‘Hundreds and hundreds of kittens’: the volunteers saving strays as Covid-19 closes shelters
Spring arrived in New York City almost unnoticed amid empty streets and shuttered restaurants. But the ecosystem of the city stops for no virus. Buds still bloom along brownstone-lined blocks and kitten season is still upon us, marking the yearly arrival of thousands of stray newborns in New York. With the ASPCA and the Animal Care Centers of NYC (ACC) offering only emergency services due to Covid-19, smaller volunteer-run rescue groups find themselves knee-deep in cats.
Instagram, surprisingly, has been a huge help – the platform has drastically changed the way rescue groups operate. Flatbush Cats, with 130,000 followers and an active YouTube channel, and Little Wanderers, with 68,300 followers, are among the most successful in crowdsourcing rescue efforts. With tear-jerking posts, heartfelt requests and calls for donations, the organizations are able to gain funding and find transportation to vet appointments as well as foster and permanent homes for rescues. “What we do is inspire people to realize that they can be the person that rescues that cat,” Will Zweigart, founder of Flatbush Cats, said.
Lisa Scroggins, founder of Little
Wanderers, has been involved in cat rescue for more than a decade. “It just seemed like I was constantly seeing kittens with infected eyes that couldn’t see get squashed by cars, or cats seeking shelter from raw winters go inside car engines and be shocked to death,” the Bronx native told me.
Little Wanderers receives more than 100 Instagram direct messages pleading for help every day. A recent post chronicled the group’s rescue efforts – they saved seven dozen litters of kittens in just four days, including four soaked and scared kittens from a backyard in the Bronx. “We ended one cycle of generational suffering,” the Instagram caption reads. “We are exhausted just writing this.”
Cat rescue and population control in New York depend on a delicate balance of not-for-profit groups, humane societies, animal shelters and independent volunteer rescuers. And with half of that machine on hiatus due to Covid-19, the future looks dire. If this pandemic bleeds into summer and fall, hundreds of kittens will grow into cats and potential breeders (breeding can start at four months). While we attempt to flatten the coronavirus curve, decades of work fighting rampant cat overpopulation is being reversed.
“We’re going to have to stop doing anything else and just care for hun