While helping extinguish more than 100 acres of scorched
Hollister grassland last week, volunteer firefighter Jake Cousins
heard a faint and quivering meow.
Cousins, 19, followed the sounds to a chicken coop. He pushed
back the fence’s corner and discovered a motionless cat
– its fur partially withered from the intense heat of a fire
halted 15 feet from the enclosure.
While helping extinguish more than 100 acres of scorched Hollister grassland last week, volunteer firefighter Jake Cousins heard a faint and quivering meow.
Cousins, 19, followed the sounds to a chicken coop. He pushed back the fence’s corner and discovered a motionless cat – its fur partially withered from the intense heat of a fire halted 15 feet from the enclosure.
Behind the dead mother feline, Cousins found the source of the desperate cries – five baby kittens, younger than 10 days old, and each about the size of an adult hand.
“Their mother was dead, so (the kittens) were going to die no matter what,” said Cousins, a graduate of San Benito High School.
Cousins, who is with the county’s California Department of Forestry unit, was joined at the Wednesday’s blaze on Hudner Lane by firefighters from four other local departments. No one was injured and no homes burned.
“It was so intensely hot,” Cousins said. “I don’t know how these little guys survived it.”
The mother cat, in blanketing her kittens, “took the heat,” he said.
Cousins and other CDF firefighters clipped the chicken wire with a bolt cutter and placed the kittens in a box before the local chapter of the American Red Cross arrived.
Red Cross Executive Director Katheryn Engelhard took the newborns home for overnight care. She was impressed, she said, by the firefighters’ care of the kittens.
“I was really touched by the way the firefighters were. They took the momma cat and buried her,” Engelhard said. “She was buried with dignity. I thought that was so touching.”
The deceased cat showed no signs of being domesticated, according to Red Cross employee Charlet O’Connor.
Cousins and another firefighter “fell in love” with the kittens, Engelhard said, and both adopted a kitten. And Cousins’ mother, he said, will also adopt one.
Engelhard said the Red Cross trains employees to care for pets during disasters, so she had experience handling infant animals.
But Engelhard’s effort surpassed the standard procedure. When she got home after the fire at about 9 p.m., Engelhard knew the kittens needed special formula – which she couldn’t get in Hollister.
She drove to Petco in Gilroy, which had just closed for the night. She explained the situation to an employee in the parking lot who was gathering carts. The employee called the store manager, who said Engelhard could take whatever supplies she needed.
The next day Cousins came to the Red Cross office to pick up his kitten. Together, he and Engelhard fed the kittens with syringes and formula. While they rehashed the previous day’s experience, Engelhard decided to also adopt one.
Cousins, whose 20-year-old cat Frosty died two months ago, said his kitten’s name would somehow relate to fire.
The volunteer firefighter currently attends Gavilan College and said he plans to eventually obtain a nursing degree and work for the Calstar air rescue unit.
For information about adopting the remaining kitten, call the Red Cross at 636-2100.
