Why are there less kittens around/shortage of these days?

Question

now the important thing to remember is i may not live in your area!! i live in the UK and the east midlands area. i took in pregnant cats and started asking around about homes for them and easily got about 8 homes from family & friends lined up.i had 2 pregnant cats so knew there was a chance we might need more homes and had heard there were lots of kittens so even before they were born placed local adverts and i have had enough response to home a good 20 kittens. And none of my kittens are old enough to go yet! A lot from school where my children go, or my husbands work, but several people responded to my adverts and adter either meeting them or speaking to them the majority seem like good potential owners. there was only 3 people i would not have been happy with taking them!

Lots of them state they had been looking for a while for kittens in the area but you hardly see any...is there anybody who works for cats protection who could say trhat they havent got so many kittens- or do you think so many people have got lazy and dont bother to look for homes themselves and give them all to cats protection, so people who just look on the notice boards for adverts arent finding many there?

these cats of course will be spayed/sterilized but is it that so many people are doing this the kitten population is decreasing? thanks for your comments!

Answer 1

I don't know the reason but it's good news indeed. I would say it's down to more people being educated about spaying their cats.

Answer 2

I work for the York Cats Protection and I can tell you up here we have loads of kittens! At the moment we have around 64 in the shelter and on the waiting list.

I think many people have now come to realise that neutering your cat is the healthiest thing you can do therefore, hopefully, there are less people advertising for free kittens in the paper (which is common up here and something I hate!)

I would rather people brought their kittens to us so we can make sure they are healthy and end up in loving homes rather than people wanting to get rid. ( I know not everyone is as careless to give unhealthy kittens away for free to just anyone,but it seems to be a very common practice around here)

Also the more people less people who choose to take kittens from local ads the more that will adopt to help the really needy cats and the charities they are in!

Hope I helped in some way  

Answer 3

There isnt a shortage of kittens in the Northamptonshire area, people are as you say letting Cats Protection have them so they can be rehomed to homes that are checked and know what they are taking on, rather than later on when they realise they can no longer afford to keep it, dump it, where as if its a CP cat, we will take it back and rehome it. We home seperately or pairs, its down to the new owner what they want. Also getting a kitten/cat from CP, it will be blood tested, vaccinated and microchipped......and at a later date 6 months,speyed/neutered, any cat over 6 months will be spey/neutered before it goes.

Answer 4

I've heard this a lot from people in the UK. I'd assume it's the spay/neuter programs at work.

:) It's good to hear nonetheless. Here in the US, all I would need to do would make a 3 phone calls and I'd have 30+kittens to take care of.  

Answer 5

Hooo boy.  We've got an insane amount of kitties here.  In my county, animal control deals mostly with dogs, so the cat population is out of control.  I have 15 strays that I provide water for.  Five of them are kittens and another one is pregnant.  Lots of kitties.  

I had an indoor kitten I was trying to find a home for, but by the time I finally found someone who would take him (2 weeks later), I realized I was too attached.  On craigslist in my area, on any given day there are at least 5 ads with litters of kittens.  So maybe all your UK cats came to live over here in Oregon since they apparently run wild here.

Answer 6

There are plenty of unwanted kittens in the shelters, people who say they are having trouble finding them probably don't go to shelters to look for kittens because of the hassle of having home checks and the waiting list.



Some people only want 1 kitten or live in a home that these shelters home checkers wouldn't approve of and they often like to rehome kittens in pairs especially 2 of the opposite s*x as they supposedly get on better.



It takes time to find a normal person who is selling kittens, the ads in papers etc are a lot of the time people selling expensive pedigree cats.