OC Animal Care shelter to receive $100K grant to help save neonatal kittens from euthanasia
TUSTIN — Ruth Honer and her husband, Bob Shimokochi, smiled as they watched two kittens play in a cage at the OC Animal Care shelter.
The tortoiseshell and tortoise seal point sisters, Opal and Octavia, swatted at each other and then tumbled, repeating the game over and over.
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Honer and Shimokochi, of Santa Ana, had already seen the two felines online but wanted to visit them in person. They have an eight-year-old tortoiseshell and wanted to add to their family of pets.
“I believe in getting rescues,” Honer said Friday, Sept. 14. “We’ve been coming to the shelter for 30 years.”
Opal and Octavia are lucky. Both came to the Orange County shelter as newborns and then went out to foster homes where they were bottle-fed and raised until they were eight weeks old — the youngest age at which kittens can be adopted. But many newborns never make it that far. Neonatal kittens are at the highest risk of euthanasia at shelters because of the extra time and resources they require.
On Saturday, Sept 15, OC Animal Care will get a boost in its effort to keep newborn kittens alive, when the shelter receives a $100,000 grant from Best Friends Animal Society, a national nonprofit focused on ending the killing of dogs and cats in rescue shelters.
The grant is designated specifically to help save kittens eight weeks old and younger.
“I had heard a lot about Orange County and I knew they were struggling with kittens,” said Jose Ocano, who represents the Pacific Region for Best Friends. “We recognized they wanted to save lives. It’s an exciting time for Orange County. It’s a new day for animals, with a new building and a new director.”
OC Animal Care is the only shelter in Southern California to receive a six-figure sum from Best Friends this year, Ocano said.
The event on Saturday will include the grant presentation from Ocano; Supervisor Todd Spitzer, representing the Third District; and Supervisor Andrew Doh, representing the First District.
“This will allow us to increase the number of neonatal kittens we save by at least 15 percent in the first year,” said Sondra Berg, spokeswoman for OC Animal Care, which has taken in 3,575 kittens age eight weeks and younger so far this year. “The grant will help us buy warming blankets, bottles and other supplies that fosters can use.”
With the grant in place, those who sign up to become foster caretakers will receive education on how to care for neonatal kittens, along with supplies. They also will be eligible for free medical care, spay and neuter procedures, vaccinations, and microchips for the kittens they foster.
On Saturday, OC Animal Care will kick off a campaign to get 100 new fosters in 100 hours, Berg said. This is in line with a vision of the shelter’s new director, Mike Kaviani, to increase community involvement. There currently are 217 foster caregivers working with the Orange County shelter.
“We have an unacceptably high euthanasia rate for cats and kittens because of the large numbers that are reproduced and left for stray,” Spitzer said. “We are working diligently to bring down that rate and we have partnered with the grantor to put significant resources into reducing those numbers.”
To find out more about foster care, go ocpetinfo.com/involve/volunteer/adult/foster