Interview! Marnie Russ, Founder and Board Member, National Kitten Coalition
June 25, 2016
Interview! Mike Keiley, Director, Noble Family Animal Care and Adoption Center, MSPCA at Nevins Farm, Methuen, MA
June 28, 2016
It is the end of June and I am wondering how kitten season affects everyone in our community? In Massachusetts, we have some kittens and pockets of areas where we have a lot of feral kittens that need rescue. Over the last 20 years, though, the number of kittens coming into shelters has declined dramatically. In the mid 90’s we often had over 200 kittens in foster care. Now in the middle of the summer, we have about 30. We have foster homes working with multiple groups so that they can stay busy and even with that, we are having a hard time.
What is a Kitten Free Zone
Massachusetts (and most New England states) are operating in what I call a “kitten free zone”. Basically what that means is that there are more families looking to adopt kittens in our area than what we can provide. At the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society (MRFRS) in Salisbury, MA, we have been in a “Kitten Free Zone” since 1998. Since about that time we began taking in kittens from outside our service area towns. We would often go to Lowell, Methuen and Springfield to get 30 or so kittens for our foster homes to be able to supply our local community with kittens. If we fast forward to 2016, all of the communities have become Kitten Free Zones, too, and are looking to source more kittens.
How do you become a Kitten Free Zone?
This is part of the CCP toolkit of success. Your community needs access to free (or very low cost) spay/neuter for feral cats and low cost spay/neuter for owned cats. Help spread the word about these programs and make sure that they are always at capacity. Spay/neuter of community cats is your first step to success.
What to do today if you are drowning in kittens and cats at your shelter?
Create a coalition/network across your geographic region so you can share and support each other. We have the Massachusetts Animal Coalition and it has been a huge lifeline for all of us to be able to get assistance from others. It is especially helpful with hoarding situations. Encourage your organization to return all community cats that come into the facility. If you need help setting up a network in your community so you can work more effectively together, feel free to download this tip sheet on how to set up a statewide yahoo group. In many cases, these are owned cats. In the cases where a cat is determined to be a friendly stray, you can spay/neuter and ear-tip that cat and return it back to the colony for when there is “Room at the Inn”.
What is “Room at the Inn”?
When you have too many stray and homeless cats for your adoption center you can spay/neuter, vaccinate, ear-tip and return the cats back to the area that they came from. Then, when you do have “Room at the Inn” (usually November-February), that is the time for aggressive re-trapping to bring those cats in for adoption. This protocol works hand-in-hand with another term called “Return to Field”. If a cat looks good and healthy and there is no space at your shelter then you should return the cat back to the field.
Good luck this summer and please share with CCP how you are doing with kittens in your community! Let’s help each other take care of community cats. Feel free to reach out to me at stacy@communitycatspodcast.com.
On behalf of the cats, thank you!
