So today there was a super duper high drama episode happening at home. By the end of it the kids were both shaken and happy. We had to rescue a kitten from a drain pipe!!

Here goes the story……..A few days ago a stray cat had given 4 babies on our neighbour’s terrace. Those cats keep roaming around our houses. Today morning the cat placed 2 of the kittens in our garage window.

God knows when she brought them up from the back staircase and the brown one crawled inside our first floor door and hid behind the curtain. It was mewing from there for some time until A discovered it behind the curtain. When we moved the curtain the poor thing was so scared. It tried to escape but there were glass windows and kept banging into that. My maid caught it and left it out in the balcony.

Now there is a rain water drain in the corner of that balcony and the cover of the drain has come off. The poor kitten thought it was an escape route and went inside the drain 😞. There is a little place there before the pipe drops down. It sat there and we could see it from outside. So we left it there and came out thinking it will slowly come out on its own once it’s all quiet around. The kitten called out to its mother and the cat came and saw the little thing in the mouth of the drain. The kitten tried its best but somehow got stuck in some angle. It only managed to get out its tail and the cat kept trying to pull it out but it remained stuck.

After an hour and a half I asked one of my house helps to hold her and pull her out. But by the time he went to see it, it had fallen down the pipe!! Exactly what I was afraid of. The pipe runs down the outside of the back of house. We went there and realised that the kitten was stuck in the middle of the pipe. Since it was a rain water pipe, there must have been some debris stuck in it and the kitten got stuck there. We could hear it mewing from inside and scraping the pipe trying to get out. The cat had heard it’s kitten and was standing outside and calling out to it.

That pipe opens out into a drain. I got the cover removed from that so that if it falls out it can hop out of the drain. But it seemed like that was highly unlikely since it was stuck. Then my driver had an idea and said if we can cut the bend on top and open the pipe and pull it out, we can rescue it. So he and one of my house help climbed up on the roof and started cutting the pipe bend. Once that came off, they started to shake the pipe to bring it loose from the other end and open it. But it would not budge and the poor kitten must have been so scared in there! First the darkness of the pipe, then the loud scraping of cutting the pipe and the shaking. Poor thing. Both the girls and me were standing there and monitoring the whole thing. P was so worried, she kept telling them to be careful that nothing falls inside the pipe and to not make very loud noises otherwise the kitten will get scared. One more person joined them in the bid to open the pipe and the three of them managed to shake the pipe enough that the debris came loose and slipped down and the kitten slipped down with it. Now it was in the drain below and we could see its face. You can see the kitten in the drain in the picture below 👇🏼. And that’s the pipe it was stuck in.

Lastly one of the men put his hand inside and pulled out the kitten. The cat was standing on top the steps right there and waiting to take its baby. He left it on the steps and it slowly climbed up to its mother. Both were re united and they seemed to be looking back us gratefully. They hopped away and she took the kitten and it’s 3 other siblings to another place.

By the end of it all both girls were shaken. P recovered soon and but A had a tough time falling asleep. At the time of writing this post she is still awake. That’s more than an hour and a half past her bedtime. She keeps remembering the kitten and saying something or the other related to it. I tried reading to her (which we anyway do everyday) and tried singing to her. Finally she is in my bed and hopefully will fall asleep soon.

Whatever said and done at least both of them learnt a couple of things today. The value of another creature’s life and do whatever is in your power to help another. They saw how my entire staff got together and gave their own inputs and rescued the poor kitten. They saw how concerned we were and how we pushed them to help the little kitten. They saw how happy everyone was once the little baby was united with its mother.