On Friday, Debbie transported 5 friendlies to and from Spay Illinois. There were two females and three males, which was a surprise, thought they were all males - sometimes when they're little it can be really hard to tell! With these five, this brings us to 61 for September, 630 for the year and 10,075 to date.
The end of year kittens are showing up, this will continue into December probably, Kitten Season is year round! On Thursday we got a call from another TNR organization that had no "body" to send on a mission, being on the border of DuPage and close enough for one of our "bodies" to get to, I asked Mary to go to a business where a mom and babies had been seen in a dumpster. When she got there, two of the babies had fallen into a solvent at the bottom of the dumpster but three were still on the cardboard where they had just been born, all with the afterbirth still attached. The mom took off, soaked with the solvent. Mary brought the kittens to me, having tried to clean the two off best she could. By the time she could get to me the two had passed. I washed the three with Dawn soap to make sure they didn't get any by contact with the mom. Fed them at 5pm, two were sucking well, next feeding at 10pm went well - they only take in a cc or so at first, morning feeding at 8, all had a really good pull, good sucking reflex! Bottle feeding - no wonder people who do it tend to keep any bottle babies that come into their care! The mom was not seen on Friday and we haven't heard any further reports that she is still alive. That solvent was noxious stuff and hopefully someone we spoke to will follow up to get that company to not dump containerless poisons in the dumpster. Putting the word out on Thursday, ADOPT agreed to take the bottle babies if the mom did not reappear. Friday afternoon they were transported to them, where they had a mom they hoped would take over at least part of the care.
I tell this story to show how many people worked together save these kittens and provide for them. At one time rescue groups were very competitive and had nothing positive to say about each other, now we work together more often than not, sharing for the good of the animals. Not only these individuals helped, but I had a K & H heating pad on hand to place the kittens on because it was donated last year! Thank you to everyone!"