“He’s genuinely excited about this shit,” Tate muttered as we headed into the sanctuary to see the cub.
“You don’t say,” I replied, watching as Levi pulled open the door of the building and waved at us to hurry. “When he tried getting it three collars and two hundred bucks worth of toys at the pet store, I kind of figured that out.”
That was low balling the figure. He’d tried adding in so much shit to the cart after insisting we go to the store, that we’d abandoned it and started all over again. Yes, it was a fox cub, but there were no lactating vixens in the area to take it on as theirs. Mom’s friend had already told me how tame it was, acting more like a puppy or kitten, so they were waiting on an assessment to be carried out on it to see if they could rehabilitate it to be released back into the wild. Because of this, Levi had decided it would need something to play with and stuff to make it comfortable, so that’s what we’d gone looking for.
One thing we knew – it was healthy. They’d run a ton of tests on the poor thing so we had those answers. It had also been vaccinated, wormed and whatever else, so I didn’t have to worry about rabies or diseases if it came near me.
All of this flew out the water when we were led through into the office and saw a tiny little fox playing with a squeaky toy.
“Jesus, that’s cute!” Tate chuckled as he got down on his knees on the floor beside it, keeping a safe distance.
Immediately, the cub dropped the toy and waddled over to where he was, sitting down and staring back up at him.
Not wanting to be left out, Levi copied Tate’s position behind the cub and scratched the floor. It turned and looked at him, squeaked and looked back at Tate.
“Oh, lordy, looks like it’s chosen its human,” Barb, Mom’s friend, whispered.
My snort caught its attention though, and it walked up to me and sniffed my foot, making it impossible for me not to squat down and lift my hand to scratch the top of its head. “Hey, little baby.”
It was blatantly clear how tame it was by how it approached us, but so I didn’t scare it, I kept all of my movements to a slow speed and my voice quiet. It didn’t even blink as I rubbed it behind its ear, instead choosing to fall back and give me its tummy. This was a heartbreaking move – a wild animal rarely did this because it was a show of submission and opened up a weak place on its body. Sure, cubs played, but this had happened with just a rub on its ear from someone it didn’t know.
“Can I pick it up?” I knew I shouldn’t, but I just had to.
“Sure can,” Barb reassured me, sighing and smiling sadly. “That baby would let you carry it around rather than walk even one step.”
Damn, that was bad, too.
“Is it a boy or a girl,” Tate asked, watching closely as I lifted the baby up and scratched its belly.
“It’s a boy, and we think he’s around five weeks old,” she replied. “Our contact at the police says the men admitted to taking it two weeks ago. It was still reliant on being nursed, so one of their girlfriends put it in with her cat who’d just had kittens.”
“You can’t be serious,” Levi growled.
He was right to be pissed, anything could have happened from the mom attacking the cub, to the cub attacking the cat and kittens.
“Sure am! It’s totally not advised to do that, unless you know what you’re doing, and the cat is practiced at nursing other species, but apparently it worked out ok. When the buyer said they were ready and that their kid had a cage all set up in the room for it, they collected it and started the trip down, keeping it like a puppy in the vehicle with them.”
This poor little guy had been through so much in such a short space of time.
“What’s its nature like? Is it calm all the time, or does it have feral tendencies?” Tate asked, reaching out and letting the cub sniff his hand before he stroked it again.
“Oh, that baby is a cross between a kitten and a puppy,” she sighed. “We have an animal behavioral specialist who attends and does assessments on our rescues for us. A big part of the sanctuary is dedicated to wild animals, and she’s the best in her field, so she knows what to look for. Her report says that it’s taken on the characteristics of the kittens in the litter it was nursed with, and must have been treated with a lot of human love because it isn’t defensive or aggressive. Sure, it’s not been in touch with humans for its whole life, but it was through a majority of the development of its independent cognitive function since it opened its eyes. That’s a key phase for them, and because it happened during domesticity, the more feral and wild characteristics have been tamped down. That said, it’s still a wild animal so he could snap back into them, but so far we haven’t seen them, and it’s not fair to deprive it of the attention it’s used to until we have someone experienced with rehabilitation into the wild working with it.”