KITTY TALES - Prentiss and baby kittens

Dropped like a bad penny…

Cats and kittens find their way into the arms of Kitten Rescue volunteers in many ways, but one of the most heartbreaking are what we call dumps.  That's what happened to a gorgeous black and white young mother and her 4 two month old babies.  This is a story told over and over again of a female kitty barely escaping her own kitten-hood and already caring for babies of her own.  Prentiss is roughly 1 - 1.5 years of age and her only crime was that someone didn't bother to get her fixed.

Fixing cats is perhaps the single most important thing any owner absolutely must do as soon as their kitty is old enough.  With clinics all over the Los Angeles area that offer low-cost spay and neuter, there is no excuse for not fixing your pet.  And yet, when the unfortunate baby does get pregnant, these innocents wind up in shelters where entire families are euthanized because the babies are too young, or abandoned in boxes or carriers where they can only pray someone kind will take them in.  Most will face a terrifying stint in a shelter that will serve as their last home in life.

Discarded like trash; pregnant kitties, nursing mothers, and kittens that are now "too big" to keep, flood the shelters in a seemingly never ending stream.  These irresponsible owners continue to add to the over population that already sends thousands of animals to their deaths every year.  Prentiss is one of the fortunate few and that isn't saying much.  She was in horrible condition simply from the stress of being dumped in the dog aisle at the Petsmart in Canoga Park.  She was drooling and panting heavily, even vomiting on her poor babies who were wallowing in their own feces.  Apart from the fleas, they were in pretty good physical condition apart from the stress.

Team Kitten Rescue member, Kathy Eshenko, took home the little family and will continue to foster the mother through her isolation period.  It took a little while for her come around, but it is rather clear that Prentiss is used to people and was someone's pet.  The kittens were more shy than their mother but were happily crawling all over Kathy with sweet rumbling purrs within a couple days. 

The four babies, one fluffy black girl and her three brothers, a fluffy brown Maine coon looking tabby, a saddleback tabby, and a matching black and white boy, were taken in by new volunteer, Suzanne, who had just finished her orientation.  Prentiss and her babies will later stay in the Petsmart enclosures in the store where they were dumped. 

It is thanks to Kitten Rescue that this poor mother and her babies are not in a cage at a shelter right now.  We can only hope the man responsible for abandoning them will think twice before creating another situation like this one.