TRANSCRIPT 🔗
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Hannah's haven, we kitty save it, no matter the story, we'll get them through.
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Hannah's haven, we kitty save it, no matter the story, that's what we do.
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We rescue rehabilitate and rehabilitable cats and kittens.
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Texas 108422 98492 to find out more.
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Thanks everybody for coming back for another episode of the Catatude Diaries.
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As you might have learnt from last episode, we introduced one of our very young mamas, Simone.
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This episode is going to tell you a little bit more about her story.
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This one's called Two Little Girls, Two Different Roads.
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Now I've had to write this all down because I wanted to get it right and I didn't want to miss anything out because both stories are very important and both deserve being told.
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So I have a story that I need to share.
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Actually, I have two.
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And while their stories are very different, they're connected in a way that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.
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Two little girls, both pregnant when they were still kittens themselves.
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One has been given the opportunity to remain a kitten.
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The other became a mother.
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And somewhere between those two stories is a conversation that I think we desperately need to have.
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Because I want you to ask yourself something as you listen.
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What would you have done?
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Not what do you think you would do, not what do you believe is the right thing, but what do you actually do if you were standing in my shoes looking at those little girls, knowing that whatever decision you made would change their lives.
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I want you to think of that because I've had to.
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Story one.
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It's one of those stories that make you hate yourself, the world, and everyone in it.
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Sometimes there are cases that come through the door and immediately make you second guess everything that you thought you knew.
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We had a kitten come into care that was barely five months old.
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She was tiny, underweight, and desperately needing to be fattened up.
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She settled in beautifully and quickly became a favorite with anyone who met her.
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She was sweet and affectionate and everything a kitten her age should be.
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She also had a big belly full of worms, which explained why she was so skinny.
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Or so we thought.
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After being with us for just over a week, we started to become suspicious of that belly because instead of getting smaller, it was getting bigger.
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This little girl who was barely five months old was pregnant.
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Spay abort is never a conversation that we want to have.
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And there are a lot of people with a lot of opinions on the subject, and I understand that.
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Before I was educated on the topic, I was one of those people.
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I had strong opinions, and I was against it too.
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But then I was confronted with the reality of it in a particularly difficult case back in 2023.
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Before we could make a decision, that cat became critically unwell and needed emergency surgery.
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And in that situation, the decision had essentially been made for us.
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This time was different.
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This little girl was still a baby herself.
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She had so much growing and developing left to do.
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She should have been playing, exploring, and learning about the world around her, not preparing to give birth and raise babies on her own.
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She didn't need to go through the physical demands of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood at an age when she was still growing herself.
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I knew what the right decision was.
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But I still cried all the way home.
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And it wasn't just about the surgery.
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I cried for what she'd already been through in such a short life.
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I cried because somewhere along the way this tiny, innocent little girl had been put in a position that she should never have been put into.
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And she deserved better.
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After surgery, we learnt just how serious her situation had been.
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Her tiny body was carrying multiple developing kittens, and there were significant concerns about the space available for them to continue growing and for the complications that could follow.
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What we had already known was a dangerous situation for such a young kitten turned out to be even more concerning than we initially realized.
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She was still early in her pregnancy, but her body had already started to change.
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It was important that she was given the opportunity to heal both physically and mentally before we started looking for a forever home.
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She should never have been put in that position in the first place.
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Today,
Load full transcript
this sweet, affectionate little girl is almost ready for the next chapter.
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She's playing again and she's exploring.
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She's being silly and doing all the things that kittens are supposed to do.
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And she's being a kitten because that's what she is.
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But what if we'd made a different choice?
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And I want you to imagine something.
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Imagine that instead of proceeding with surgery, we'd decided to let that continue.
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Imagine that we'd waited that we'd watched her belly grow, prepared a nesting box, and waited for the day she became a mother.
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Would that have been the kind of decision that would we have been giving those unborn kittens a chance at life?
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Or would we have been asking a little girl to sacrifice her own childhood for babies she was never supposed to be carrying at her age?
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It's a difficult question, isn't it?
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And it's easy to have an answer when you're not the one responsible for what comes next.
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But here's where the story takes a turn.
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Because while she was recovering from her surgery, another little girl was about to come into our lives.
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And she was going to show us exactly what motherhood can look like when you're still a baby yourself.
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And this is where Simone's story continues.
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And if you listened to the previous episode, you already know how she came into care.
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But there's also things about Simone's story that we didn't know when she first arrived.
