I love spring. I garden as my stress relief and the weather warming up and my bulbs sending up shoots tells me that happy hours digging in the dirt and nurturing growing plants are right around the corner. Along with that happy anticipation is a strong vein of anxiety because along with spring’s flowers comes “kitten season.”
In the cold winters of Maine, cats tend not to go into heat, but as soon as the weather gets above 50 degrees during the day, we start seeing pregnant cats in the shelter. As I write this, we have three litters of neonatal kittens, kittens under eight weeks of age, in our care. Thankfully, our foster homes are refreshed from their winter rest and are excited for their new temporary babies, but that number of litters will increase exponentially by this time in June. By July, our foster homes will all be full and we will be housing neonatal kittens in the shelter.
Kittens are delicate, and the reason cats have such large litters is because not all of them will survive. Shelter staff and foster parents do their very best to raise all the kittens we receive, but inevitably some do not survive. The sorrow of foster parents as they bring us their babies that have passed away is gut wrenching to see. The hardest part is when we know that their loss could have been prevented if their mother cats had received appropriate veterinary care.
Many of the kittens we will see in the coming months are the result of unspayed or unneutered indoor/outdoor cats. These are cats that have homes but have not been altered and are exposed to the diseases of the greater community outside. Sometimes that means upper respiratory viruses, other times that means intestinal parasites and, most ominously of all, at times they are exposed to panleukopenia.
Neonatal kittens do not have fully developed immune systems. While nursing, they are protected by their mother cat’s antibodies, but if the mother cat has not been fully vaccinated, she will not have the antibodies to pass along to her kittens. When you get your distemper vaccination for your cat, you are getting multiple protections. An FVRCP vaccine (commonly known as distemper) protects against feline viral rhinotracheitis, a common cause for upper respiratory infections; calicivirus, a particularly nasty upper respiratory virus that is potentially deadly for kittens; and panleukopenia, a feline strain of parvovirus. When a mother cat goes outdoors and encounters cats carrying any of these diseases or goes to an area harboring panleukopenia in the environment, she can pass the illnesses on to her neonatal kittens whose bodies are unprepared to fight them.
We will raise hundreds of kittens through their neonatal development period until they are old enough for adoption this year, but we will also lose some to preventable illnesses. If you have an indoor/outdoor cat, please consider spaying or neutering, along with making sure your cat’s FVRCP vaccine is up-to-date, along with their legally required rabies. These steps can literally save lives. If you are interested in helping us through the busy summer season, you can see our supply wish list as well as links to our chewy.com and Amazon wish lists at midoasthumane.org/donate/donate-supplies.
Many wonderful local stores, such as The Animal House and Ames True Value, also carry the necessary supplies. We will go through more wet cat and kitten food than you can possibly imagine, not to mention kitten milk replacer, cat litter and kitten kibble, and every little bit helps. We will also do an indescribable amount of laundry to keep these kittens clean and healthy, so if you are in the middle of spring cleaning, please consider donating any gently used sheets, towels and blankets that you no longer want. Each of us can make a difference in making sure these kittens grow strong enough to be placed in loving homes.
Jess Townsend is executive director of Midcoast Humane in Brunswick.
Source link
