The Parkland Humane Society was recently forced to take care of six kittens that were in a box that fell off a truck within the city limits.
Denise Penrose, PHS statistics director, explained a female resident was on her way to the city’s waste disposal site and was following a white truck filled with garbage bags, when a box fell out of the truck. When she stopped to pick up the crate to take it to the disposal site, she found six kittens inside.
The resident contacted the city and was told they could not take custody of the animals because the city’s pound is closed.
“She went to Dauphin Vet Clinic, too, and they said they couldn’t help her. And then she came here (to the Parkland Humane Society),” Penrose said. “We really had no foster homes or no room left. But it just so happens that our quarantine room was empty. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to bring them in.”
Of the six kittens, there were four which were about three months old, while the other two were a bit older form a different litter.
Taking in the six kittens put a great strain on PHS’s resources, Penrose said.
“We do have a budget. So for every cat that we take in, or kitten, we have to do everything for them. We have to get them vaccinated. We have to get them spayed and neutered, of course. But it’s just finding space for them, because now we have six cats,” she said. “It’s finding the space, but we did take them in.”
Stories such as this are becoming more and more common, because, as Penrose explains, people think they can just dispose of the animals in their care when they become too much to handle.
The day this happened was a chilly day and, because the kittens were so small, Penrose said they likely would have died if they had not been found.
Penrose advises people who have pets to keep an eye on them and have them spayed or neutered, keeping the population under control so things like this do not happen again.
“It’s so important. Actually with dogs now, we cannot find any shelters to take dogs. So if we take any dogs from the pound, or any dog period, we can’t find a place for them to go to keep on taking more dogs. So once we have dogs in our program, we can’t find anywhere for them to go,” she said. “And it’s getting really bad, because before, we could always find places for them to go and now we can’t. And we have about 30 dogs right now, between puppies and dogs.”
So the question now, Penrose said, is what do people do with the strays that are found when the city pound is closed and PHS cannot take them in because they simply don’t have the space?
“It’s pretty sad. And it seems to be getting worse. People just don’t care,” she said.
The kittens are now ready for adoption.
