A plea for help with kitten deluge

Western Isles Support for Cats and Kittens (WISCK) has been in existence for less than six months, but already the group has filled the gap left when the national cat charity quit the Western Isles in December.

Right now a band of volunteers is providing food, shelter and round-the clock care for 32 kittens and 15 adult cats – and there are kittens and cats daily in need of more help.

Cat-care co-ordinator and vice-chair of WISCK Karen Cowan said: “Spring is always the busiest time of year for cat rescue, with nature taking its course and un-neutered pets out looking for mates, at the same time as feral colonies produce dozens of kittens.

“This year there has been the added strain of seeing a collapse in opportunities for fundraising as events are cancelled and shops shut.

“We’ve had to put in place a completely new set of working practices to keep our volunteers safe and our cats.”

As lockdown began, WISCK successfully introduced social distancing, a cleaning rota for the pens and home-working foster-carers served by a doorstep drop-off system for food and litter. Then kitten season began and the calls started coming in.

Karen said: “We had increased our social media activity and took all our committee business online, but cat pens still need cleaning, injured and sick cats need to be taken to the vet and there were urgent calls to step in as feral cat numbers reached their seasonal peak.

“Animal welfare is an essential activity, so we can still travel if we need to – for example when we took a call from BASF at Callanish to rescue a kitten family at risk from heavy machinery when a gas tank was being moved – but we do have to protect our volunteers at the same time as caring for cats.”

And the cats showed no sign of limiting their activities. One trapping exercise in Shawbost brought 20 adults into care, of which eight females were pregnant – hence the deluge of kittens now being cared for.

In normal times pregnant mother cats from feral colonies are taken into care and kept until the kittens are born, before being neutered once they have finished rearing the litter.

Karen said: “The trouble with people failing to neuter their pets is that we end up with far too many stray and feral cats producing kittens. It means overwhelming numbers of cats in some areas and defects and weaknesses because of inbreeding.”

Luckily WISCK not only has a strong committee, but a huge back-up team of willing volunteers.

There’s been a plethora of fundraising ideas, including one supporter who is walking 5k a day for the month of May, and another who entered WISCK for a pet-food competition and won five bags of cat biscuits. An online ‘Piseag Pageant’ yielded over £700 in entry fees from cat owners – best in show was 19-year old Midge (pictured bottom).

Donations small or large, one-off or regular can be taken by Paypal or direct to WISK at Royal Bank of Scotland, sortcode 83-27-12, account number 15988656. To find out more about their work see: https://www.facebook.com/westernislessupportforcatsandkittens/ or contact by email: [email protected]