It's kitten season on the Central Coast, and we're bracing ourselves for it by hosting a four-day-long “St. Catrick’s Day” Weekend celebration from March 17-20, 2022, that will include a Kitten Shower donation drive, a virtual webinar about fostering and kitten care needs, and an adult cat adoption promotion to help make room in the shelter for kittens.
The festivities come in anticipation of the beginning of a long local kitten season that typically spans from March through October or later. This is the time of year when unaltered outdoor cats begin to reproduce, resulting in high numbers of found and surrendered kittens coming into the shelter.
Woods cared for 752 kittens last year, including 326 that needed foster care until they were old enough to be spayed or neutered and made available for adoption. The influx of kittens requires an increase in the shelter’s foster volunteers, kitten and foster care supplies, and medical support. By early summer, Woods’ catteries are often at full capacity, with adoptions lagging behind the number of local cats and kittens in need of help.
“In spite of the thousands of spay and neuter surgeries we perform annually, and our monthly dedicated effort to sterilize unowned, outdoor community cats in particular (through our Project M.E.O.W subsidy), we still see hundreds of homeless kittens in need of help each year. Many of them come to us ill and malnourished and require specialized, round-the-clock care in order to survive,” says Woods Humane Society CEO Neil Trent. “We rely on the kindness, compassion, and generosity of the local community in order to provide the resources needed to save and find homes for these fragile young animals.”
We've created a Kitten Shower “Registry” of our most-needed items, such as kitten electrolyte supplements, heating pads, bottle warmers, syringe feeders, and more, at www.WoodsHumane.org/KittenShower. We also invite the public to attend a free, live “shower” and informational session on Sunday, March 20, at 11 a.m., where a panel of Woods kitten experts will show some of the kittens currently in the shelter’s care; discuss foster, volunteer, and donation needs; as well as demonstrate common kitten volunteer tasks such as bottle-feeding, weighing and more. To register for the free webinar, visit www.WoodsHumane.org/Event/Virtual-Kitten-Shower.
For more information, visit www.WoodsHumane.org or call (805) 543-9316. Woods Humane Society is located at 875 Oklahoma Ave., San Luis Obispo, CA 93405 and at 2300 Ramona Rd., Atascadero, CA 93422.
