The Brax shelter sounds the alarm: The number of abandoned kittens has increased again. However, the structure cannot accommodate them all.
Every year it gets worse and worse. If the Brax shelter was already overcrowded with animals last year, the number of cats rescued by the animal center has increased again this year. “People bring us kittens every day,” laments Nicole Bonadio, the vice president and treasurer of the Brax shelter, “We have even more abandonments than last year.”
Currently, 50 kittens are waiting to be adopted. “But we can’t accept them all,” laments Nicole Bonadio, where the number of places in the animal reception center is limited. “There is an impressive number of stores that call us because they have stray cats in their warehouses, or people who find cats in trash cans,” points out the vice president of the shelter.
Many reasons
An increase in the number of kittens, which can be explained by several factors. “Since it wasn’t very cold this winter, the cats were warmer,” says Nicole Bonadio. So, “more and more people are not neutering their cats.” A situation exacerbated by the year of Covid, when sterilization campaigns were interrupted, especially in cities, leading to a multiplicity of felines now in shelters. “Generally we get a lot of them until Christmas. After that it calms down and it picks up again in April when the cats give birth.”
Of the 50 kittens, 32 are in foster families and 18 are in catteries at the shelter, pampered by the association’s volunteers. “Those who are less than two months old are placed in foster homes because they have to be bottle-fed,” explains Jason, one of the volunteers at the shelter. They return to the shelter once they know how to feed themselves and sometimes wait several months before being adopted by a family.
“We are bound to deny it”
“Generally, people re-adopt cats when they come back from vacation, around the start of the school year,” states the vice president of the association. But in the meantime, it’s up to the shelter team to take care of it. “Even though it breaks our hearts, we have to deny it,” laments the latter, “because we don’t have enough space or volunteers to take care of it properly.”
Shelter volunteers hope to find them a family quickly… But not under any circumstances. “Taking care of an animal is a commitment”, recalls the structure, which does not accept adoption for a family living in an apartment where, according to them, the space is “too limited for this type of animal”. Since the beginning of the year, 28 kittens have already been adopted, ready to live a new life full of love.
