When police officers stepped into a West Yorkshire home in Britain on a Monday to look into an animal welfare concern involving a dog, they had no idea two smaller lives were also waiting inside the property. Removed from the address by authorities were a pair of tiny kittens—later named Smurf and Shrek—whose coats had been heavily colored in with blue and green permanent marker.

Whoever had handled the young pair had gone over every single patch of their fur that was originally white, leaving their small frames carrying the sharp, heavy scent of marker ink. Because the kittens were recovered from a setting where children were not involved, police did not believe the markings were the result of a child’s prank, viewing the pair instead as victims of deliberate mistreatment.

Officers immediately handed the two kittens over to Katie Jane and her team at Bradford Cat Watch Rescue, where the sight of the stained pair left even experienced caregivers stunned. As Katie Jane held the tiny kittens and consulted a veterinarian to find out if the heavy ink was toxic to their fragile systems, she could only wait to see how their bodies would handle what had been done to them.

VIDEO: Watch Tiny Smurf and Shrek Settle Into Gentle Hands After Their Rescue in Bradford

A Quiet Concern Over the Scent of the Ink

Inside Bradford Cat Watch Rescue, the arrival of the blue- and green-stained kittens brought a moment of disbelief to a team accustomed to difficult cases. Even after years of taking in neglected animals, seeing two kittens so thoroughly coated in ink was something Katie Jane had never encountered before.

Although the shelter gave them the lighthearted names Smurf and Shrek because of the colors on their fur, no one at the facility treated their condition lightly.

For kittens so young and small, anything applied to their coats poses a serious risk, either through absorption into their delicate skin or from the animals trying to groom themselves clean. With the smell of permanent marker still clinging strongly to both of them, Katie Jane’s immediate priority was having a veterinarian examine the pair.

Fortunately, the veterinary assessment brought the first bit of relief since the police had walked through the door.

While the marker had stained deep into their coats and skin, the substance had not poisoned the kittens internally. With the immediate medical fear behind them, the rescue team could turn their attention to the slow task of washing the ink away.

“The hardest sights in rescue are often those where an animal’s trust was used against it by hands that had every advantage in strength.”

Careful Hands Around Their Tiny Faces

Removing permanent marker from kittens so small required a delicate touch. Katie Jane and the shelter’s volunteers prepared a warm bath and began working gently over their stained fur, watching closely to see how the pair would react to being handled again.

Given what it must have taken for someone to hold the kittens down and color over every inch of their white fur, the team would not have been surprised to see them panic or struggle at the touch of human hands.

Instead, Smurf and Shrek did the exact opposite.

Placed into the warm water, neither kitten showed any fear of the bath. They sat calmly in the hands of the volunteers, allowing themselves to be washed without fuss or hesitation as the first layers of blue and green ink began to lift away from their coats.

The most delicate part of the process came when Katie Jane had to work around their heads.

Because the marker had been applied all the way up to their cheeks and foreheads, the caregivers had to be especially careful around their tiny faces, keeping the water and cleanser away from their eyes and noses while coaxing the dark pigment from the fur.

Twenty-Four Hours Later With a Tiny Milk Bottle

Because permanent ink does not wash out in a single rinse, the rescue team refused to scrub the kittens too harshly all at once. Instead, they spaced the cleaning out to let the pair rest and stay warm between sessions.

Within twenty-four hours of being handed over by the police, Smurf and Shrek had gone through their second gentle bath.

Although a faint tint of blue and green still lingered on the white patches of their fur, they looked vastly cleaner than the pair who had arrived smelling of chemicals the day before. More importantly, their energy and appetites showed that the ordeal had not dulled their will to grow.

Cradled in warm towels and held by the volunteers, both kittens took eagerly to a tiny milk bottle, drinking their fill before drifting off to sleep.

Aside from the fading colors still visible on their coats, they behaved just like any other healthy kittens of their age—curling comfortably into the palms of the people caring for them, safe at last inside a room where every touch is meant to protect them.

“Cruelty may leave a visible stain on a young life for a little while, but it fades quickly in the presence of hands that only know how to be gentle.”