The story of the Mother’s Day double miracle began on Saturday. It was the fourth day of our deployment to Memphis, and our Red Star Animal Emergency Services™ team was on a boat rescue operation to a Memphis neighborhood that had been completely submerged under floodwaters.
Josh Cary — an Animal Emergency Services staff member with American Humane Association — was leading the operation, alongside veteran Red Star volunteer Manny Maciel. Some of the homes around us had lost decks that were now floating in the water. On top of one of these, we spotted seven calico kittens.
As we paddled closer, we could see that the kittens were tiny, just a few days old. Gently, we gathered them up and took them to the local veterinary hospital, where they could get special care.
The next day was Mother’s Day. We were back in the boat in the same neighborhood, searching for more animals stranded by the rampant flooding. On another sunken deck, we saw two calico cats. We quickly realized that one of them was the mother of the kittens and the other was expecting a litter.
We gathered them both into our boat and zipped her over the veterinary hospital where one of the mamma cats was reunited with her baby kittens — Mother’s Day miracle number one!
Later that evening, as the sun went down and the muggy Tennessee air began to cool, the pregnant cat made a small sound. She was ready to have her babies. By the next morning, we discovered our second Mother’s Day miracle: a litter of newborn kittens.
A five-year Red Star volunteer veteran, Barb Davis deployed with our Animal Emergency Services team on May 3 from her home in Doniphan, Neb.
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