Local animal advocates are calling on pet owners to make sure their cats are neutered and spayed after a number of kittens were allegedly dumped in NOTL.
Ginny Taylor and her friend Ria Rosenberg operate the charitable fund Let Pets Live and say the dumping of kittens in the community has gotten to a disturbing level.
They suspect owners are being overwhelmed because of unwanted pregnancies.
“It’s a huge problem,” said Rosenberg from her home.
As she spoke, she clutched a seven-week-old kitten found on Lakeshore Road in NOTL on Oct. 22.
“I think a lot of the time when people find out that their cat is pregnant — you know, the kittens are really sweet when they’re born — they let them (nurse) and when they stop feeding, they dump them.”
The latest discovery happened near the water treatment plant on Lakeshore when Taylor was out with friends walking their dogs.
“One of the dogs stopped and when he stopped we heard a cry,” she said.
“I heard it again and I looked up and right in front of me there was a skinny tree, and about eight feet up was a kitten hanging in the tree.”
The kitten was alive but obviously in distress, added Taylor.
Immediately, she reached out to rescue it expecting to be bitten and clawed, knowing that most wild kittens go into fight mode when humans approach, especially those with dogs.
“But it didn’t. I cuddled right into me and that’s when we knew, ‘Okay, somebody’s dumped some kittens.'”
With the kitten in arms, Taylor began to walk back to her car to call Rosenberg to inform her of her discovery and to discuss next steps.
“So we’re walking back on the trail and I just happened to turn around, or one of us turned around and looked, and there’s a kitten following us. So we grab that kitten, and we start to look and look and look and don’t find any more.”
Later, after Taylor had taken the kittens to the vet, she and her dog walking friends returned to the area a few times throughout the day.
They didn’t find any more kittens.
However, the next morning after picking up the kittens from the vet and bringing them to Rosenberg’s house, Taylor received a call from her dog walking friends saying they had made another discovery.
“They called us and said, ‘We’re on Lakeshore, in a totally different area than yesterday, and we found another one.’”
The news wasn’t surprising to Rosenberg, who said the problem with kittens being dumped is a NOTL-wide issue.
“Lakeshore Road is one place,” she said, “but kittens get dumped everywhere.”
She wants owners to make sure their pets are fixed.
“People let their cats roam, not spayed or neutered, and you have got huge cat colonies everywhere because they just keep breeding,” she said.
Owners, Rosenberg suspects, simply take the animals out to the countryside with the hopes they will find a home on a farm.
She wants owners to understand that this is a vicious thing to do.
“It’s incredibly cruel,” she said.
“It is something that could be very different if people were a little bit responsible. Instead of dumping your kittens, you could take them to the Humane Society.”
The Lake Report contacted the Humane Society of Greater Niagara and learned all stray cats are accepted at its Fourth Avenue location in St. Catharines during regular working hours.
Closer to home, NOTL Cats is a rescue group for pets that have been abandoned or are unwanted, primarily cats and kittens. It’s made up of volunteers living in town.
The group’s founder, a woman named Marian, asked her last name not be published because she has experienced people dropping off cats at her home at all hours — even some that are dead.
Marian said she does accept all cats, but by appointment only.
“All they have to do is email me or Facebook me,” she said. NOTL Cats’ Facebook page is simply NOTL Cats.
NOTL Cats has a mission “to shelter, nurture and socialize abandoned and homeless cats in a loving home-like environment until they can be adopted out to their forever homes.”
Its email address is notl.rescue@hotmail.com.