Curie-osity : As Geiger Counters Purr, the Adoption Offers and Media Inquiries Are Pouring In for 4 Contaminated Kittens

Along with being radioactive, the atomic kittens of the San Onofre nuclear power plant are now learning to cope with yet another modern invention: fame.

After a Times story about how the cats were born inside the perimeter of the heavily guarded plant and tested positive for radioactive cesium and cobalt, offers of adoption began to arrive, and news outlets, including the BBC in London, began asking for pictures (of the cats) and interviews (with Southern California Edison officials).

By nightfall of the first day, the month-old kittens--Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Neutron--were pooped from posing for pictures and fell quickly asleep.

Meanwhile, tests done on the black kittens show that their levels of cesium and cobalt continue to decline. Officials believe the kittens will be able to leave within 65 days or so.

The cats are being watched 24 hours a day by shifts of San Onofre workers who feed them through miniature baby bottles.

The kittens--Alpha and Beta are males, Gamma and Neutron are females--are gaining weight and have tape on their tails so handlers know which is which.

Cats are famous for showing up in unusual places.

A Russian cat walked 450 miles to return to its owners in Moscow. A London cat once spent 40 days inside a plane packing crate before being found in Australia. A Los Angeles cat named Felix spent 29 days in the cargo hold of a jetliner in 1988 and logged 179,000 miles before being returned to his owners.

But radioactive cats, that’s something else.

“That’s a new one,” said Tom Corn, editor of Phoenix-based Cat World International magazine. “But I’m not really surprised. They’re cats. They’re everywhere.”

A cat expert at the veterinary school at UC Davis is similarly not amazed that cats could get in where no human intruder could penetrate.

“The plant’s security was designed to repel terrorists,” said professor Peter Moore. “Cats are not terrorists.”

A plant spokeswoman said the kittens may have ingested the radioactivity by drinking water leaking from pipes. The 87-acre plant has a pest-control program to hunt down squirrels, raccoons and rodents, but somehow the kittens went undetected for three weeks.

Dr. Scott Diehl, a San Clemente veterinarian and City Council member, examined the kittens and found them fit despite their exposure to radiation which, while still considered below the danger level by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, was enough to set off the radiation detectors at the plant.

“They’re all very healthy,” Diehl said. He likened the radiation exposure the kittens received to what a person would get from six X-rays.

Finding homes for the kittens won’t be hard. Employees at San Diego Gas & Electric Co., which owns a portion of San Onofre, have already put in bids.

“Kittens, even radioactive ones, are hard to resist,” said Debbie Phillips-Donaldson, editor of Irvine-based Cat Fancy magazine. “The novelty of these kittens, if it can be proved they’re free of the radiation, should make it easy to find homes.”

And then there are the workers at San Onofre who have started to become attached to the felines.

“They’re going to be fighting over who gets to keep them,” said Sherry Folsom, a nuclear communications engineer at the plant.