DETROIT – “I keep hearing the phrase ‘kitten season,’ what does that mean?”
While you may be looking forward to the warmer weather, for many animal shelters around the country, the spring season brings a bit of dread. With warmer weather comes “kitten season,” the time of the year when stray cats are breeding and litters of homeless kittens are coming into the shelter multiple times a day.
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This is a consistent pattern not just at MHS but at all animal shelters. Our foster homes know to clean out their extra bedrooms to get ready to host mom cats and their babies for a few weeks as the snow begins to melt.
Many of these litters of kittens are strays – born to stray mother cats, but just as many are a result of “indoor-outdoor cats” who are let outside by their owners to roam during the day.
Cats can begin reproducing as young as four months of age, so any unsterilized cats let outside could likely be breeding. If you keep an indoor-outdoor cat, the most important thing you can do to help reduce the impact of “kitten season” is to have your cat spayed or neutered! Learn more about the importance of spay/neuter here: http://www.michiganhumane.org/pet-care/veterinary-services/simple-spayneuter.html
If you are aware of feral cat colonies living nearby – look into our Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) program. Feral cats are either lost or abandoned cats who reverted to an undomesticated state, or they were born in the wild and raised without human contact.
Because feral cats generally are not able to be socialized and placed into adoptive homes (there are exceptions, but this can take a commitment of months or years), the most humane option is to ensure that they can live out their lives outdoors while not breeding more homeless cats. You can learn more about TNR here: http://support.michiganhumane.org/site/PageServer?pagename=feral
In the spring and summer, dozens of homeless and unwanted cats and kittens can be surrendered to MHS in just one day. Our foster program is especially important during this time of year – the shelter environment is not ideal for raising a litter of kittens, so we are grateful to our foster homes who take young litters into their homes to raise them until they are old enough to be adopted out.
We spay and neuter all of the cats that are adopted from MHS. If you are interested in joining our foster program, you can learn more here: http://www.michiganhumane.org/get-involved/foster/