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Some things that have changed the way that we've had to look at her.
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It was late October when she arrived with five newborn kittens.
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Five.
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She'd given birth to them in a closet.
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And the circumstances surrounding their arrival were nothing short of ridiculous.
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There was a very real possibility that those babies were going to be separated from their mother.
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Now anyone who knows me knows exactly how I feel about unnecessarily separating newborn kittens from their mum.
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And anyone who listened to the previous episode knows how that particular situation unfolded.
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And let's just say it wasn't one of humanity's finest moments.
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At the time we were already close to new intake.
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We were financially stretched, overwhelmed, and struggling to keep up with the animals already depending on us.
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But there are some situations where you don't have the luxury of sitting down and working out whether you can afford to help.
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You just know that if you don't do something, the consequences could be devastating.
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And this was one of those.
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So Simone and her five babies came into care.
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Six more lives, six more mouths to feed, six more reasons to worry, and another very young mum who at the time we believed was approximately twelve months old.
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Yes, she's young, but not unusually young, or so we thought.
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As we got to know Simone, we started noticing little things, things that didn't quite make sense.
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She was affectionate and she was playful and she wanted attention.
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And sometimes when we watched her with the babies, she seemed almost confused about what she was supposed to be doing.
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Now, before anyone jumps to conclusions, I'm not suggesting that every young mother behaves this way.
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Or that an older mother can't struggle too.
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I've seen experienced mums who need help and first-time mothers who seem to know exactly what they're doing.
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Every cat is different.
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But Simone was making us curious.
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Then we discovered something.
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She wasn't twelve months old.
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She's eight months old.
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Which means when she became pregnant, she was likely only five to six months old.
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Sound familiar?
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Our first kitty was barely five months old when we discovered her pregnancy.
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Simone was likely around a similar age when she conceived.
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Two little girls, almost exactly the same stage of their lives, except one pregnancy ended, and the other resulted in five kittens.
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Suddenly the similarities between them were impossible to ignore.
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And I found myself looking at Simone differently, because I wasn't just looking at a mother with five babies anymore.
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I was looking at a kitten who had become a mother.
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Now I need to explain something.
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Simone loves her babies, and I have absolutely no doubt about that.
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She feeds them, she settles with them, she responds to them when they cry.
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But some of her behavior has been a little unusual.
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Over the past few days, we've watched her pick up the kittens and move them
around in ways that have made us kind of cringe and a bit wary.
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And sometimes she'll grab one, move it around roughly, trill, and then go back to get another.
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To her, they're little toys.
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And they squeak.
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But then she'll lie down, they'll find their way to her, and then everyone settles for a feed.
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It's almost like watching two different sides of her.
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One moment she's being a mother, and the next she's behaving like a kitten that wants to play.
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And I can't help wonder whether those two instincts are competing with each other because she is still so young.
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She's still at an age where she should be playing and exploring and learning.
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But instead, she's responsible for five completely dependent little lives.
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And that's the responsibility she didn't choose.
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There's also the nesting.
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Some nights she'd move them into the litter tray, dirty or not, because for whatever reason, in her little head, she thought that was a better choice.
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She had a proper nesting box available.
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For some reason it just wasn't what she wanted.
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But watching her repeatedly choose the litter tray made me realize that something wasn't quite right.
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Maybe she was looking somewhere that she felt more secure.
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Maybe there was something about her environment that she wasn't comfortable with.
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I don't know.
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And that's the thing.
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I can't ask her.
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I can't sit down and say, Simone sweetheart, what are you doing?
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Well, actually I can, and I do frequently, but she's not particularly forthcoming with an explanation.
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So I just sit and watch and I observe and I try and help her and make changes because that's what rescue is.
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It's not just putting food in a bowl and cleaning out the litter tray, it's noticing the things that aren't quite right, it's asking questions, and sometimes it's admitting that you don't have all the answers.
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Simone's babies needed additional care right from the beginning because they were tiny.
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And two of them have conditions with their legs, which means they haven't been able to do what they're meant to do.
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They're not in the right position.
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We also needed to provide supplement feeds to help support them all.
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Now I want
to be very clear.
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I'm not saying that Simone's age caused these issues, because that'd be an assumption, and we don't have the evidence to back that claim.
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But what I can tell you is that raising five newborn kittens is demanding for anyone, even for a healthy, mature mum.
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And when the mother herself is still growing, it's something that deserves particular attention.
