The folks at our local animal shelters are being overrun with kittens. Â And while that sounds like an adorable problem to have, it’s also very serious and they need help immediately. Â Here’s the message from the L.A. Department of Animal Services:
LA Animal Services and hundreds of innocent baby kittens urgently need animal lovers to help foster. Each year, LA Animal Services receives thousands of young kittens who need around the clock care to survive. The shelters ability to save these orphaned animals is directly dependent on the number of foster volunteers waiting to take these babies home to provide temporary foster care.
Brenda Barnette, LA Animal Services General Manager says, “This year kitten season has been nonstop. Typically we start to see a decrease in kitten births around this time of year. This is not the case this year as we see more and more kittens arrive each day.”
LA Animal Services needs people who are willing to foster kittens until they are 8 weeks old when they can be returned to the shelter to be spayed or neutered and adopted by loving families. We will provide as much training as you need and help from staff is just a phone call away. Each foster volunteer is given training which may require bottle feeding instructions for unweaned kittens who cannot eat on their own yet. The foster volunteer provides a place for the kittens to stay and gives them the care they need to grow and thrive in a home of their own.
“Foster volunteers are the future of life-saving,” says Barnette. “By opening your home to an animal in need, you are preparing a pet for adoption into a home of his own as well as directly saving lives of animals in our crowded shelters. If you are available for a couple weeks or a month, please help some orphaned kittens get the chance they need for a happy life.”
Foster volunteers are life savers. You can download your application at
LAAnimalServices.com/volunteer/foster-program or go to the City Animal Shelter nearest you and ask for a Foster Volunteer application. Take your completed form to the shelter and sign up to start fostering today.Not ready for the around the clock feedings for underage kittens? You can still help. We have some mom cats with litters who could really benefit from home care. We also have great dogs who are being overlooked at our shelters who could really benefit from a few weeks of home care.
The shelters are open Tuesday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. To find the shelter closest to you, visit: LAAnimalServices.com/shelters or call (888) 452-7381.
And in case that doesn’t convince you, we’ll bring out the big (or teeny tiny, depending on your point of view) guns – two of this writer’s own rescues.  These adorable sisters are now 17 years old and – along with their mother, who came at the same time – are still much-loved members of the household.  Wouldn’t you like to have some just like them?
