If You Find Kittens
If you find young kittens without their mom, it does not necessarily mean they have been abandoned. Their mother could be out looking for food, or finding a more suitable home for her kittens. If you find one or two kittens, mama may be in the process of moving the family and is on her way back for the others. If the kittens appear healthy, please wait and observe from a distance for at least four hours before doing anything else.
If, after 4 hours of observation, you haven’t seen signs of the mother, depending upon the litter’s needs and your time and resources, consider fostering the kittens until they are old enough to be adopted into fur-ever homes. The Ulster County SPCA can assist you in fostering kittens. If you are not able to foster kittens due to time or resource limitations, please contact us and we will find the kittens a foster home.
Please do not contact the Ulster County SPCA about kittens until you are sure the mother is not caring for them.
Keep the following in mind when deciding what to do next:
- Kittens have the best chance of survival with their mother.
- If you bring the cats inside, you should keep them separate from your animals until evaluated by a veterinarian, to reduce the spread of any potential disease.
- For proper social development, kittens should be kept with their litter (and mother, if possible) until at least 8 weeks of age.
- Unless their mother is not available to care for them, kittens do not need human interference to survive.
Fostering Unweaned Kittens
The Ulster County SPCA is always looking for members of the community to sign up as fosters, especially during the height of kitten season, from late spring into mid-summer. Fostering unweaned kittens can be very time consuming and difficult. Potential fosters should understand that kittens need a lot of care, get sick easily, and do not always survive. Fostering is very rewarding, however, so please consider filling out our foster application, and email it to info@ucspca.org. We will supply you with the necessary training and supplies to care for a litter of kittens, which can then be returned to the Ulster County SPCA when they are old enough, to be adopted out into their fur-ever homes.
A foster application and foster orientation from the Ulster County SPCA is required to foster out any kittens in our care.
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