Kitten Season: It Ain't Over 'til it's Over!

People are surprised to see kittens still around in the month of November – and sometimes a bit beyond.  It’s not too unusual, given the fact that nature has a way of pairing mating cycles of cats and dogs with the warm weather months. So, in the northeast, these cold days we’re starting to experience will greatly reduce the number of litters born in the winter months. The kittens we’re seeing at Dakin now were mostly born in late summer/early autumn, which ties in with the seasonal cycles. The following first-hand account comes from Kitten Street Team Volunteer Anna, who works very hard with her fellow volunteers to humanely trap feral cats and kittens living outdoors, bring them to Dakin for spay/neuter surgery, then return the adults to their outside colonies while the kittens head to the adoption floor. That’s a practice known as TNR, or Trap/Neuter/Return.

“And we thought kitten season was coming to a close! It sure doesn't feel like it. What a busy Sunday for the Kitten Street Team! We were all out trying to trap a total of 10 kittens at three different sites. Laura caught the last two from a litter of five and apparently there’s another litter in the area. Alesha hand-caught two, in the dark, with two others still on the loose from a site we call the Kitten Factory. I spent six hours trying to rescue kittens at a mobile home park, but with no luck. I had to call Zoly, whom we termed ‘MacGyver’ (this girl converted an old tube TV into a feral feeding station), for help. She was willing to crawl underneath the caregiver's trailer to look for the kittens!

We just can't wait for kitten season to end and focus on straight-up TNR! Check out Kitten Street Team's Sunday catch…such cuties!”