More and More Kittens

With summer fast approaching in the Northern Hemisphere and vacation plans already in the works, the number of unwanted cats and kittens is growing by the day. Not only that indoor cats, all grown up, are suddenly becoming redundant, but innumerable

kittens born to house cats end up on the streets where their odds of survival are slim to none. Despite the flood of unwanted cats, the message about the importance of spaying and neutering doesn't seem to be getting through and the supply of kittens

needing homes far exceeds the demand of people wanting to adopt them.

For a long time, drowning and dumping the unwanted kittens has been a somewhat common practice, especially in Serbian villages. Things are

now beginning to change at a slow pace and it will obviously take forever to raise awareness on responsible pet ownership. For the time being, we witness countless pleas for help from people who have found themselves in a sticky situation when

their cats give birth because they failed to spay them on time. No one has the obligation to take responsibility for someone else’s poor judgment; on the other hand, letting the entire neighborhood become inundated with kittens is unacceptable as the

population of free roaming cats is difficult to shrink already.

Taking all into consideration, I simply had no choice when the news about two unwanted litters spread through the neighborhood so I reluctantly agreed to

take them in. The mother of this last litter to arrive was very productive – she had six babies, four boys and two girls, all healthy, playful, cute and apparently very well cared for. Allowing them to be with their mother long enough gave them the right start in life and

their story is now just beginning. I don’t even want to imagine what would’ve happened to them hadn’t they come here. I had absolutely no plans of taking in any new cats this year but well, sometimes we find them, sometimes they find us.

New kittens are a lifelong commitment and although these six cuties, just like Maggie and Kate, will most certainly have the best lives possible, there are many unwanted babies out there who won’t be that lucky and only the fittest and most cunning will

survive. Too many kittens are born every day into the world with not enough homes to provide for them, just to have extremely short and painful lives of starvation and neglect. If only people would sterilize their cats, so much misery could be avoided.

None of the adorable babies attracting attention now will be a kitten forever, they all need loving owners who will take care of them for the next 15 or 20 years. For cat owners, spaying or neutering is just a routine procedure, a short and easy surgery, but for

millions of homeless animals everywhere it’s the life itself. And it takes so little to ease their suffering and give them a chance…