29/03/2026
In animal rescue, sometimes we have to hold the precious moments of joy and celebration tightly to our hearts, to prevent them crumbling from the pain of loss. The first 3 weeks of March have been like that at The Peaceable Kin-dom.
While we're celebrating tiny kitten Willow's near-miraculous community-supported recovery from starvation, dehydration, and a broken leg, we're also mourning the deaths of four Kin-dom kitties over the past few weeks: one long-term foster and one brand-new rescue, one year-old graduate, and one senior kitty who'd been with us for just over 3 years. Their names: Teddy, Taniwha, Tigerlily, and Ariadne. Each had a story, all were deeply loved, and are now painfully missed.
We've posted a lot about Willow in the three weeks since she arrived, and you can read the heart-warming story of her post-surgery progress, setback, and recovery, by scrolling back through our page The Peaceable Kin-dom. Since her last update, she got into mischief by chewing the epoxy-resin splints that hold the pins stabilising her repaired right rear tibia, and the bits she ingested made her quite bloated, resulting in another vet call🙀!
Consequently, she's had bitter-tasting lemon juice smeared on the splints and, for extra insurance against further chewing, she's had to wear a slightly-more-comfy-than-plastic, kitten-sized version of the dreaded "cone of shame" whenever she's not cuddling with her foster family. She's handled the indignity and restricted movement with as much grace as possible, and her foster family is very good at distracting her with new toys that allow gentle play without sudden movements, running, or jumping that could re-injure her still-setting leg bone.
On April 8, she'll have more X-rays, and if they show the bone has completely fused, the pins and splints will be removed from her leg. Then, once she's rebuilt her strength and her weight's caught up with her actual age, we'll be looking for a loving, safe-from-road-danger forever home for her. If you might be interested in possibly adopting her, you're welcome to get in touch now, and come to meet her and start creating a relationship with both her and her foster family.
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Starting exactly one week before Willow entered our lives, three current or former Kin-dom kitties departed 😿💔😭.
The first was Teddy, a lovely ginger-and-white boy who came to the Kin-dom with his bonded tabby brother Elvis in September of 2024, when their elderly guardian went into permanent care and nobody in the extended family could take them in. They were over 8 at the time, and appeared healthy, but we soon learned Teddy had sun-damage skin cancer on the light parts of his nose and ears, and additionally needed extensive dental work. Those treatments cost over $2,000. Plus blood tests revealed both cats carried the FIV virus, the feline equivalent of HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), which makes them more vulnerable to infections and injuries can be slower to heal. They can live long, healthy lives, but need protection from hazards, so we require outside enclosures ("catios") to adopt our FIV-positive cats.
Nobody came forward to adopt these two gentle boys, but a generous-hearted friend offered to foster them indefinitely. We provided a spacious catio attached to her sleepout, and the two brothers lived a happy life with lots of love and attention from their foster carer.
Unfortunately, on March 1, startled by a sudden dog bark nearby, Teddy had a freakish fall from a high pile of cut bamboo. Though he seemed all right shortly afterward, the next morning his carer discovered him struggling to breathe. After all day at the vet clinic, with no injury evident on X-rays, he still couldn't breathe without supplemental oxygen, and his condition was deteriorating. The vets didn't know how to help him, and it was clear he was suffering, with no apparent chance of recovery. So we sadly agreed for the vets to help him gently leave his body. His carer and his brother Elvis were especially devasted by his sudden, unexpected death, and we're all still mourning his loss.
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On Wednesday, March 4, we got a call from a woman who'd found a tiny, weak, emaciated kitten on the unsealed road to the river near the treatment plant, when she was walking her dog. She'd scooped the kitten up and taken him home, and she rang to ask if The Kin-dom could take him in.
Unfortunately, we were (and still are) already well over the number of felines we can fit into our available housing. The other animal rescue in GB was in a similar position. So we told her we'd support her with supplies, food, vet care and coaching, if she was willing to foster the kitten, and - bless her - she agreed to do it, because the other options - turning the kitten loose or euthanising him - were simply not ones we were willing to consider.
So we provided a crate, bedding, food, toys - all needed supplies, and she took him into the vet clinic that afternoon.
