The following post comes to us from guest blogger Krissy Gogel. A web designer and cat mommy, Krissy can be found online at 6bdesign.com.

Continued from part one…

Sorry, No Vacancy

This time around, we decided to find a no-kill shelter for the kittens instead of raising them ourselves. Because we could only find four people to take five of the six kittens from the first litter, we figured that a shelter would be more successful finding these kittens good homes. But we had no clue that, due to factors like the mortgage and housing crisis, all of the no-kill shelters and rescues were completely overcrowded and not accepting new animals.

While I was busy calling and emailing different organizations to place the kittens, “momma cat” was moving them. A week later, thanks to a good neighbor, we found them – under her house. I spent an entire day in the sweltering August heat in a crawl space, under a house with a flashlight. I eventually found four 5-week-old babies, which we did take in. I was expecting to find six or more.

A Tragic Discovery

About two weeks after the under-the-house rescue, a neighbor knocked at our door to tell us that she had found the missing kittens. I went into complete shock when I saw them.

One was lying motionless, covered in blood, and the other was dead. Something or someone tried to kill them. My husband and I rushed the survivor to the animal ER. The vets determined that she, Marley, was suffering from severe head trauma. She was unable to move or maintain body temperature for quite a while. A few days and a thousand dollars later, she began making progress and came home to live with us.

The Little Survivor

Marley is half the size of her siblings and is completely malnourished. She is making steady progress and is finally able to move, meow, eat and go to the bathroom on her own. She still isn’t able to support herself to sit upright or walk, but she’s trying. Thankfully, I work out of my home office so I am here to give her the 24-hour-a-day care that she requires.

Stray Cats in Your Neighborhood: What to Do

If you live in a community that is overrun with stray and feral cats, you should know that ignoring the problem only makes it worse. According to the Sacramento Area Animal Coalition’s website, “In just seven years, one female cat, her mate and all of their kittens can produce 470,000 offspring!”

With overpopulation, these cats are at a very high risk to suffer from malnutrition and starvation, which makes them very susceptible to getting diseases – some of which may be transmitted to your pets if they go outside. From my personal experience, here is what you should do to humanely help control the feral cat population in your neighborhood:

• Have your cat spayed or neutered – even if you don’t let them outside! Cats that don’t go outside can still occasionally sneak out of the house. You don’t want your male cat contributing to the feral problem, and you definitely don’t want your female cat wandering home pregnant. Plus, there are many health benefits for having your cat fixed.

• Contact an organization in your area that offers a TNR (trap-neuter-return) program. Some organizations charge for such services, but trust me, it’s cheaper to pay for spaying and neutering than it is to raise kittens. If you don’t know who to call, start by asking your local veterinarian or search the internet. There are lots of organizations out there – you just have to find them.

• Don’t ignore the feral kittens – they don’t just go away! If they are fortunate enough to survive in the wild, dodging cars and hiding from predators, they will grow up to have kittens of their own. Again, contact an organization in your area that can advise you on what to do.

If you are experiencing a similar problem with feral and/or stray cats, I hope this article can be of some help. And if you are going through what I went through, please remember to be as compassionate as you possibly can. The forgotten cats and kittens of the world deserve our attention, so being humane is the least that we can do.

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 7:09 am and is filed under Guest Blogger, Pet Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.