A year-old program that rescues newborn kittens and nurses them to health is thriving in Centre County.
It’s called the PAWS Nursing and Orphans Kitten Program. Last year 57 kittens were taken in. So far this year 20 have been rescued.
Deborah Bezilla, the foster home coordinator, says it is hard work, “They need to be bottle fed because there isn’t a mother to feed them, obviously, so having our volunteers do that is so amazingly helpful to us.”
When they’re first born the kittens need to be fed about every two hours and they are more prone to getting viral infections.
“So it costs a little bit more in terms of money,” admits Bezilla. “They also are a lot more susceptible to intestinal problems. So we’re often doing fecals on them.”
These kittens are found all across Centre County. They come in as newborns and tpically stay in the program until they’re eight-weeks old or weigh at least two pounds.
Lisa Bahr is the director of operations, “his is our first official year operating it. We have previously worked with the Orphaned Kitten program, which has now dissolved.”
The program is always in need of help, whether you can foster a kitten or offer monetary donations to help support their care.
“Those are basically just our bottle babies,” said Bahr. “So sometimes with our orphan kittens, we do have moms for, but mom might be really young and not able to take good care of those kittens, so our volunteers step in, our fosters, and basically act as mom would.”
“Most kittens only weigh about a quarter of a pound when they’re born and so, it’s wonderful to see them growing up and knowing that they’ve got a great chance of survival,” said Bezilla.
Most of these kittens have success stories, they go through this program and are adopted to a forever home.
