Ask What YOU Can Do To Help Rescues/Shelters, Instead of What They Can Do For You (Reply)

Jmuhjacat Writes: A dear friend who's already adopted several ex-homeless cats and a couple of dogs called me awhile back, frantic to find a safety net for kittens and their mom just discovered in her yard. Hours of research and twenty-something emails (to say nothing of concern and stress) later, and I think I've had a total of two answers, both of which I passed on to her (along with a printed list of all the local possibilities) and I pray the outcome has been good.

Reply: Had this same person called me, I would have said:

It is very hard for most shelters or rescues to take in "Moms and Litters" because these cats require many weeks of fostering or sheltering before kittens or Mom can be neutered and placed for adoption. Figure that for any shelter or rescue to regularly take in Moms and litters, hundreds of adult cats will die for having no place to go in the roughly three months that a Mom and kittens can be sheltered, vetted and adopted out.

Recently, one of our regular cat fosters discovered two very young kittens in the alley in back of her building. "Yhoumey" had called me to say she could take in and foster a cat from the shelter, but when I heard about the kittens in her yard, I stressed that she needed to take them, rather than allow them to grow up "feral" and go on reproducing in the yards. Yhoumey picked up the two kittens two weeks ago (they were about 5 weeks old). Because they were rescued so young, they were a breeze to socialize and started eating on their own within a few days.

However, the reality is that these kittens still will require several more weeks of fostering before they can be vetted, neutered and advertised for adoption.

In this same length of time, (almost two months in total even with the fact the kittens were already 5 weeks old when rescued) Yhoumey could have saved, fostered and potentially helped place a number of young, adult cats.

Wherever possible, it is preferable for finders of Mom's and litters, to personally foster these cats until they can be neutered, vetted and adopted out. In these days of "Petfinders" and other Internet adoption sites, it is far easier for members of the public to advertise and place animals than it was when I first got into rescue and we did not have such opportunities and resources available.

Please bear in mind that even when finding "no kill" rescues or shelters to take in Moms and kittens, it severely stretches their already overstressed budgets, fosters and resources and thus results in many otherwise adoptable adult cats dying.

We in rescue, really need members of the public to ACTIVELY HELP instead of calling us every time they find a stray or Mom and litter.

If more people did their part to solve their community stray problems, we could minimize or even eventually eliminate the need to "euthanize" cats and kittens in shelters.

To paraphrase John F. Kennedy: "Ask what you can do for rescues and shelters; not what they can do for you." --PCA

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#1 Comment from jmuhjacat
5/20/08 5:24 PM | Permalink

Absolutely agree; but I am glad Yhoumey has done as you asked and is getting this adorable little kitten and sib socialized; and each situation being contextual, knowing my friend and her extended family and what she has already done out of kindness and concern, I gave her the best help I could under the circumstances.
We cannot save every precious life, though we pray that this can someday be the case. But we can save those we are able to.

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Ask What YOU Can Do To Help Rescues/Shelters, Instead of What They Can Do For You (Reply)