When you play Monopoly, you never know what the next “Chance” card will bring you. The same can happen in life.

A few days ago, Laura drew the “you find a newborn kitten without a trace of his mother” card, while we were taking a few days off in the countryside.

Just before noon, while walking around our vacation home on August the 14th, she discovered something that initially looked like a dead rat. Upon closer inspection, she realized it was a kitten who looked like it was about to die soon, and immediately ran back inside to call me.

It was indeed a kitten, tiny and helpless. His eyes were still closed, and his fur was as black as tar. He was close to a stone wall, trying to crawl away from a small pool of drying blood. It looked like he was tentatively trying to find some unlikely safety in a thorn bush nearby.

This wasn’t an easy task, however, as he was getting constantly pestered by at least half a dozen flies, undoubtedly attracted by the smell of blood and the prospect of a fresh corpse to loot. They were the kind of green flies that only show up in the most unpleasant circumstances: usually when some sort of excrement or dead animal is involved.

Without thinking twice, I took the kitten and brought him inside. We both genuinely thought he was in immediate danger and had to take action. In hindsight, we should have waited at least an hour for his mom to show up. Maybe she was out hunting, or was transfering her litter some other place, one kitten at a time. However, that thought didn’t cross our minds at all.

After we brought him inside, we started to look for advice on what to do. We realized that part of his umbelical cord was still attached to his belly. This fact, combined with the closed eyes and the pool of blood we had just found him in, told us that he was likely born on the previous night, or maybe even during that very morning.

To make things worse, this was the day before the traditional “Ferragosto” holiday in Italy, on the 15th of August, when almost every office is closed and every person is thinking about going to the seaside to chill. We were stuck in the middle of Central Italy, with some spotty phone coverage and a tiny black kitten crying for help.

Suddenly, some sort of switch flipped in my brain. Nothing else mattered more than keeping that little thing alive. It was a strange sensation, and a new one at that.

We spent the rest of the afternoon figuring out our next steps.

First, we started to contact every vet in the area. Our initial idea was to ask one of them to take in the kitten, so that he could receive proper care from a professional. We thought it was a fairly simple case, and one that happens often to them.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

All of the vets told us they couldn’t possibly take him in. Some of them offered advice on how to keep him alive in the next few days. One of them went as far as telling Laura we had doomed him to certain death because we didn’t wait for his mum to show up. Thanks, asshole. Talk about empahty.

They all suggested to get in touch with local shelters and groups of volunteers so that we could find someone who could adopt him. When we did that, the shelters told us to call the volunteers, and the volunteers told us to call the shelters.

We soon realized that no one wants a newborn kitten because they can be very high-maintenance: you need to feed them every two-to-three hours, and constantly take care of them. Apparently, that’s just too much.

I had a strange feeling in my stomach while browsing through websites and Facebook pages full of loving words for stray dogs and cats, but empty of solutions for our very real situation.

In any case, the doctors told us what to do in order to keep him fed and warm for the next hours. While Laura continued to look for help, I went to buy the necessary supplies: powdered milk specific for cats, a tiny milk bottle, and a few other things.

When I came back, I immediately tried to feed him. This turned out to be more difficult than I initially thought, as both he and I had no idea of what we were doing.

After 15 minutes of struggling, he managed to gulp down two or three milliliters of milk, which seemed like a huge success to me.

After that, we gently lowered him in his new home: a luxurious one-room cardboard box, covered in old rags for increased comfort. One of these rags was wrapped around a bottle full of hot water, which served as a substitute for the warm body of his missing mother. Basically the equivalent of a three-star hotel for stray cats. Not bad, all things considered!

The tiny kitten seemed to appreciate the effort, as he quickly got cozy and fell asleep without a sound. In the meantime, we had dubbed him “Gringo”, after the main character of an old and catchy ad which was aired in Italy during the ’60s. We had come across this ad just the night before, and it got stuck in my head.

I knew this was a bad idea. Giving him a name was a fast ticket to sadness, should something happened to him. It would only make us grow even fonder of him. It was too late for that though: Gringo had already broken through our defences and was on his way to conquer our affection, as it seemed like we were his only chance at surviving.

After feeding him a few times during the afternoon, we weighed our options: on the next morning, our parents would come to spend the next two days with us. This covered Ferragosto and the 16th. On the 17th, we had to take a ferry and leave for our actual vacation in Croatia and Montenegro.

We needed a solution, and we needed it fast.

Luckily Gringo seemed to get better and better, after every time we fed him. He started to crawl around and climb the walls of his cardboard home, often with comical results. He would try his hardest to climb to the edge of the cardboard, before inevitably (but safely) tumbling down on the soft rags beneath him. An easy lesson on how gravity works on Planet Earth, but not one he seemed to agree with.

We spent our first night with Gringo in a constant state of alert. He needed feeding often, and would cry for help every time he would not feel comfortable in his home. This was not easy on us, but our fist objective was reached: the cat had lived to fight another day.

On the following day, Ferragosto, we had to change our plans a bit, so that we could keep a constant watch on Gringo. We kept in touch with a vet who was recommended to us by one of the volunteers we had contacted the day before.

We only had her name, as we couldn’t find either a phone number or office adress. Donning my invisible Sherlock Holmes hat, I found her on Facebook by triangulating all the info we got from the volunteers. Even though it was a bank holiday, she called us to give more advice and to tell her that she had put out feelers to people she knew could potentially help.

During the day, however, dark thoughts had started to gather in my mind.

We essentially had less than a day to find a solution. If we failed, I knew we couldn’t bring Gringo with us. We would not be able to bring him with us on the ferry across the Adriatic sea. Even if we did, it would be impossible to raise him in our small flat afterwards.

Which options did we really have? I couldn’t bear the thought of abandoning him to his fate, after all we had done to keep him alive in the past 24 hours.

In my mind, the only “clean” solution would be to bring him to a vet on the next day and put him down, gently, without making him suffer.

I thought of this while keeping him in one hand, and feeding him with the other. I felt helpless. What do you do in these situations?

Putting him down seemed to be at the same time both the kindest and the most cruel of options.

Neither Laura nor our parents seemed to share that opinion with me. But still, there were no alternatives on the table.

When the next morning arrived, we decided to bring him to a vet to ask in person if they would take him, as a last resort. It would also allow me to ask if he would be able to put him down later this afternoon, should all else fail. I was not going to end the day without a solution that would lead to even more suffering on Gringo’s side.

As we were 5 minutes away from the vet, however, the other lady doctor called us. She had found a couple of friends who would take him in!

Apparently this legend of a guy wanted to make a surprise for her fiancee, who had just recently lost one of her two cats. The one who still lived was a young female who hopfeully would also adopt Gringo as her own kitten.

The vet also reassured us that they were used to raise newborn cats, and that she would follow Gringo personally over the next few days. We thanked her many, many times, and asked her to put us in touch.

Soon afterwards, our would-be savior called us and we arranged a pickup in a couple of hours, on his way back from work.

We couldn’t believe our luck. I turned our car around and drove the three of us back home.

What followed were some very bittersweet moments. I was happy and grateful that we could leave Gringo in good hands. It was the best outcome we could hope for. But still, saying goodbye was not easy for either of us.

Of course we know that it’s too early to tell whether or not he will survive the next three weeks. One thing I know for sure, though: if Laura handn’t found him 48 hours prior, he would have soon died of thirst, or worse.

Somehow, we gave this kitten a second chance at life, and I’m proud of that. Now it’s up to him to keep climbing and play the game of life with his new family.

Good luck Gringo. We’ll keep following you.