Kitten Season

After arriving in Japan, I took a board position with our base animal shelter as the Kitten Coordinator. It has been an amazing opportunity and I enjoy the people and animals I have the pleasure of working with each day. I have been working with animals for the past 14 years, both as a volunteer and a career with a degree and training certificate connected to animals. I have had quite a few different types of species to deal with including dogs, cats with severe medical issues, ferrets, doves, goats, pigs, chickens, abused/neglected/starved horses and many more throughout my years connected with the Army Vet Corp and fostering at various rescue organizations.

As the Kitten Coordinator at our base shelter, I am responsible for all of the kittens aged 0-12 weeks old that come to the shelter. We have many feral cats on base so with that comes many kitten litters that are born in weird places (inside cars or bbq grills) and the moms end up abandoning the babies because the people accidentally scare them away. My job is to train foster homes to hand raise these kittens and ensure everyone is healthy and happy for adoption! Of course, I also will take in litters throughout the season. This is also such a great lesson for the kids and fits perfectly with our eclectic homeschool family- I certainly think that ABCs and 123s are mandatory education but life lessons with hand son experiences are invaluable and just as important for children to learn. Raising kittens will help teach my children responsibility and the life cycle but most importantly it will also teach them empathy and love towards those who cannot speak or care for themselves.

Just last night we got our first litter of the season! Six cute little kittens- a mixture of orange and dark tabbies!  My coworkers caught the kittens but the mom wouldn't come to us so we left a trap. We would much rather take the kittens in with mom so that she can raise them in a warm and secure place and then get spayed before being released back outside. Around 10:30 pm I got the call that mom had been trapped so I hop out of bed and my dear friend who is the president of the shelter meets me to help load her up- we didn't get home until close to midnight!

Momma was quite traumatized so I wasn't terribly shocked when she wanted nothing to do with her kittens after we got home. I ended up staying up all night ensuring the kittens didn't miss feedings, stayed warm since momma wouldn't snuggle with them and just ensuring she wouldn't hurt them. Thankfully in the morning, she started letting them near her and shortly after let them start to nurse. She was still super nervous and would tense up if I looked at her but by the late morning, she started cleaning the babies. Once I saw this, I knew they would all be ok so I was then able to move them out of the kennel in my bedroom and into the storage room. I have checked on them once a hour all day and momma seems much more calm both with the kittens and with me. I am so thankful!

This week will be a fairly inactive one with the little babies here. I have to really stick around the house to ensure that mom doesn't begin to reject her kittens early.  We are just coming off of two weeks of spring break which was desperately needed after not taking a summer or Christmas break due to our move to Japan. I think we will slowly get back into the swing of things by doing some printable worksheets and working on our science fair projects.