Trustees Ana Andrianova and Sharon Pine said the flood of kittens had slowed, but not stopped, during winter.
And now, with the warm weather, from 10 to 20 cats and kittens were being trapped, rescued, or surrendered to ARNNZ every week.
At present, the group’s 25 active fosterers were caring for about 200 cats and kittens — about 30% adults and ‘‘teenagers’’ and the remainder young kittens.
‘‘We really need people to help us out by adopting teenagers as well as kittens — we need the room,’’ Ms Andrianova said.
More fosterers are urgently needed, as are funds to help with food bills and veterinary fees.
SPCA Otago is also experiencing a jump in demand, and has more than 50 kittens under its care.
Most are being fostered in private homes.
The network was founded in early 2015, with the aim of controlling the city’s feral cat colonies, and the lives of ARNNZ group members have been dominated by the fight ever since.
The group receives daily calls for help to rescue stray cats and kittens, or to deal with cat colonies and ‘‘community cats’’.
With the support of vet Verona Mitchell and Mosgiel Vet Services, they have desexed and re-homed hundreds of cats and kittens in the past two years.
But Mrs Pine is concerned the ‘‘desexing message’’ is still not getting through to the public.
‘‘We still see lots of people giving away free kittens — sometimes it feels as though we are fighting an uphill battle,’’ Mrs Pine said.
While good progress has been made in many areas of the city, there were still ‘‘hot spots’’ in South Dunedin, Caversham and Corstorphine.
Often the kittens rescued from the streets were unwell, suffering from snuffles, cat flu and viruses which required treatment on top of the usual fleas and worms.
One little battler, an 8-week old fluffy tabby called Sausage, has fought to survive with a cleft palate — a condition that will need treatment when she is big enough.
★ Dunedin pet store Animal Attraction will host an adoption day on behalf of Animal Rescue Network New Zealand on Saturday, December 16. People who are considering adopting a pet are welcome to come along and meet the cats and kittens waiting for homes.
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Comments
Cats are a big danger to our native birds.
I support NZ being pest free to protect our birds and trees
I would love to get my 3.5 months old kittens desexed but the problems lies also within the vets. I have contacted nearly every vet in Dunedin (even those recommended by ARNNZ!) but they all refuse to desex them before they are 6 months. If you insist on it, they tell you 100 reasons why it is unwise to get them fixed earlier. In other words: as long as you are not working for SPCA or ARNNZ, you cannot desex your kittens as early as they can. And you are wondering why you have so many kittens???
This evening while out rabbit shooting on a Taieri rural block I spot a "new" wild cat to the area. This block borders native and wetland areas (so think ground nesting birds). The cat sees me and scarpers, so I head to where it had been sitting and search around. Within ten feet I find a card board box, with wood shavings and rotten faeces in the bottom. The box is smaller than the cat, so I figure it had been dumped for a few months now as a kitten. Interestingly the box has a courier ticket attached and the tracking shows the box was delivered to Otago Prison at 09.04 on 05 Oct 2017. So someones miss guided attempt to either "give the cat a better life" or more likely get rid of a nuisance cat they don't want, has just created another feral cat in our rural area. The chances of this cat getting saved is slim, the likely outcome will come under heading 'pest control'. I'm sure the police have far better things to do with their time, but I'll pass on the details to the local cop.