February marks the height of kitten season. Litters are usually born at the beginning of spring and carry on until the end of summer.
Spring babies are already on the move and can in fact start having babies of their own when they are only four months old.
February marks the height of kitten season. Litters are usually born at the beginning of spring and carry on until the end of summer.
Spring babies are already on the move and can in fact start having babies of their own when they are only four months old.
During this time of the year vast numbers of feral cats and their offspring run rampant in the streets of
Grahamstown.
The average female cat can have three to five litters in one year with up to six kittens in a litter. This creates a problem, because feral cats are prone to a range of diseases, as well as being exposed to
cruelty and abuse.
Lorna Grant and Natalia Kavalenia are two local Grahamstown women who have taken it upon themselves to
capture feral cats and take them to a veterinarian where they are deloused, de-wormed and sterilised before they are released.
Their motto is trap, neuter, release. Sometimes they find homes for the feral cats, but most of the time the cats are returned to their environment where Grant and Kavalenia try to care for them with the small donations they receive.
The SPCA has agreed to sponsor free vaccinations for the cats that they take to them. Three cats recently received a home on a farm in Salem where they catch rats and receive food and love from their new family.
Grant has been saving feral cats for 30 years. A neutered cat’s life is his or her own with no future generations to take care of.
“The reward is knowing that you ended the suffering for one particular cat,” she says. She stopped capturing cats for a while because of her health but started again when she met Kavalenia.
Kavalenia’s involvement with feral cats began in October last year when she had an epiphany during lunch at a localrestaurant.
She saw a tiny, caramel ginger kitten with piercing green eyes that was feral, and for weeks she could
not stop thinking about him. She couldn’t rescue him because of her small flat and he disappeared.
But the incident made her sit up and notice whole colonies of feral cats all around Grahamstown. Grant does the advertising and administration work, and Kavalenia goes out to different sites, sets traps and
transports the cats to the vet.
Grant says South Africans are rather good at turning a blind eye to suffering in general, not just to the suffering of animals.
She says there are so many organisations looking after the needs of humans and animals need friends too.
• To find out more about the Feral Cat Project go to www.tnr.last.or.uk
