You know this time of year as summer, or our annual vacation into sweatiest Hades. In animal welfare we have another name for it: kitten season.
Adorable name; really hard, busy time for animal welfare organizations. Just ask local cat rescue groups.
Kitten season is when animal shelters and rescue groups are full. And not just with cats and kittens—it is the busiest time of year for dogs, too.
That means if you are trying to find a place in a shelter or rescue for an animal, you may find yourself being told there’s no room.
Even government shelters can be limiting which animals they take in, to try to conserve space—and for other reasons, like using resources to keep animals in homes, as Hillsborough County’s Pet Resource Center director Scott Trebatoski tells us.
At Human Animal Support Services, we encourage this model of animal sheltering: keeping pets in the community whenever possible, with shelters serving as emergency backup for animals who truly have no place else to go.
