Florida Freediver Rescues Homeless Kitty on Expedition & Makes Him Part of the Pack
The caves and springs throughout Florida are a haven for underwater adventurers like the team at Depth Wish Freediving. They enjoy exploring these natural wonders, but usually all you find in these places are fish, turtles, alligators, and the occasional manatee. This time, however, they were surprised to meet an animal no one ever expects to be in the water: a tiny baby kitten.
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“On our most recent free diving course, we found and rescued a kitty,” says Tanner Pedersen, who together with his partner Kenzie Milcarek, founded Depth Wish Freediving, which teaches diving and free diving courses in the rivers and springs near Gainesville, Florida.
Related: Watch: Baby Manatee Comes Directly Up to Free-diver and Hugs Her
“I heard this cat meowing and looked over and made eye contact with it,” said Pedersen. The cat was apparently clinging for dear life from a palm frond dangling over the edge of the water.
Clearly that cat was desperate, for he immediately jumped in the water, swam over to Pedersen, and climbed on his head. Pedersen felt he had no choice but to carefully take the kitty home with him, perched as it was on his head in the middle of a river. After searching the area for any sign of other kittens or the mama cat they belonged to, the divers found no trace, so brought the kitty back to dry land with them.
The Cat Distribution System
“So now we have a brand-new member of our family,” he explains. The cat distribution system works again.
According to some people, the universe provides you with a cat when it’s time to get one. Maybe one shows up at your door, or crawls under the hood of a car. Maybe your neighbor finds a box of abandoned kittens, or your colleague posts live videos on social media when the pregnant cat she’s fostering goes into labor (that last one is how I ended up with my two cats).
As Pedersen and Milcarek had recently lost a tabby cat, Nani in March, it seems like the perfect timing for the system to do its thing.
They took the little kitten to the vet, where it was checked out and deemed healthy expect malnourished and in need of some dewormer.
They’re taking suggestions on names, and in the comments, everyone has water-based ideas, ranging from Scuba Steve to River to Poseidon.
And don’t worry, they thoroughly searched the area where the cat was found, making sure that there were no others in the area. They even went back the next day and found nothing. So how did the kitten get there? Was it dumped? Was it snatched up by a predator and dropped? No way to tell.
The Plight of Black Cats
Some people suggested that it may have been abandoned because it was black, and it’s true that black cats are abandoned at a rate far exceeding cats of other colors. Not that this is a problem for Pedersen and Milcarek. “We have two other black cats at home, so he was meant to be a part of this family!” Pedersen writes. Along with the two black cats, Nash and Nigel, the couple also share a brown and white dog named Anakin.
And though the kitten initially appears black in these videos, more recent photos of the animal suggest that it’s got a tabby coat after all. (Just like their old cat.) They still aren’t sure of the kitten’s gender, due to its age (six or seven weeks) and malnourishment, but are certainly thinking another N name for the new arrival, such as Newt or Nori, to nod at its aquatic origins.
What do you think?
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