CANADA – A family who lives in Powassan, Ontario says they were “devastated” when they returned home Wednesday morning to find three kittens abandoned in their mailbox.
“My dad had come home, [and the] mailman came down the driveway and asked if my father lived at this address,” explained Leslie Armitage.
“He said there were kittens in the mailbox. My dad couldn’t believe it.”
“I was devastated. I’ve always loved animals, and to think that someone could just put these little, tiny baby kittens in a cold tin mailbox and just leave, just abandon them, I felt shame for the people that would have done that,” Leslie Armitage tells CBC News. (Provided)
Armitage explained that her father opened up the tin mailbox to find three kittens that were only four weeks old.
“One of them was dead, and the other didn’t make it. The [third] one was full of life,” Armitage noted.
“I was devastated,” Armitage stated.
“I’ve always loved animals, and to think that someone could just put these little, tiny, baby kittens in a cold tin mailbox and just leave — just abandon them — I felt shame for the people that would have done that.”
The kittens were simply left on an absorbent pad with no food or note, Armitage said.
“I assume the person thought, ‘these people love animals, we’ll just drop them here.’ But it’s very inhumane,” she added. “I don’t know if they were there overnight.”
Armitage said she contacted Ontario Provincial Police and reported what happened.
“The constable that showed up — she looked at the size of the kitten — and she was devastated,” she stated.
“She took down all the information she could but, without having a [camera] that may have caught someone, there’s not a lot they could do.”
The Armitage family’s tin mailbox is located about 350 metres away from their home. (Provided)
Abandoning kittens is all too uncommon
Dumping kittens isn’t uncommon in this particular area, according to Powassan animal control officer Sandy Briggs.
“They get left in front of the vet clinic, in front of the humane society, and we’ve had cats dumped here,” Briggs stated.
“We get up in the morning and there’s crates at the end of the driveway.”
Briggs went on to say that her animal control office doesn’t have the facilities to take cats, and there is no bylaw or licensing for cats in the area.
The surviving kitten is doing well, Leslie Armitage says. (Provided)
“There are a couple of places that will take cats, but usually they sort of get started and within a couple of weeks they’re overloaded with cats and kittens,” she stated.
Briggs said that what usually happens is someone will get a cat, choose not to spay or neuter it, and then wind up with a litter of kittens they can’t take care of.
Armitage said to CBC she hopes people will keep an eye out for other abandoned pets, especially as it gets colder.
She went on to say that the surviving kitten has been checked by a vet and is doing very well.
She’s decided to keep it but hasn’t thought of a name yet.
“I want something original,” she concluded.
