This story (click on screenshot below) comes from NPR, and the video of the rescue went viral (also see below). I believe I posted it at the time.
From the story:
As Robert Brantley was driving down the backroads of northeast Louisiana on Tuesday, something caught his eye. The professional shooter was going about 40 miles an hour as he headed toward the shooting range, but he thought he had seen a kitten on the side of the road.
He wasn’t sure though, so he turned his car around and went back to find out. In a video that he posted to Instagram, Brantley walks toward a single white and gray tabby kitten.
“Look — kitty, kitty,” Brantley calls toward the kitten.
Brantley picks the kitten up just as three more white kittens pop up in the grass. But it didn’t end there. In total, 12 kittens came out of the grass after the first one and ambushed the man who said he thought it was just a lone kitten.
“Oh, no, there’s a whole — oh, my gosh! I can’t take y’all. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh, there’s more! We got a kitten problem,” Brantley exclaims in his initial video. “Who would do this? I thought I was saving one. Hot diggity dog.”
Needless to say, Brantley had his hands full and did not make it to the range that day.
“I was not prepared for the kittens,” he told NPR. “I was just blown away.”
The 37-year-old said it was a wave of emotions as he realized someone had likely dumped the kittens on the side of the road at an age when they couldn’t fend for themselves.
Brantley put the baker’s dozen into his Honda hatchback, and the rest is history (see below):
Here’s the original Instagram post that went viral:
What happened? The nice man fostered them and found forever homes:
Brantley then headed home with his baker’s dozen of kittens. The initial video gained a lot of traction on social media, and Brantley said thousands of offers for adoption started pouring in from all around the U.S. and elsewhere in the world.
At this time, most of the litter is spoken for, with the exception of a couple of kittens that need a little extra attention, and a veterinarian is scheduled to stop by Thursday night to help out.
“We found some good people locally that want ’em, and I know that they’re all good people and they’re not doing anything bad with them,” he said. “We haven’t gave any of them away yet — they’re probably a little too young.”
Brantley has continued to share the kittens’ journey on his Instagram page, including playtime in the yard and the beginning of bath time, featuring one kitten Brantley has named Scout.
Here’s an update I found on Facebook: the kittens being photographed
And a photo of Brantley and one of the pack:
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I’ve posted about the new cat video game “Stray” twice before (here and here), and it seems that it was a big hit among gamers. Now it seems that the game is actually helping real stray cats. See the four-minute news report below:
If anybody has played this game, let us know in the comments, and tell us what you think. If I played video games, it would be this one, for it looks very realistic. And I’m sure Grania would be playing this if she were still around.
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This article from the Smithsonian shows something absolutely predictable (click to read).
What is Starlink? From the article:
Starlink is a satellite internet service created by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. It currently has more than 1,600 satellites orbiting in space, with permission from U.S. authorities to eventually launch up to 12,000, reports the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt.
But it also has this feature:
Starlink satellite dishes have a self-heating feature to melt snow, which may be why cats are drawn to it, reports the Guardian. Engineers created this feature to stop snow from interfering with the signal, but can the dish handle a pile of felines?
. . .As cold weather and storms plague parts of the United States this winter, cat owners can count on their fluffy companions to curl up in the warmest spots they can reach.
That’s what Aaron Taylor certainly seems to have discovered. On December 31, Taylor posted a photo on Twitter of five cats curled up on his self-heating satellite dish. The post quickly went viral, gaining more than 190,000 likes and 26,000 retweets so far.
Here’s the picture:
Starlink works great until the cats find out that the dish gives off a little heat on cold days. pic.twitter.com/uyH3Kbqrie
— Aaron Taylor (@Tippen22) December 31, 2021
. . . . On Twitter, Taylor says five cats snuggling on his dish interrupts his video streaming and “slows everything down.”
. . . .For those concerned about cats outside in cold weather, Taylor clarifies they do have access to heated cat house. But even when temperatures reached minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit, the kitties still used the satellite dish as a $500 cat bed. “When the sun goes down, they head back to their house,” he adds on Twitter.
He suspects these daytime luxury naps occur because sunlight heats the dish from the top, while the internal dish heater warms it from the bottom, he writes in another comment.
Other Twitter users quickly replied to Taylor’s post, including Nico Thirion, who posted a photo of a bird hanging out on a satellite dish. “Different species, same problem,” he wrote.
Here you go. Beware if you live in a cold area and have a Starlink dish:
Different species, same problem pic.twitter.com/OzG2bOoaWv
— Nico Thirion (@Nicothirion) January 1, 2022
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Lagniappe: kitteh enjoys a spa day. Actually, it’s not a pleasurable spa day: no cucumber eyeshades or massages. Just bathing, toothbrushing (you can buy chicken-flavored toothpaste for cats) and nail clipping.
h/t: Barry, Nicole, Margaret
Stray is simply beautiful to look at, and cat very convincing in its movements. From watching many videos of experienced gamers, the ones who’ve interacted fully as a cat, not just rushing through to “win,” are the most fun.
Have never bought a video game before, but this is very tempting. Finding out how many robots and objects cat can interact with, where cat can nap, what is allowed to be shredded, etc, would be quite satisfying. And I wouldn’t really care if cat got home or not, as a cat this smart would fine his way without my help.
Love the cats in the satellite dish! We had fixed wireless internet service (as this type of service is called) on Orcas Island. Our dish was pointed more or less horizontally to intersect a signal beamed from Lummi Island. Pointing the disk horizontally didn’t attract any animal visitors. Neither was it heated, which was another non-attractant.
Great trifecta – thanks! Those poor little kittens – so great that they were found by someone willing to put in the effort to raise them and find them good homes.
Other rescue: the cat (seen earlier) rescued in the earthquake in Turkey has been adopted by his rescuer and named Enkaz, meaning Rubble.
So happy they were found. Little cuties.