With fur fluffed out against the bitter cold, three kittens huddle next to a barn, tiny pink tongues scouring traces of food from plastic dishes.

The trio are survivors.

Their littermate drowned in the icy water of the nearby Sportsman's Rod and Gun Club fish hatchery on Ash Circle in Andreas after someone dumped them.

As the kittens eat, then wash their faces with tiny smudged paws, Eleanor Miller sits at her kitchen table and tells of how she and her husband, Morris, found the babies.

She believes someone dumped them at the hatchery, about a tenth of a mile from their home.

“Last weekend, I went out to the farmhouse, and there were three little kittens between the farmhouse and the fish hatchery,” she says.

“We were there to feed the four cats at the farmhouse. When my husband and I got there, our friend came over from the fish hatchery where he was feeding the fish.

“I told him there were three little kittens left here, and he said there was one down in the hatchery, in the water. It was drowned, and they fished it out,” she says as one of the couple’s two rescue dogs nuzzles her hand.

“They were looking for food, and he fell in and drowned. So I’ve been feeding them since,” Miller says.

The kittens made their way to a barn about 125 feet away, where Miller fixed up a shelter for them.

She and her husband bring warmed food to the kittens two or three times a day, “so their little bellies could keep warm,” she says.

The traumatized kittens were skittish.

“They were hiding. They were afraid. At first they didn’t want to come to me. Then one was so hungry he came to eat. Then the other two saw that and they came running,” she says.

“They’re so cute and so playful, for being in the cold,” Miller says.

Word of the abandoned babies quickly spread, and animal rescuers, including The Sanctuary At Haafsville and Diane Sharpless of the Schuylkill County Animal Response Team, have offered to help.