The vets said the kitten, whom the woman called "Taniwha" was very malnourished and dehydrated, had a lower-than-normal body temperature, and possibly had a virus that caused snuffly breathing. They warmed him up, gave him fluids, got him to eat, and sent him home with his rescuer, saying to bring him back in the morning if he wasn't doing well.
His rescuer/fosterer - who hadn't had a cat before - took wonderful care of him, putting him on a heating pad and giving him lots of cuddles and good food. He seemed to perk up. But in the middle of the night, she discovered his body was cooler than it should have been. She cuddled him against her own body for several hours until the vet clinic opened the next morning, and she took him back in.
The vets did everything they could, but he was clearly fading. By the time he was found, he may well have been already too far gone from lack of food, water and warmth, and probably intestinal worms too. Most kittens in the wild have them, and a big enough worm load in a tiny, malnourished body can actually kill the kitten from internal bleeding and toxicity. Unfortunately, vets and rescuers see too many such cases, and it's often too late to save them.
Sadly, that was true for tiny Taniwha, and so the vets saved him from further suffering, and compassionately ended his short life. It was heartbreaking to see his tiny body curled in a box, knowing he never really had a chance at life, and wondering why and how he came to be where he was found. His rescuer took his body to bury near where she'd found him, leaving a small marker that we hope will be noticed by anyone who comes there to dump unwanted kittens, and will maybe change their mind as a result!
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Then on Friday of that same week, March 6, we learned that one of our "graduates," a beautiful just-over-one-year-old cat we'd named "Tigerlily," had been killed by a car! Tiger had been born at the Kin-dom in November 2024, to a very young feral mother named Blossom.
A local family had fostered Blossom and her five kittens, and ended up adopting Tiger along with another, older Kin-dom rescue cat we called "Noble." The two cats were best mates, both much loved by their family, who did their best to teach the kitties to avoid the nearby road and keep to the lush gardens and trees at the rear of the property.
Sadly, intermittently traveled rural roads can be even more dangerous than constantly-busy roads where the steady flow of traffic noise warns cats to avoid the area altogether. When roads have only occasional traffic, cats are emboldened to cross, and then when a car approaches, the cats have no way of judging their sp*ed, and simply can't get out of the way in time.
All the many Kin-dom volunteers who knew and loved this little kitty are grieving along with his family. His 14 months of life were filled with love and the best of care, but they still were far too short!
😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭
And finally (we hope)... last Sunday (22 March), we had to farewell our senior kitty, Ariadne, whose body was clearly shutting down, even though her tests were all normal and the vets had no clear diagnosis of what was wrong. She had been at The Kin-dom for just over 3 years!
A quiet, older domestic tortoiseshell who disliked other cats and hissed or struck at almost everyone but her main carer - whom she loved, purred, and sought snuggles with - Ari was always passed over by prospective adopters. She had too many strikes against her: she was older, thin, arthritic, wobbly on her feet, anti-social, and a picky eater with a tendency to vomit at the slightest hint of a hairball.
But what most people never saw was her perennially youthful face and beautiful, clear, luminous green eyes that looked right into your soul with a plea for understanding and love. Few people took the time to win her trust, and thus to experience her musical little chirps as she leaned against your body and welcomed gentle strokes. Hardly anyone else ever stayed long enough for her to curl up against your side and fall asleep purring. We thought she'd have been a perfect companion for someone with a quiet, sedentary lifestyle
She'd come to the Kin-dom in January 2023, rescued with two kittens her trapper thought were hers. Another agency took the kittens, but not her, so to prevent her from being euthanised we took her in. She arrived with a broken tooth and a lump at the base of her tail, so the first thing we did was take her to be speyed and to have the lump and broken tooth removed.
But when the vets opened her abdomen to spey her, they found she'd already been speyed! So she'd clearly been someone's pet! But she had no microchip. No one had reported her missing. We'll never know how she came to be on a property in Rockville with two kittens who weren't even hers. But given her condition, she'd obviously been on her own for some time. And given her painful start to life at the Kin-dom, it wasn't surprising she was slow to open up and trust people again.
