to keep an eye out for us and contact us when they saw her.
We left food out regularly for her, and one fateful Sunday evening Lyn and I decided to go looking for her. We took some food and a soft-sided carrier, with little expectation that we would catch her.
But we found her, and managed to corner her at the side of a house with Lyn behind her and me in front. To our surprise, we managed to get her into the carrier. Alas, the zipper failed! While I tried to keep Mama Fang inside, Lyn tried to do up the zipper. We tried and tried, and Mama Fang fought back as hard as she could. Pregnant again, she was determined to protect her unborn babies.
Well she bit us both so hard, we eventually had to give up – she bolted. Lyn and I, completely shaken up, me in tears, trudged back to our house with blood dripping from our hands, running down our legs, our clothes covered in blood stains. We got home, washed up and squirted betadine on our injuries and realized we needed to go to the hospital. Some of the injuries were very deep, but the bigger concern was rabies.
Four hours later and USD$3000 poorer, we returned home. We had to have weekly rabies boosters and our dressing changed twice per day. Our injuries healed over time, but it took a long time to recover from our disappointment, and I was mortified that we may have caused Mama Fang or her babies some harm. That’s when we actually named her Mama Fang.
Two days later, a neighbour called us. Someone had dropped a box with 4 newborn kittens at her house and she had no experience with newborns. Well, we were fairly certain they were Mama Fang’s babies and that a neighbour had found them and picked them up, thinking they were doing the right thing. Again, we canvassed the neighborhood to see if we could find out who found them, so we could return them to their mama. But no luck.
Not only did we have an expensive and painful experience with Mama Fang, we ended up raising her babies for her! That’s the story of the ABCD Kittens – Avery, Blair, Charlie and Daryl.
And a year later, we caught Mama Fang, pregnant again, and finally had her spayed. But that’s another story.
