Spooky

The first thing we actually saw was not a family. It was a black kitten, more shadow than cat, wandering a graveyard on its own. Eight weeks old, as far as we could tell, and gone again if you blinked. We named it Spooky, and that sighting is perhaps what saved the rest of them. Until then we only had the school area: neighbours sure they had seen a mum and kittens, then sure they hadn't, nothing you could walk up to with a carrier. Spooky gave us a place to start.

Half term was running out, and a cat who has been raising a litter in that quiet does not get a gentle warning when the playground fills. She bolts. Often toward a road. Three kittens that young cannot keep up. We sat down with the local church and the school, asked for access and patience, and borrowed the traps we needed.

The rain was torrential. We checked those traps every few hours, soaked through, and eventually we had the mum and two of the kittens. Which left one still out there. Spooky, eight weeks old, alone, which is a stress no kitten that age should have to sit with. With more traps we might have lifted the whole family in the same pull. We didn't have more traps. We caught Spooky later that night.

They are in the warm now. The kittens and their mum are being neutered, vaccinated, flea-treated and wormed. The kittens will be rehomed when they're ready. Mum is the open question: whether she can live as a domestic or semi-domestic cat, or whether a different arrangement would be kinder. We won't rush that. If you want to help, the vet work is where the money actually goes.