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Because every feed, every interrupted rest, and every demand that those babies place on her body is happening still while she has growing and developing to do of her own.
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And sometimes I watch her and I wonder how much of this she actually understands.
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Not in a human way, of course, but whether she feels overwhelmed, whether she's exhausted, whether she's just trying to work out what to do next, and whether given the opportunity, she'd rather be chasing a toy across the floor.
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Now I want to ask you something.
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Remember the question I asked you at the beginning?
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What would you have done?
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Now let's go back to the kitty in story one.
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She was barely five months old.
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She was underweight, carrying multiple developing kittens.
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You knew there would be significant risks associated with continuing the pregnancy.
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You also knew that terminating that pregnancy means that those kittens will never be born.
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What would you do?
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Would you proceed with the surgery or would you let the pregnancy continue?
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And before you answer, I also want you to think about Simone.
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Because Simone is living on the other side of that decision.
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She's here.
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Her babies are here.
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They're alive and they're being cared for, and we're doing everything we can to give them the best possible start.
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But the fact is that Simone is still a kitten.
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She doesn't suddenly become a fully developed adult because she's given birth.
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And the fact that she has five babies doesn't mean she stops needing care herself.
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Now imagine that she hadn't come into rescue.
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Imagine that there wasn't someone watching her behavior, someone noticing where she was putting the babies, someone checking whether they were feeding properly, someone monitoring, someone providing the additional milk when it was needed.
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What would her experience of motherhood have looked like then?
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We don't know.
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And I don't want to pretend that we do, but I do know that having support makes an enormous difference.
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And that difference matters.
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Now we've seen so many young mums come through our doors this year.
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And do you know what they all have in common?
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Struggle.
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They need help, they need extra support.
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Some struggle to produce enough milk, some become overwhelmed, and others are simply exhausted by the demands of raising their babies.
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Because they're still babies themselves, yet they're forced to raise more of their own.
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And these are the ones that we call lucky because they've made it into care.
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They have someone watching over them, helping them and making sure they have everything they need.
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And most importantly, when their babies are weaned and they're ready, they will be de-sexed and they'll never have to endure another pregnancy or raise another little because the cycle ends with us.
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I want you to think about the mothers that we never meet, The ones giving birth underneath houses, in sheds, in abandoned buildings, in backyards.
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The ones trying to keep their babies warm when the weather turns cold.
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The ones searching for food while their newborns wait for them to return.
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The ones who are sick and injured or malnourished or just simply too young to cope.
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And the ones whose babies don't survive.
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We don't get to see their stories.
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We don't get the happy photographs.
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We don't get to celebrate their milestones.
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Sometimes we don't even know they exist.
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And yet somewhere out there, there's another little Simone becoming pregnant.
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Another little Simone having to give birth.
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And the cycle just keeps going.
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I've debated sharing this story for so many reasons.
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One of them because the strong feelings and misconceptions and opinions surrounding the spay abort procedures.
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And I know there will be people who disagree with the decisions that we made.
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And I know there will be people who say that we should have let nature take its course.
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And once upon a time, I might have been one of them.
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But experience changes your perspective, education changes your
understanding.
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And sometimes being confronted with the reality of a situation forces you to reconsider everything that you thought you knew.
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This isn't about whether you agree with pregnancy termination.
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This is about why a kitten who was barely five months old was pregnant in the first place.
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That's the conversation that we need to be having.
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Because her story isn't rare.
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This is happening every single day.
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And until we start doing better by the animals who depend on us is going to keep happening.
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We are already bursting at the seams with unplanned, unwanted, and discarded kittens and mothers.
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Rescues are exhausted.
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Carers are overwhelmed, and veterinary clinics and shelters are struggling to keep up, and the cycle just keeps continuing.
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There are more pregnancies, more kittens, and more animals needing homes that there simply aren't any for.
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It doesn't have to be this way because we can do better.
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We need to do better.
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Now I'm going to tell you the name of the kitten from story one.
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And that's little Mariska.
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You all know her, we've shown you her picture before.
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And she's playful, she's affectionate, she's discovering the world.
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But she doesn't have five babies depending on her.
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She doesn't have to worry about feeding them.
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She doesn't have to go through birth or the physical demands of raising a litter.
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She gets to be a kitten.
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And then I look at Simone and I see her laying with her five babies, and I see them feeding, and I see her cleaning them.
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And I see these moments when she wants to come and play, when she's restless, when she's doing things that leave me scratching my head.
