By Meghan Reyes
The beginning of March is marked as the start of kitten season, and every year, hundreds of kittens are born homeless and continue to give birth on the streets.
A Kitten Place is an organization dedicated to saving homeless and orphaned kittens and cats in the Tampa Bay area. It was established in August 2019 by Michelle Bass and Alicia Pollock.
“Myself and Alicia have volunteered for several rescue organizations over the years and we learned quite a bit about the world of rescue,” Bass said.
A Kitten Place was established to focus on the ‘bottle baby’ kittens and kittens in need of critical care. Since then, it has begun to take in adolescent cats and pregnant cats. Its goal is to provide a safe environment to birth a cat’s last litter of kittens. After birth, the mom and kittens are spayed and neutered when they reach the appropriate age. A Kitten Place also rescues kittens that are in desperate need of medical care.
“We find homes for the kittens,” Bass said, “Depending on the mom’s demeanor, we either find her a loving home or return her to her original home outdoors.”
A Kitten Place has a group of over 40 volunteers and has foster programs for volunteers to take home rescues and give them basic care. Foster volunteers are also responsible for ensuring kittens receive proper socialization. Volunteers can assist with surgery, scheduling and coordinating, data management and transporting rescued animals.
“We have rescued kittens who needed life-saving surgery, amputees, pregnant and injured cats, kittens with severe malnutrition and parasitic infection, among many other critical care cases,” Bass said.
A Kitten Place also takes in special needs cases, such as Milan, a teen kitten who was on the euthanasia list at the county shelter. He was positive for scabies, ringworm and panleukopenia—a virus that can be deadly to cats and kittens. A Kitten Place rescued Milan from the shelter and after dedicated care, he is now in very good health and is awaiting his forever family to find him.
Visit A Kitten Place’s website at https://akittenplace.org/ or its Facebook page @michlbasskittens.
