Cat’s Cradles

CHATSWORTH — A Reseda grandmother who raised four sons is reliving the rigors of parenthood all over. This time, she is juggling triplets.

“I had forgotten about getting up in the middle of the night, and I didn’t even know they needed to be burped,” said Patricia Kiefer.

Kiefer’s “babies” are kittens--the second litter she is fostering under a pilot program launched at the West Valley Animal Care and Control Center in Chatsworth. The program is the first of its kind in Los Angeles, patterned after similar efforts in Santa Barbara and San Francisco.

The city hopes to recruit 10 volunteer “foster parents” for the program which, if successful, could be expanded citywide, said Dr. Dena Mangiamele, the city’s chief veterinarian.

Volunteers take the kittens home and hand-raise them under a rigorous schedule of nurturing, handling and training until they are old enough and strong enough to return to the shelter for adoption.

Currently, thousands of orphan kittens dumped yearly at the city’s six animal shelters are quickly euthanized. The deluge continues throughout the “kitten season,” from April through October.

Mangiamele estimates an average of one or two litters of kittens--ranging from two to eight per litter--are dropped off daily throughout the season at each of the city’s six shelters. Most of those are less than 8 weeks old and would require constant care to survive. “We can’t let them suffer and starve to death,” Mangiamele said.

The foster kitten program aims to save a few of the otherwise doomed. Candidates--only healthy orphans between 2 and 8 weeks old--are selected by the shelter’s veterinary technician and matched to the experience and capabilities of a foster parent. Still, the task requires considerable risk and a large commitment of time and energy, Mangiamele said.

“Kittens are a lot like children in some ways,” said Sue Romaine, a West Hills marketing specialist who proposed the Los Angeles pilot program. “They are cute and adorable and playful but need to be trained and raised properly. They can get sick and you have to bottle-feed them. It’s just like having a baby--except you have five at a time.”

Romaine worked for five years with a fostering program in Santa Barbara before moving to the Valley last December with her husband, a music CD wholesaler. “I wandered into the [West Valley] shelter and asked, ‘So where’s the fostering program?’ I was surprised to learn there wasn’t any, so this is truly a newborn program.”

With the approval of the city’s animal regulation commission, Romaine and a few other volunteers took home their first litters this spring. The number of kittens given to each volunteer depends on the foster parent’s experience and the age and special needs of the kittens. Romaine, for instance, who estimates she has fostered hundreds of kittens, has handled up to 11 at a time.

Romaine said the work involved is well worth the joy she receives. “Kittens are an endless source of amusement,” she said. “They are discovering the world and each one has a unique personality.”

She described one precocious litter pouncing on her husband’s collection of CDs, toppling it into a pile on the floor, then “skateboarding” on the slippery plastic boxes across the carpet. Another time, a litter

of four orange tabbies confined for the night to a bathroom found mischief in the form of a roll of toilet paper. They unraveled it, then shredded it to pieces.

“There was this blizzard of white all over the bathroom,” Romaine laughed. “It took me days to clean it up.”

Kiefer, the grandmother, said she volunteered for the project to share the experience with her three grandsons, ages 6, 10 and 11, who visit with her daily. A widow and retired aerospace worker, the 59-year-old Kiefer said she believes that helping to save the kittens teaches the boys responsibility and routine. “I think it’s a wonderful lesson, to see these rough-and-tumble boys hold a little baby, feed it a bottle and not be afraid to be made fun of,” Kiefer said.

She was assigned five kittens that were beyond the bottle-feeding stage for her first batch. But she has only three in the second batch, which came to her at 3 weeks old and require frequent bottle feeding. “These are a little bit wild--one is named Spitfire--and need more handling and more love,” Kiefer said.

Volunteers complete a questionnaire, are interviewed and must sign a contract before acceptance into the program. Written instructions provide a guide to raising kittens, which must be returned to the shelter for checkups, inoculations and, finally, for adoption at about 8 to 10 weeks old. All supplies and food are provided by the foster parents.

The kittens, like all animals adopted from city shelters, are spayed or neutered before they are released to permanent homes.

Strict adherence to a sterilization program, animal activists nationwide agree, is key to surmounting overpopulation problems, blamed for the deaths of 10 million to 12 million dogs and cats a year at shelters nationwide--or 10% of the total dog and cat population, according to the Humane Society of the United States. Los Angeles euthanized almost 80% of more than 26,000 cats at its city shelters last year. Countywide, shelters serving 92 cities, with a total human population of 10 million, destroy 76% of the 112,000 cats handled a year.

Claiming to be on the verge of surmounting the overpopulation crisis is San Francisco, which has a 17-year partnership between city shelters and the local chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. A “no kill” city, San Francisco in 1994 began guaranteeing that all adoptable animals brought to its shelters will be placed, said Rich Avanzino, SPCA chapter president.

The program--the first in the nation--has allowed the city to spay and neuter at its shelters large numbers of animals that otherwise might have been abandoned, Avanzino said. “The number of animals is declining dramatically,” he said, “because fewer animals are being left to wander on their own in the parks and because we are reducing the number of animals being born.” The cat population is estimated to have dropped by 20% last year alone.

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City shelters in San Francisco, which operate apart from but in coordination with the SPCA, still euthanize sick and non-rehabilitative animals, such as some feral cats that are not suitable for adoption. But the number of euthanized animals is dropping--with a 47% decline in the number of cats killed yearly in just the last three years.

The city even pays people--at the rate of $5 per animal--to bring in male cats for neutering, as well as feral cats.

“We used to have a lot of cutes and cuddlies,” Avanzino said, describing the puppies and kittens that once populated shelters, “but now most are old and uglies. That’s the inventory of animals looking for homes.”

San Francisco’s foster kitten program, launched in 1980, is believed to have been the first in the nation, Avanzino said. Last year, almost 500 volunteer foster parents saved 1,200 kittens that were raised and placed in permanent homes.

Los Angeles’ pilot kitten program is most closely patterned after one in Santa Barbara, in which a private nonprofit rescue group works with a south county shelter to save kittens. It is believed to be the only program in which a private rescue group works on the same grounds as a government animal control facility. Started just five years ago, 40 volunteers now participate, saving about 350 foster kittens a year.

But thousands more, they admit, are beyond help. “We can’t be successful by doing everything everywhere,” said Sharon Metsch, president of the Santa Barbara Animal Shelter Assistance Program.

The shelter is constantly full and accepts only litters from local residents, said Beth Rushing, volunteer coordinator.

“Please don’t tell anybody where we are,” said one volunteer. “We can’t handle any more. People think we can save everything. Well, we can’t.”