Last Thursday evening, Skyler and his partner, Nikka, decided to see a late showing at the cinema. The movie ended around midnight, and by then the couple was hungry.
“Nikka really wanted to get tacos,” Skyler told The Dodo. So the couple headed to the bus
stop to catch a ride to the restaurant, in the opposite direction from home.
But then they hit a snag.
Realizing the bus they were waiting for was on its last run of the night, and they’d have trouble getting home afterward, Skyler and Nikka decided to grab a few snacks at a gas station minimart instead. But the failed taco mission wasn’t entirely fruitless.
“As we walked up [to the gas station], we saw a round black and white cat sitting on the pavement next to the door, just staring her big beautiful eyes at us,” Skyler said. “I went over to try and pet her, fully expecting she’d run off, given the skittishness of most strays.”
Instead, the cat happily accepted Skyler’s affection.
Skyler suspected, by looking at the cat’s belly, that she was pregnant. Then he learned she was living on the street.
“We found out from one of the other locals and the gas station attendants that she was occasionally being fed by the patrons, but no one had a home for her,” Skyler said.
Struck by the cat’s loving demeanor, Skyler and Nikka decided to take her home with them, and to take her to a vet the next morning.
Once back at their apartment, the couple bathed the cat and made her a bed from a pillow and some blankets. Skyler checked in on the cat every few minutes to make sure she was comfortable. But then:
“I looked in to see two little heads poking out and nestled up to her,” Skyler said. “She’d started giving birth on my pillow.”
And the babies kept coming. Over the next few hours, the mother gave birth to seven healthy kittens.
Skyler and Nikka were stunned.
“We'd obviously not prepared for her to give birth within an hour of getting her into the apartment,” Skyler said. “We quickly set up a makeshift whelping box, DoorDashed some food and necessities for her, and tried to quickly make a nice area for her and the little ones.”
Throughout the cat’s labor, Nikka shared the experience on the subreddit r/TrojanCats, dedicated to stories of pregnant cats delivering their babies shortly after being rescued. And that’s where the new mama got her name.
Users there named her Taco, after the failed quest that had ultimately led the couple to her.
“We've been calling them Taco and her 7 Seasonings, or Taco and her little Frijoles,” Skyler said.
That evening’s attempted taco run had resulted in something neither Skyler nor Nikka could have predicted. But they couldn’t be happier with how everything played out.
“If the bus schedule had been a little different, we would have gone to get tacos instead of going to the gas station,” Skyler said. “Just a lot of perfect timings.”
Skyler and Nikka plan to care for the kittens until they’re old enough to be adopted into loving homes.
Taco, however, has already found hers. The couple plan to keep her, along with at least one of her adorable “seasonings.”
