In early December, a young man was walking along some train tracks in Covington, Kentucky, heading to the Life Learning Center, when he spotted a taped-up box sitting on the tracks. He was immediately concerned and rushed to open it — and was shocked by who he found inside.
Five kittens were huddled together inside the box and looked to be around 5 to 6 weeks old.
“A staffer at The Learning Center posted them on a local [Facebook] page looking for rescue help, and they made their way to Stray Haven,” Shelly Conner, volunteer cat coordinator at Stray Haven Pet Rescue, told The Dodo.
The kittens were quickly placed in a foster home through Stray Haven and began to get settled in — until their foster mom noticed something was off.
“Initially, the foster who picked them up got them set up in her bathroom, but quickly realized something was ‘wrong’ with most of them,” Conner said. “She sent me videos, concerned there was something neurologically going on. I recognized CH right away. They came to me that evening.”
It turned out that four out of the five kittens had cerebellar hyperplasia (CH), often referred to as wobbly cat syndrome. This can be caused when the mama cat contracts panleukopenia (kitty parvo) during pregnancy and the formation of the kitten’s cerebellum is altered, according to a Facebook post made by Stray Haven. Since Conner had experience working with CH kittens, she volunteered to take them in, and they’ve been with her ever since.
The kittens were named Rocky Road, Cherry Garcia, Pistachio, Sherbet and Chunky Monkey, who is the only kitten who doesn’t have CH.
“The other four have what we are calling mild-moderate CH,” Conner said. “When we first got them, they had loose stools and couldn’t get up on their feet at all, so things were a bit challenging, and we were concerned they were all severe CH … As they got stronger and older, they gained the ability to get up on all four legs. After about three weeks, they gained enough stability to be able to start drinking on their own and use the litter box. They truly have come so far in just five weeks.”
The playful little kittens have no idea that they’re any different, and are growing and learning just like any other kittens. Stray Haven is hoping to place them with families who have experience dealing with CH, just to be on the safe side, but otherwise, their lives won’t be that different.
These kittens were abandoned and left to die on some train tracks, but now they have their whole lives ahead of them.
