Vote for the Bird Kittens

Please vote for our kittens in Unleashed's photo contest. The picture with the most likes will win 200 pounds of food for the rescue. 

https://www.facebook.com/UnleashedRaleigh/photos/a.10153088393751131.1073741848.177087051130/10153101899576131/?type=1&fref=nf

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These five kittens were born in a humane trap to a feral mother cat who was trapped for TNR (trap-neuter-return, the humane way of preventing overpopulation in feral colonies). Since they were born in mid-march, we named them after birds: Magpie, Hummingbird, Canary, Finch, and Chickadee. These sweet babies have been handled since they were born and will be available for adoption through Alley Cats and Angels after they are fully vetted (mid-June).

Adoption Updates

Whoops, a little overdue on these but the last couple of weeks have seen some great adoptions.  The following were adopted:  Kentucky, Gru, Flicka, Capt. Jack Sparrow, Odin (2nd try!) and Kyle, who went to live with his brother, Butters! Also, Marla became a foster failure because her foster mom loves her so much she couldn't give her up.

On a related note, we need more foster homes! 

These little ones need to incubate for a while before they are ready, but you know I cannot close out an entry without at least one cute kitten picture!

They were living in the crawlspace of an empty house with their feral mom. There are five little darlings and they are approximately 4.5 weeks old as of 3/23/13.

Mama cat will be TNR'd and go back to the neighborhood after she's recovered from surgery (the neighbors know her and she is welcome back).

They're multiplying...

Don't tell me it's not kitten season yet!! Because we have 17 (no, that's not a typo) kittens that are two weeks old or younger. 6 kittens are right at two weeks old, 6 kittens are 7 days old, and 5 kittens are 2-3 days old.

Kitten role call:

• Two week old kittens: three orange tabbies, one dark gray tabby, one black, and one tortie (mama taking care of babies)
• One week old kittens: one dark gray tabby, five silver gray tabbies with white markings (mama taking care of babies)
• 2-3 day old kittens: two white kittens, one dark gray tabby, one orange tabby, and one gray and white (without mama, they are being bottle fed)

Yes, sirreee - it is definitely kitten season!!

We have babies....

It amazes me how people can be so thoughtless. Someone dumped a mama cat and six brand new newborn (hours old maybe) in a box at the end of a driveway to a horse farm. What if the people at the farm hadn't been home? That mama could have died protecting her babies. Fortunately the owners were home and took the mama and babies in until they could find a rescue that could take them. My friend Debbie picked up the mama and kittens today and is their short term foster home. I know she misses having kittens around, so I'm sure she's loving it. I mean, she snapped 196 pictures in a short period of time!

We're quite happy the mama is there to take care of her babies. When we were neighbors (as opposed to me living in the "boonies" like I do now), Debbie and I once rescued four 3-day old kittens without a mama. It was our first experience and wow. Debbie was able to take them to work with her during the day (because ones that little have to be fed every 2 hours). I kept them at night. It was exhausting but again, wow, it was a very special experience. And Debbie ended up keeping one of the kittens.


This is from Debbie: "The kittens are now 5 days old, they were born Thursday, February 19th. There's 6 of them and I think 2 of the orange are girls and 1 of the black ones but I lost track trying to figure it out myself; they kept moving around on me :) Mama is super sweet and being a real good mama but doesn't seem to mind at all if I pick them up; she was a little uncertain, though, of the camera and as you can see used her leg to hide them from the flash a lot. Sorry, didn't realize I had so many of them until I got ready to send them; can't figure out how in the world I took so many in such a short period of time. I'm going to have to put them on a darker towel so I can get some better pictures. With all the white in the bathroom, the flash, the reflection from the bathtub and the light towel, I had to go through and darken quite a few of them; trying to take a pic of just an orange one in all that white came out mostly just a blur!"

Update: 3 orange kittens (aka "the triplets" for now anyway), 1 tabby, 1 black, and 1 tortie (with not much tortie markings but the markings are there). Debbie snapped another zillion pictures last night so we'll have more pictures later. We have "kitten pile" pictures of just the kittens. I held each one last night and Debbie got a picture. Little tabby is about the length of my hand.

The Oakville Kittens

Meet the "Oakville Five". These kittens were dumped at Oakville near Warrenton, NC. They were dumped near a very busy intersection and would have surely been hit by a car soon. The rescue's adoption program is technically full unless we get more foster homes (and money), but there was no way I could leave these sweet babies.

They are about 10 weeks old and very sweet. No names yet as they really are almost identical.

You may notice the rather "interesting" cage decor at the bottom of the cage. Well, yesterday the monkies staged the "great escape". The kittens are small enough that they were able to squeeze through the bottom rungs of the cage so I cut up my old Diet Coke boxes and duct-taped them to the outside of the cage. Very bag-ladyesque, but effective (and it also keeps them from losing all their toys through the rungs).


Today, they were given their first bath with both anti-fungal shampoo and Dr. Bronners Peppermint Soap. The anti-fungal shampoo is just a precaution against ringworm or other skin fungi and the Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Soap helps kill fleas (they will be given Revolution after three days [waiting three days is necessary since they were just bathed today]). The kittens were dewormed and given their first vaccine today. As you can tell, one of them didn't think too much of the whole process! They seem to have gotten over being upset quite quickly as they are currently playing with all their toys and snuggling with their stuffed animals (kittens can never have too many toys)

They are currently living in an extra large dog cage in my "cat free living room"; however, I am currently searching for foster homes for these munchkins.