Earlier this month, two tiny kittens were left in a box on the side of a busy New Brunswick highway during a snowstorm. The animals came very close to being run over by a snow plow, but a Good Samaritan intervened.
A motorist saw a boxed marked "free" on the side of a highway and called the SPCA just in the nick of time.
“Had the officer just been a little bit later, there would be no kittens. The plow would have come, taken the box and that would have been the end,” says Karen Nelson of the Greater Moncton SPCA.
Melanie Hamilton fosters animals from the SPCA. She says the four-week-old kittens were in rough shape when they arrived at her doorstep.
“The sneezing starts and then the stuffy nose starts, and then by the end of the day, the second day that I had them, they had trouble breathing,” says Hamilton.
But with a lot of medicine, hand-feeding, and love, the kittens are doing much better today. Jingle and Bell are now thriving in their foster home, as they patiently await a forever home.
The SPCA says foster homes like Hamilton’s are invaluable because they just don’t have the space to house all the animals they rescue.
“We couldn’t do it without the community support,” says Nelson.
Nelson says, regrettably, this isn’t an isolated incident. She says to minimize unwanted animals, they need to be viewed as more than a piece of property, which is why they don't make good Christmas gifts.
“It’s a long-term commitment. A cat is 20 years.”
“I just really wish that everybody who was in a situation, if you don’t have a car, if you don’t have the money, if you can’t get to the SPCA, just call them and explain the situation,” says Hamilton.
Hamilton and Nelson say there are people who care and who will help.
With files from CTV's David Bell.
