followthebluebell:
seriously, tho, shelters and rescues are being slammed HARD by kitten season this year. i mean, we always are, but this year seems extra bad. shelters are in desperate need of:
- Towels
- Kitten Milk Replacer (kmr)
- Baby kitten kibble (like with the teeny tiny kibbles like royal canin’s babycat formula)
- Baby kitten soft food
- Heating pads (kittens need SO MUCH HEAT)
- Pine litter (baby kittens can’t use clumping litter because they try to eat it or it gets stuck to their bottoms and clumps up)
- Unflavored pedialyte
- little kitten pens (like the kind you keep kittens IN, not the kind you write with)
- feeding syringes, bottles, and nipples
- money
- Fosters!!! this is probably the thing we need more than anything else, tbh.
This year IS especially bad. It’s not in your head. It’s a direct result of the pandemic.
(I know you know this, but I want people reading to really understand).
Basically, one year ago private nonprofit spay/neuter clinics, other rescue nonprofits, and TNR trappers were both more or less grounded, as their legal status re:essential services was up for debate.
When bog standard vet clinics were given the green light, regular veterinary capacity diminished because of their need to meet new safety standards. So you had
1. Basically zero nonprofit clinics
2. Basically zero trapping
3. Incredibly reduced capacity for for-profit care
And it got cleared up eventually. It was a confusing time. But remember when the lockdown first hit? In March?
Y’know, the start of kitten season?
The confusing “can we operate? guess we’ll wait and see. gosh you can’t even find a single spay appointment huh” time last year happened to correspond pretty directly to what is usually our busiest trapping season.
The kitten season we are seeing this year, which is SO BAD, and seems to be SO BAD literally across the country, is what happens when volunteers and underpaid animal rescuers take a single kitten season off.
All the kitten that were born last year that would’ve been trapped and homed and their mothers spayed were instead… left to roam and grow up and now it’s their first kitten season as breeding adults and as a result the rescue community, under-supported most of the time, is just completely overwhelmed.
So, hey, if you’re reading this: Go donate to a cat rescue or animal shelter. Do it right now. And you know what’s even better than donating? Volunteering to foster. It’s rewarding, it’s fun, it’s all the benefits of getting a cat or kitten without the long term commitment. And it will literally save lives. Every rescue we know right now would commit crimes for more reliable fosters.
And most rescues will help you cover basic food costs and supplies, so you don’t even need money, just space. (And that’s why, if you can’t foster, donations help! So that rescues can do that for their fosters!)
If you can’t foster and you can’t donate, at least boost this.
Help a local cat rescue. If we’re going to do anything to bring this problem back into even normal levels of bad, we need to be acting as fast as possible. This year more than any, rescues really really need your help.