Kitten rant

It's that time of year, work is getting busy, more people are visiting us and, of course, we are full to the brim. Three weeks ago we got to see the cat above give birth to three lovely kittens, one of which is half the size of his two brothers but with a close eye and a bit of supplementing he's getting stronger and putting on weight. So yep, we've got kittens but the down side is they tie up the pen until they can be homed which means we cannot help other cats in need until the pen is free. I wish people would realise that more. Every day we get visitors asking if we have kittens but they get in a huff if we don't have any or if they don't meet our criteria - yes we have a criteria for a kittens but it's for good reason.

This is our policy for kittens:

• they must be at least nine weeks old before rehoming so they will have had their first vaccination before going out into the big wide world
• families must have children older than six years old - this is a big problem with some people but believe me we've had bad experiences with young kids and kittens so they can like it or lump it
• owners cannot be too old, cats can live a good 16 years so if someone in their seventies wants a pet we are not going to home them a kitten as the chances are it will out live them and finding a home for an old cat is near impossible (we try to be tactful about this)
• people must be around during the day, or at least able to pop in regularly, basically for the kittens safety and to feed them
• kittens must be homed in pairs or to a household with another cat
• and finally as with any cat, they need access to a garden (obviously not until they've been neutered though).

So just a few things we require for the younguns in our care and you can probably imagine we get a lot of stick from people wanting a six week old kitten for their four year old kid and explainations usually fall on deaf ears. The normal reply is 'I'll just go to the pet shop then' which is supposed to offend us but doesn't, as I've said, we have good reason for our rules and unfortunately they'll end up with a nervous/pregnant/aggressive/dead cat.

'So the RSPCA doesn't want us to help by homing their cats', is another common retort but what people don't realise is they're not helping us by taking a kitten, they'll help us by taking an older(grown up) one and freeing up the space for another cat in need. As much as I love kittens I wish we didn't have so many every year and that owners would get their pets neutered so their offspring don't end up at a shelter.