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And I think about how close these two little girls are in age, and how easily their circumstances could have been reversed.
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Mariska could have been the mother of five, and Simone could have been the kitten recovering from surgery.
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And yet here they are.
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Two completely different experiences, neither of which should have been necessary.
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And I think that's the part that gets me.
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Because neither of these little girls did anything wrong.
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They didn't make irresponsible decisions and they didn't choose to become pregnant.
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They were simply cats doing what nature designed them to do.
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And somewhere along the way, the humans responsible for preventing these situations failed them.
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That's where the responsibility belongs.
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Not with Mariska, not with Simone, and certainly not with their babies.
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If you take anything away from this story, let it be this DeSex your pets.
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Not when they've had their first litter, not when you decide that you've had enough kittens, not when you finally get around to it.
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Talk to your vet about the appropriate age and timing.
00:21:39.440 --> 00:21:47.440
Because by the time you realize that your little girl is pregnant, you might already be facing decisions that you never imagined you'd have to make.
00:21:47.839 --> 00:21:51.039
And those decisions can be heartbreaking.
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I know because I've made them and I've cried over them, and I've questioned myself long after the paperwork has been signed.
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:01.599
And the surgery is finished.
00:22:03.359 --> 00:22:06.559
But I've also sat beside young mums who are struggling.
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I've helped feed their babies.
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I've watched them become overwhelmed.
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And I've seen what happens when animals are left to reproduce without anyone taking responsibility for the consequences.
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I don't want to have to keep having these conversations.
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I don't want to keep seeing kittens becoming mothers.
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I don't want to keep making decisions about pregnancies that never should have happened.
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And I don't want another little girl to go through what Marissa or Simone had to experience.
00:22:42.319 --> 00:22:51.920
And just like her namesake, Detective Olivia Benson from the Law and Order series, we fight for the ones that don't have a voice.
00:22:53.119 --> 00:22:58.880
And Simone, she's the little black kitten who gave birth to five babies in a closet.
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The little girl whose story brought so many people to our page.
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The little girl who has no idea that people have been talking about her, worrying about her, and following her baby's progress.
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She's just doing the best that she can.
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And we're going to keep doing the best that we can for her.
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Because that's what she deserves.
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And when those babies are grown and no longer need her, Simone will finally have the opportunity to be Simone the kitten again.
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No more pregnancies, no more litters, no
more tiny babies depending on her for survival.
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Just a little girl who deserves to be loved and cared for, exactly like Mariska.
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I want to leave you with one final thought.
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We talk a lot about saving lives in rescue, and rightly so.
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But sometimes saving a life means making a decision that other people won't understand.
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Sometimes it means stepping in before something goes wrong.
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Sometimes it means helping a mother raise babies that she was never ready to have.
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And sometimes it means making sure those babies are never conceived in the first place.
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Not everyone will agree with every decision that we make, and that's okay.
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But I hope that after hearing these stories, you'll understand why we have to make them because I've looked into the eyes of both of these little girls.
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I've held them, I've worried about them, and I've cried for them, and I've seen two very different sides of the same problem.
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Two kittens, two pregnancies, two different outcomes, and neither should have been pregnant in the first place.
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Both ended up at Hannes Haven, and they've got two stories on two different roads.
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Their stories don't have to be repeated.
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We can change what happens to the next little girl.
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We can change what happens to the next generation, we can change the trajectory.
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We need to rewrite our history This one keeps repeating.
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Too many stayed silent, too many left and never come back.
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But imagine if we could have changed that to generations with timelines much the same.
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Except this isn't reversed, and it's not a game for generations.
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The same pattern, the same silence, the same heartbreak.
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Somehow we gotta change the trajectory.
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Same kind of problems, stories like books, but not everything is the same, especially looks.
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See the while the waters between us.
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No ships strong enough to survive.
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But fight in the same battles, just at very different times.
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For generations, the same pattern, the same silence, the same heartbreak.
00:26:54.880 --> 00:27:02.720
Somehow we gotta change trajectory, trajectory, trajectory.
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When history is repeated, we are with the same game.
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Why don't you take the lessons you learned and set a different trajectory?
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Trajectory.
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we still don't talk our own mothers the same.
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When will they learn it's time to switch up the game?
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Four generations, the same pattern, the same silence, the same heartbreak.
00:27:48.319 --> 00:27:53.359
Somehow we gotta change trajectory.