Brooklyn, New York About six weeks old, Strawberry, Blueberry, JoJo and Mazzy were pulled from long metal pipes in the parking lot of a storage unit firm by animal rescuers. Living in a chilly garage with a gang of semi-feral adult cats, Meatball was a single kitten.
While the nice people at LIC Feral Feeders, a cat refuge in Queens, took in and bottle-fed two-week-old spaghetti, macaroni and rigatoni until they were strong enough to survive.
Think of these cuties representing kitten season 2025.
Usually falling in warmer months, kitten season is the time of year most cats give birth. That generates a flood of kittens, sometimes delicate newborns. Shelters become overloaded particularly with regard to the 24-hour care and feeding of very little kittens.
That drives a demand for more foster homes as many of the 4,000 or so shelters in the United States lack the time or means for round-the-clock care, said Hannah Shaw, an animal welfare activist sometimes known as the Kitten Lady with almost a million followers on Instagram.
“Every year, over 1.5 million kittens find refuge in shelters. And most of them will find refuge in shelters in May and June,” she warned. “Shelters want all hands on deck to assist in fostering.”
Shaw stated, familiarity with fostering animals is really strong. Doing it is a different tale entirely. She said, there is a mistaken belief that the people who volunteer to foster animals bear all the expenses. Many shelters and rescues these days cover food, materials, and medical expenses associated with fostering.
“A lot of people don’t foster because they think it’s going to be this huge cost; but, fostering actually only costs you time and love,” she remarked.
Given cats generally bond early in life, Hill’s Pet Nutrition veterinarian Lisa Restine advised anyone wishing to adopt kittens consider pairs. And how many too many cats would be per house?
“This is nothing serious or medical; my general rule of thumb is the number of adults in the house; you can carry one cat in each hand, so if there are two adults you can have four cats and still be sane,” she remarked.
Restine advised using square footage to avoid territory conflicts as a general guideline for cat planning. She stated two cats per 800 square feet then 200 square feet more for every increase should help.
Like Macaroni and Rigatoni, littermates are far more likely to get close, Restine observed. Like Meatball and Spaghetti, kittens reared together often bond while they are not biologically related. Adopters wishing to link an adult cat with a new kitten arrival could be let down, though.
“Once they’re over that 3- or 4-month mark, it’s tough to get that true bonding,” Restine remarked.
Usually, kittens spend few weeks to several months in their foster homes. Although figures on the number of “fail” kitten fosters—that is, when foster homes choose to retain their charges—some shelters note rates as high as 90%. That’s a victory, despite using the term “fail,” supporters observe.
Shaw notes also another obstacle preventing individuals from encouraging: the belief that it calls for certain knowledge or expertise. She has so devoted her life to public education, providing movies, books, and studies on how it works at her website, kittenlady.org.
Companies are joining in as well. Running the Hill’s Food, Shelter & Love program is pet food business Hill’s. It has given over 1,000 animal shelters supporting fostering in North America food support valued more than $300 million.
“About a quarter of a million kittens, sadly, don’t survive in our shelters annually,” Shaw added. “You will be mentored and supported from the shelter. Therefore, I believe that a lot of people’s anxiety about raising could find that, in fact, you are quite capable of doing. You haven’t done it yet, hence it’s just frightening.
