“Come on,” she muttered, holding the syringe against the kitten’s mouth. It turned away, mouth stubbornly closed. Eve was at her wit’s end. She needed the kitten to eat so she could try to sleep for a few hours before she had to do this all again. She had to go to work in the morning, and she was going to be a zombie. Already, she’d lost hours of time that should have been spent looking for a new client to shoot the replacement episode. “You’ve got to help me out here,” she told the kitten, receiving a whimper in response.
This was exactly why the kittens should have stayed with Josie tonight. She’d know what to do. No doubt, she would have had them all fed and cleaned and been back in bed ten minutes ago.
Eve yawned, eyes watering with fatigue as she glanced at her phone. It felt ridiculous to consider calling Josie in the middle of the night, but she’d told Eve to call with questions at any hour, and in fact, she was probably still at work. She’d said she would be tending bar until two. After the way they’d left things earlier, Eve didn’t want to talk to her again so soon, or at all, really. But if she wanted to get any sleep tonight, she’d better just get it over with.
Decision made, she picked up her phone, scrolled to Josie’s name, and dialed. It rang twice before Josie answered, sounding somewhat muffled. “Eve?”
“Yes. Do you have a minute?” Her voice sounded way too loud in the otherwise quiet bedroom.
“Yeah. I was just closing up. Everything okay?”
“I thought you worked until two,” Eve said.
“Well, no one’s here, so I decided to close early.”
Eve decided to ignore that rather than get into another conversation about the future of the bar. “I can’t get the white one to eat.”
“Did she eat earlier?” Josie asked, shifting neatly into the role of kitten rescuer.
“A little bit, but not as much as the other three.”
“How is she acting otherwise?”
“Sleepy, lethargic.” Eve looked down at the kitten in her lap.
“Is she warm?”
Eve rubbed a hand over the kitten. “Not as warm now as she was when I took her out of the box with the others.”
“Okay, the first thing we need to do is warm her up. Why don’t you put her back in the box and make sure she’s on the heating pad. Put the other kittens right up against her to get her nice and snuggly.”
Eve did as Josie said, trying not to notice how cold and empty her lap felt after she’d put the kitten back with her siblings. “Now what?”
“Give her a minute,” Josie said gently. “How’s everything going otherwise?”
“I’m tired.” Eve sounded irritable even to her own ears.
“Do you believe in karma?” Josie asked.
“No.”
“Well, you’re doing a good deed,” Josie said. “And I like to think we reap what we sow.”
“You know as well as I do that’s not always true.”
Josie let out a little sound of disbelief. “Wow, you really are a cynical one, aren’t you?”
“I have every reason to be.” Eve couldn’t believe they were even having this conversation. Briefly, she wished she hadn’t heard that cry in the trash can earlier. She never would have known these kittens existed. She could have gone about her evening as planned without four tiny lives weighing on her conscience.
“Is she perking up at all yet?” Josie asked, shifting them back on topic.
Eve looked into the box, where the white kitten was nuzzling at the stuffed cat Josie had given them. “A little, yes.”
“Look in the box of supplies I sent over. You should find a toothbrush in there.”
“A toothbrush?” Eve slid out of bed and peered into box of supplies. Did kittens this small even have teeth?
“Yes,” Josie confirmed. “You can groom her with it. It feels like her mom licking her. That might help wake her up and get her ready to feed.”
