As the weather around Southern California starts to dry out and warm up, animal-care agencies and rescues from across Southern California are bracing for an onslaught of newborn kittens to come through their doors.
Kitten season, as its known by those who work in animal care, is a months-long timetable that usually kicks off in the spring when endless new litters of infant felines are born and, inevitably, brought to local shelters.
And though most animal lovers may rejoice at the thought of thousands of newborn kittens frolicking around their yards — the reality of kitten season is often more bleak.
“Kittens can actually start producing (more) kittens at six months old — biologically at four, but often we see it start around six, and they can have three litters a year,” said Long Beach Animal Care Services bureau manager Melanie Wagner. “Exponentially, kittens are made very very quickly.”
“With the nice weather, wildlife breeds. It’s the same thing for cats,” said Santa Ana-based rescue Cali’s Misfits CEO and co-founder Carla Etzold. “Cats who are unfixed on the streets or unfixed and owned, but on the streets, they just breed prolifically. t’s just the massive influx of underage kittens.”
Though most kittens are likely to survive when they’re in the constant care of their mother, it’s a different story for the thousands that end up orphans each year.
Newborn kittens need feedings every two to four hours to survive — round-the-clock care that most shelters don’t have the capacity to offer.
“We end up with a lot of motherless neonates in our care,” Wagner said. “Why that is so hard on shelters, in general, is they need feeding every two to four hours. We cannot leave them alone at night or they will starve to death.”
Complicating the scenario: The deepening need for bottle-feeding “foster pet parents.”
Kevin McManus, spokesperson for Pasadena Humane, said kitten season is always “all hands on deck.” In…
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