Mona Moore / Daily News
HURLBURT FIELD - If the base’s walls could talk, they would have been outdone by a few furry friends this week.
Members of the 505th Command and Control Wing discovered a litter of kittens in the walls of Building 90005.
The noise that peaked last Thursday had settled down by the time Bruce Chappell returned from a long weekend Monday morning.
“When I came in, I heard meowing. You would only hear them one at a time,” Chappell said. “I walked around and thought it was somebody’s ringtone or an e-mail notification that was comical to them but really irritating.”
A maintenance crew could not find the sources of the noises while crawling through duct spaces. Chappell listened for most of the day and then called in the second cavalry after 4 p.m. when he realized the kittens were in the wall.
Master Sgt. Mark Young tapped the office walls until he could zero in on the kittens’ location. The litter was in front of Chappell’s desk.
“I had a utility knife in hand so I cut a small hole in the wall and I could hear them meowing in the background,” Young said.
“Once the door got cut in the wall for them to come out, they were suddenly just the loudest things on earth,” Chappell said.
Young cut a few more holes before spotting a kitten.
“I could see one of the kittens was directly behind the next stud and I could see him clawing, trying to get past that. So, I cut another hole to get in and pulled it out,” Young said.
The wall gave birth to four kittens. Young thinks the litter was born in the crawl spaces of the ceiling and fell down the back of the wall.
A pregnant cat had been spotted around the 505th for a while, but has not been seen since the kittens were found.
The squadron left the kittens in the building overnight in hopes of luring the mother out, and will set a nonlethal trap Wednesday.
Capt. Adriana Fernandez was a veterinarian technician before joining the 505th. She determined the cats were about four days old and would need feedings of formula every few hours.
“At that point, nobody thought they were cute,” she said.
“Their eyes aren’t even open yet,” said Chappell, who is a civilian. “They were little gray things just bigger than a breakfast sausage.”
Fernandez, who is allergic to cats, volunteered for overnight feedings. She came in every two hours to care for the kittens.
Fernandez called around until she found a place that would take care of the litter until they were old enough to adopt.
The Alaqua Animal Refuge picked up the kittens. The Freeport refuge will care for the kittens for the next six to eight weeks.
WANT A PET?
To adopt a cat or other animal, call the Alaqua Animal Refuge at 880-6399.
