Kitten Season: Please Help if You Can

Along with all the other things that bloomed and budded early because of the warm winter weather, kitten season has begun much earlier than usual and your help is desperately needed.

If you can adopt one or two kittens into your family and give them a 'forever home', great!  But if you can't......how about fostering?

The Monmouth County SPCA is an Open Admission shelter. They do not euthanize adoptable pets. They are proud and pleased to have adopted this policy in 1999. It has enabled them to save countless lives. However, since adoptable animals stay at the shelter until they are able to find the right home, the added financial and manpower burden has been enormous.

That means they are taking in kittens faster than they can make room for. As beautiful as the renovations to the shelter are with all of the glass-enclosed rooms for cats to climb around, and as wonderful as the volunteers are who spend time trying to care for and spend time with all of the adult cats and kittens, there are now kittens cramped in carriers and cages, with and without their mommies, who need your help.

I started fostering kittens for the SPCA last year because I wasn't sure if my boys were able and willing to commit to caring for cats, no matter how much they begged. So I brought home a litter of little kittens that needed a temporary home until they reached adoption age. These kittens needed to learn how to be held and pet and loved so that they would make great future permanent pets in someone's home.

My boys learned what it's like to do a good deed, how to volunteer, how to take care of little animals, and how to hold, pet, and love kittens. It was a win-win for us. And it was much easier to give back the kittens when it was time for them to be put up for adoption knowing that there would soon be another litter of little ones to bring home and care for.

Of course, there's always the chance that you will at some point bond with a kitten (or hopefully at least two!) that you decide to adopt and keep permanently, and that is the most happy ending of all, but if you're not in that spot, at least you get to spend a little time loving a kitten and knowing this kitten is not stuck in a cage until it's old enough to be adopted.

A great deed, indeed!

Please contact the Monmouth County SPCA at 732-542-0040 for details on how you can become a foster parent.....or stop by if you're able to adopt and check out all the wonderful cats and kittens (and puppies and dogs and rabbits...etc.) that are ready and waiting for their forever home. The Monmouth County SPCA is located on Wall Street, just off Industrial Way, in Eatontown. And.....coming soon to Freehold Raceway Mall (details to come!)

Don't forget to listen to Lou and Liz in the Morning on 94.3 The Point every Thursday at 8:20 when we bring into our studio a kitten, cat, puppy, or dog that is ready for adoption!