Seven kittens rescued from inside a construction loader in Spanish Fork

Elise Lane has helped rescue numerous feral kittens before, but saving seven kittens straight out of a CAT construction loader certainly ranks among the most memorable. 

On Wednesday night, Lane, the founder of Ashley Valley Community Cats, got a call from an employee at Green Forest Landscaping who had a problem. 

“He said: ‘Hey, I found these baby kittens in my bobcat, can you please help me?’” Lane said. 

After getting Lane’s advice on how to handle the situation, the man and his crew took apart the front end of the CAT 246D skid steer loader and discovered six 3-week-old kittens mewing in the machinery.

The following day, an additional kitten was found. Lane then trapped the mother cat Friday morning to prevent her from sticking any more babies in the loader in an attempt to protect them from predators. 

The mother cat has since been spayed and will soon be reunited with her kittens, who are at a foster home. 

Lane said it was crucial to catch the mother cat.

“A lot of people just focus on the babies and that doesn‘t really end the problem,” she said. ”The mom is still out there and she’s still going to make more babies.” 

The kittens are healthy, but a few have upper respiratory issues that are common in babies with a mother who’s not getting proper nutrition.

“It‘s something very easy for us to fix with proper care and nutrition,” Lane said. 

The kittens are named after Lord of the Rings characters: males Gollum, Legolas, Smaug and Sauron; and females Gandalf, Arwen and Galadriel. They’ll remain in a foster home for the next four to six weeks until they reach 2 pounds, when they can be fixed, vaccinated, microchipped and put up for adoption.

“We‘ve already had two applications come in to adopt two of those kittens,” Lane said. 

Others interested in adoption can apply on the Ashley Valley Community website and specify that they want the construction loader cats. 

”It is pretty common for us to take in feral kittens like this,” Lane said. ”These just had a really unique story.”