Climbing temperatures mark the beginning for bottle baby season, the time of the year where litters of young kittens and puppies begin pouring into shelters.
Kittens under six weeks old make up a large portion of bottle babies. They require care every few hours that shelters can’t provide since they don’t employ overnight staff. If kittens are unable to be feed every few hours, their blood sugar may drop, resulting in feigning kitten syndrome, which can be fatal. When kittens that are unable to receive overnight care due to a lack of foster homes, sometimes the decision is made to humanely euthanize them so they don’t suffer overnight.
If the commitment to take on bottle babies feels like too much, there are lots of other animals that can benefit from foster homes. Animals that need emotional or behavioral support or are recovering from surgery/illness can all be placed in homes.
Alice Hamlin, foster transfer coordinator for NOCO Humane’s Weld Campus, says that fosters play an important role in the animals' lives.
“You get to know that you are playing a special part in that animals life that not a lot of people get to experience of being the stepping stone to take them from, again: sad, scared, stressed in a shelter, and then taking them to that point of being happy, being themselves, being comfortable and going into someone’s home and making a lasting impact.”
NOCO Humane will provide all the necessary training, so no skills are needed. They also provide any needed supplies so there’s no financial commitment from the foster.
There are only a few big requirements:
- Must be 21 years old
- Must have a place too keep the foster animals away from personal pets
- Must own fewer than eight personal pets
Before working at NOCO Humane, Hamlin fostered many animals from bottle baby kittens to super senior cats. She says it was an incredibly impactful experience.
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life,” Hamlin said. “I felt just kind of disconnected from everything, and for me, fostering was the first kind of way for me to get a step back into the world and feel like I was doing something that mattered.”
If fostering any type of animal feels like too much of a commitment, you can still help feral kittens that you see while out and about. Surprisingly, the best thing you can do for kittens under six weeks old, is to leave them alone unless they are in immediate danger or you are absolutely certain the mother is dead. If the mother is handleable, kittens should be brought to the shelter with her, but if not, they should be left alone.
More information about fostering can be found on the NOCO Humane website.
