Intense ‘kitten season’ has Southern California shelters scrambling for foster homes

Less than three weeks ago the two kitties — Stevie and Whitney — looked like little aliens. “They were so small, they didn’t look like cats at all,” said Teri Denning, who is fostering them at her Encinitas home.

Now, they’ve turned into cute fluff balls. Stevie is solid gray and Whitney is gray tabby. Stevie is chill and lets the world go on around him; Whitney is a go-getter.

While the amount of required care has become less, the kittens still depend on Denning to survive. And they will for at least another four weeks, before she takes them to a cat rescue where they will be placed in a permanent home.

Denning is one of 40 volunteers with OC Shelter Partners, an intervention group that helps care for neonatal kittens turned into Orange County Animal Care. They’ve been particularly busy the last few weeks with the launch of an intense “kitten season” — March through early fall. Each day, shelter staff are accepting multiple litters of days-old kittens born to feral and stray cats.

The Orange County shelter has taken in about 600 kittens since January, a 16 percent increase from last year, with 267 sent out to foster groups to find temporary homes. But the onslaught isn’t limited to one county.

Shelters in Los Angeles and Riverside counties also have been inundated. Long Beach Animal Care Services, for instance, has taken in about 130 kittens this year, compared to 95 for the first four months of 2018; and in Riverside County, more than 1,300 kittens have been taken into shelters, up from 1,009 for the same period a year ago.

“This is anticipated chaos when you have an influx of these resource-intensive fragile animals,” said Mike Kaviani, director of Orange County Animal Care. Neonatal kittens require bottle feedings every two hours, around the clock.

“Grants have allowed us to develop funds for supplies and medical care for fosters to keep the kittens healthy, warm and fed,” Kaviani said. “The direness is always there when we’re dealing with thousands of newborn kittens. The challenge is all hands on deck to keep them alive.”

Fostering and working with local nonprofits is critical, said Staycee Dains, director of Long Beach Animal Care Services, which has embarked on a program with two local groups — Little Lion Foundation and Cat PAWS — with the goal of saving 500 kittens this year. LBAS provides financial support to the groups for their care, about $100 per kitten.

The real issue, Dains said, is that while many cat owners responsibly care for their cats with vaccinations, spaying and neutering, others feed “community” cats but don’t consider themselves the owners.

“They feel like they’re just a caregiver,” she said. “They’ll feed them, give them a (litter) box and sometimes let them into their homes, but once the big expense comes for medical treatment, they’ll draw the line. In some cases, when they move they leave them behind.”

John Welsh, spokesman for Riverside County Department of Animal Services, said the agency partnered with Best Friends Animal Society about three years ago in the Coachella Valley Animal Center in an attempt to bring down a large feral and stray cat population. Riverside County has four shelters — in Jurupa Valley, San Jacinto, Blythe, and Thousand Palms — and contracts with four cities in San Bernardino County.

“We couldn’t solve the cat problem ourselves, so why not partner up with Best Friends,” Welsh said. “We believe it’s had a major effect on our feral cats in the desert.”

Liz Hueg, who in 2015 started the bottle-feeding program at the Orange County shelter and since then has saved nearly 900 kittens, said she has seen tremendous support from the community, with animal lovers stepping up to foster. She makes sure she’s there for Denning and others who need support tending to the kittens.

“I answer my phone 24 hours a day,” Hueg said, adding her group’s Facebook page provides a network of support among fosters. “My goal is to have fosters lined up. We provide everything — bottles, a kitten guide, formula and potty pads.”

After hundreds of hours of care, Denning plans to take Stevie and Whitney to be neutered and spayed when they are about nine weeks old. Two other kittens she tended to didn’t survive — some are just too weak.

She said she will try not to ask about where the two survivors will go.

“You have to cut the cord,” she said. “All I can do is give them the best chance. I can’t follow their lives until they become adult cats.”

Find out more

For more information on fostering kittens, visit ocshelterpartners.org in Orange County; rcdas.org in Riverside County, or littlelionfoundation.org in Long Beach.