A Seal Beach animal rescue group is helping local shelters care for cats during what they call kitten season, with the help of "kitten kits."
A big part of clearing the shelters is keeping animals out of shelters in the first place, and that happens with the help of dedicated rescue groups and volunteers.
Rescue groups say people often bring kittens – just days old -- to shelters, but the shelters don’t have the resources to care for animals that young.
Volunteers with the Helen Sanders Cat Paws Rescue Group provide “kitten kits” to shelters year round. They also spay and neuter and find fosters.
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“If they need that kind of bottle feeding around the clock and they’re not rescued, they can’t let them starve obviously – so sometimes, end of day is end of kitten,” Felin-Magaldi said. “All these homeless kittens are being born and people are finding litters of kittens so this is a particularly bad time of year.”
“We probably have people coming in with a box of kittens – so a litter is four to six kittens,” Alma Vera-Lima, superintendent of the Long Beach Animal Care Services, said.
Just as Felin-Magaldi and another volunteer were dropping off kits to the Long Beach Animal Care Center, a woman brought in a beanie filled with newborns, no more than a few days old.
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The woman who found them can’t care for them and the hope is that someone else can foster them, and eventually find them a forever home.
In the meantime, rescue groups like Felin-Magaldi’s will try to fill in the gaps.
“It speaks to me of these cats or kittens born into this world, not asking to be abandoned and left to die – I don't think that should be a death sentence, they should get a chance,” Felin-Magaldi said.