Ari was a high-maintenance cat, whose special diet was costly and who couldn't share space with other cats without fireworks. So she spent her days in her carer's bedroom and her nights in a spacious, comfy crate in the office, safe from conflict with the other cats sharing that room. Volunteers would go and sit with her, sing to her, offer treats on a long-handled spoon. She never played interactively, but when nobody was around, she'd rearrange the toys left for her on the bed. It was a comfortable, not very stimulating existence, but she slept most of the time and seemed contented with the strokes she got from her carer whenever she came into the bedroom. It wasn't ideal, but it beat living rough in the bush!
In the early weeks of March, as the sad losses described above unfolded and Willow arrived to dominate our lives temporarily, Ariadne had gradually started eating less and less. Always a picky eater with a touchy tummy, she started leaving more and more of her special diet and tempting treats in the dish. Nothing we offered appealed - not her special high-nutrient tinned food, nor raw wild meat, nor boiled chicken and broth, nor tinned sardines or salmon. She'd walk to her dish, sniff it, and turn away after a few bites, if any.
Always on the thin side, by mid-March her weight loss was noticeable, and she seemed more frail and wobbly than ever. So we took her to the vet on the 16th, where she was found to be severely dehydrated. She spent the day on subcutaneous fluids, and was sent home after eating a small amount of food.
She ate nothing the next day, so we took her back to the clinic Friday for blood tests, more hydrating fluids, and IV nutrients. An X-ray showed nothing unusual, and her kidneys, thyroid and pancreatic tests were normal. She spent that night in the clinic on fluids and IV nourishment, then they sent her home Saturday night.
But Sunday morning she again refused food, and her breathing was laboured, which it hadn't been before. So we took her back to the clinic, where the weekend vet-on-call did an ultrasound and discovered her heart and lungs were surrounded by fluid, stressing her heart and lungs. We called her regular vet, who kindly came in and confirmed that even though we didn't know the cause, her body was clearly shutting down, and draining the fluid would only postpone the inevitable.
Although The Peaceable Kin-dom is a "No-Kill" rescue - which means we will never euthanise a healthy animal nor one who could recover and live a full life, with treatment - we are absolutely committed to NEVER allowing an animal to suffer when death or permanent pain are inevitable. And Ari made it clear she was ready to leave her failing body. Whereas her cage on Wednesday warned clinic employees "MAY BITE," now she offered no resistence to the vets' gentle handling. She curled up on her carer's lap almost gratefully, so the vet could easily administer the drug into her IV port, that gently stopped her struggling heart. She just closed her green eyes - luminous and clear to the end - and went into her final sleep. We all cried.
We buried her in the garden at the Kin-dom the next day, and marked her grave with a heart-shaped rock bearing her name, and a flower in a little vase, and a small solar light. A few volunteers gathered to hear her story and share our memories of her. Some people recounted being whacked by her when they came too close, a few even getting bruised or scratched; others said they'd always been scared to come too close when cleaning her litter box.
But nobody held it against her. They understood she'd had a rough life. As one person who knew her well said: "She had a broken heart." Like the mythological Greek princess she was named for, she'd been betrayed - whether intentionally or not - by people she loved and trusted. We did our best to make it up to her, but sometimes the hurts run too deep!
This is the reality of rescue work. We do our best, and sometimes, it's not enough to heal the wounds of past abandonment, abuse or neglect. But we do believe Ari knew, in these last 3 years of her life, that she was loved.
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March has seen more losses than we usually experience in half a year. But despite our grief, we still have 26 cats in residence and 4 more in foster care - and they still need feeding twice daily and their litter cleaned daily too. And we're SO grateful that little Willow is doing so well now. Outcomes like hers remind us of why this work is worth doing. We wanted you, our supporters, to know what your interest, compassion, and generosity make possible.
And we're sharing these stories because we believe the old folk wisdom that states: "Shared joy is double joy; shared sorrow is half sorrow." We hope these cats' stories have touched your hearts as their lives have touched ours.
In kinship and gratitude, the volunteer team at The Peaceable Kin-dom 🌈🙏🐾❤️🩹🐈😻💝
