Four roughly six-week-old kittens are being looked after in Victoria, after sanitation workers in Duncan found them in a garbage bag.
The garbage had been picked up and dropped off at the transfer station when workers heard the sound of meows and went to investigate.
“It appears like the kittens were put in a trash bag picked up by the garbage worker and then taken along the route and ultimately dropped in the transfer station,” Sharon Rubin with the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee told CHEK News.
“So the sanitation workers then went and opened the bag and rescued four kittens.”
The workers contacted a group in the Cowichan Valley. That group was unable to take on these kittens, so reached out to the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee in Victoria which is now caring for the kittens.
While the kittens are in safe hands now, they will need some care before they’re ready to be adopted.
“They were covered in fleas, all of them have ear mites, they have what we suspect is the start of a little bit of an upper respiratory infection and we think that they probably also have ringworm,” Rubin said.
“Prior to being put in the garbage they were like this and didn’t get the help they needed.”
Rubin says the kittens aren’t fearful of people, so they clearly had owners for the first few weeks of their lives.
People having unwanted or unexpected pets is a common issue that the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee hopes to help out with.
“We have a massive problem in Victoria with people who have not gotten their cat spayed or neutered for various multitude of reasons and they let their female cat, in particular, go out and get pregnant and they don’t know how to deal with the babies,” Rubin said. “All the rescues are overrun.”
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In January, the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee will be hosting a low-cost spay and neuter clinic to help low-income people afford to spay or neuter their cats. The group hopes to offer this on an ongoing basis to help reduce the number of stray cats in the South Island.
As for the four found cats, a foster family has been lined up for them until their health improves and they are ready to be adopted.
Laura Brougham
