So, tell me, when exactly does kitten season end?!

In North Carolina, kitten season used to be primarily end of March through maybe October.  Now, it seems like it's year round.  We took in babies this year the first week of February.  And we are still getting babies, babies, and more babies.  It's enough to make your head spin.

Officially, intake has been closed for a little while because we have so many, adoptions are slow, and we don't have enough foster homes.  But we are a rescue group that is very heavily into TNR for ferals -- we work on many colonies at one time, and with colonies come kittens.  What are we going to do, TNR adults and leave the 6-week old kittens until they are old enough to be TNR'd?  No way, we couldn't do that.  So we've taken in lots of kittens in the past month from colonies we are currently TNRing.

Then there's the litter of five week kittens from a feral mom that we took in Monday.  Six kittens, one is sick - how could we not take them and leave them in the cold where the sickly one would've most surely died that night alone as his sibling had left him. First stop, vet's office.  Five are doing great, the little one is still touch and go but we're doing everything we can for him but it's wait and see and hope and prayer that he makes it.  And we are hoping and praying and calling Dr. Jodi all the time -- we love the vets that work with us, they are so fantastic, not just great medically but also all around wonderful people.  That litter is a very mixed bag of kittens: two orange tabbies with white mitts, one black and white cow kitten, one dark gray tabby with lots of white (he's the sickly one), one that appears to be all white until you look close and see there's some light orange on his tail and ears, and the other one is a Siamese/dilute calico mix (white with siamese markings with just teensiest bit of very color here and there).  We'll get pictures up soon, have some good ones, just have to upload them.

Then came Chance.  He was brought into PetSmart last night in hopes the rescue would take him.  He's about 7 weeks old and a medium haired orange tabby - adorable as can be with his little fluffy pants.  He was found in the middle of a road and narrowly missed being hit by a car (it passed over him, but didn't hit/roll over him).  He, of course, got scared, jumped, took a tumble and scratched up his little nose.  This picture was taken while he was waiting for his quarantine cage to be set up in the hall bathroom of my house, before the heater in the kicked in so I could bathe him without him getting cold.  This was literally taken within 15 minutes of getting him home - thus the fact that he still has eye boogies in this picture.  Poor little guy was absolutely starving.  Scarfed down canned kitten food and then attacked the dry kitten food.  He is such a good little boy.  Phone pictures so not the best but at least you can see how adorable he is.