TNR Networking Saves Kitten’s Life

Thursday the HSLC Trap/Neuter/Return (TNR) Team was contacted by a business in Chantilly that we did TNR for late last year. We trapped all the cats there, all of whom were beautiful Russian blues. All turned out to be friendly so we put them in the foster program and got them all adopted.

Considering the site closed, imagine our surprise when a few days old kitten was found on the grounds yesterday, with no sign of mama or any other cats anywhere.

So our contact there reached out to us for help. Our TNR Coordinator, Donna, immediately started networking to find a place to put the kitten in order to save its life. Normally we try to keep kittens with mom til they are old enough but we couldn’t in this case since we couldn’t find her.

Donna reached out to Marnie Russ, who runs the kitten nursery at the Animal Welfare League of Arlington. She is also one of founders of National Kitten Coalition.  Fortunately one of our volunteers and fosters, Molly Boyne, also fosters for them too and currently has a nursing mom. So Marnie and Donna felt placing the kitten with Molly would be our best option. 

The nursing mom foster, Snowflake, accepted the kitten and she was able to nurse for a while and fill her belly, which probably saved her life. But Snowflake is an inconsistent feeder and needs a human to remind her to feed the kitten. So we decided it would be best to move the kitten to another AWLA foster that lives nearby and is already bottle feeding a couple of young kittens. The next best option if a nursing mom isn’t available is to place a solitary kitten with other similar kittens to increase the chance of survival.

Last we heard the kitten is doing okay. Thank you to all involved for helping to save this little life.

 

Our TNR program is only possible because of caring friends like you. Please make more rescues like this possible by making a tax-deductible donation today. Thank you!