Rudi (61) and Christel (58) had undoubtedly imagined their Easter Sunday differently. During an afternoon walk in Ranst, they suddenly came across a flashy, pink suitcase in a meadow. Nothing special, until they opened the suitcase and a kitten pushed her curious head out.
“We were walking in Ranst last Sunday, opposite the Chiro premises,” Christel Engelen tells us on the phone. “It was about half past two and we had just finished Easter brunch. Suddenly we saw a pink suitcase on the other side of the street. I joked to Rudi: ‘Who throws something like that away? There won’t be a body in there, will there?’”
Christel’s joke turned out not to be that far from the truth. Her husband, overcome with curiosity, walked up to the suitcase, opened the zipper, which was completely closed, and was shocked. “I see two eyes. There is something alive in it.” he shouted to his wife. Together they opened the suitcase again, after which they saw that there was a kitten inside.
“We immediately called 911,” Christel continues. “We left the suitcase closed for a while, because we didn’t want the cat to accidentally end up under a car. But the police advised us to simply release the animal so that she could resume her way home. I couldn’t do that. We then called the Blue Cross in Wommelgem, but we could not reach them. We ended up taking pictures of the animal and putting them on Facebook in the hope that someone could help us.”
(Read more below the photo)
And that worked. A friendly person, who also has cats herself, immediately let us know that she could help. Once on site with a crate, they let the cat out of the trunk. “She curled up in a ball among the bushes and seemed very tame. We put her in the crate and that person then took her to the non-profit organization Zwerfkat Wommelgem. They were very enthusiastic to help us. But the employees of the non-profit organization made another striking discovery: the cat was pregnant.”
The non-profit organization will keep the cat, which they have named ‘Mieke’, with them until she has given birth and is strong enough to stand on her own feet again. “We have no idea how long she was in the suitcase, but she just seemed a little disoriented. We don’t know yet whether we want to adopt her ourselves. We’re both still working and everything. But maybe someone from our family.”
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Tags: Rudi Christel find pregnant kitten Mieke field Ranst joked wont body suitcase Ranst
