Strong Island Animal Rescue League helps two cats and a dehydrated fawn — all in the same day

A kitten that tumbled through a sewer grate into a pit 20 feet down, a cat with a nightmarish leg wound, a fawn so dehydrated it was unable to keep flies from landing in its mouth — three rescues, courtesy of Strong Island Animal Rescue League.

Frankie Floridia, president of the Port Jefferson Station rescue group, said a woman called him Monday night after she spotted a cat standing next to a sewer drain in a Bohemia industrial park — home to a small cat colony — and heard the kitten crying below.

The kitten's 20-foot fall heightened the difficulty of the rescue, he said. Suffolk police Emergency Service Section officers responded and one managed to climb down and rescue the kitten, which will soon be put up for adoption, Floridia said.

Also Monday, another woman called the rescuers after seeing a cat, probably about 1 year old, on a Patchogue lawn with a partly "de-gloved" left front leg, Floridia said. The term de-gloved means a sizable portion of the skin had been somehow ripped off, either in an attack by another animal or some sort of mishap.

Floridia, using a net, was able to capture the cat, and like the kitten, it will be neutered and put up for adoption. Anyone who might have a home for either should check the group's Facebook page, he said.

The third rescue — of the apparently orphaned fawn — also occurred on Monday, this time in a wooded area of Rocky Point. There was no sign of the fawn's mother, who Floridia said may have been struck by a car.

"The baby was in the woods," he said. "Its mouth had flies all over it."

The fawn is now being cared for by the STAR Foundation, a wildlife sanctuary in Middle Island.

To Floridia, these rescues, though all extraordinary for the cats, the fawn and the humans involved, were not all that unusual: "It's just like a day in the life."