Alley Cat Allies To Teach Newborn Kitten Care In Galloway

ATLANTIC COUNTY, N.J. – Kitten lovers, mark your calendars.

Alley Cat Allies is bringing the highly renowned National Kitten Coalition to Galloway Township on Feb. 17 to teach residents how to save rescued unweaned kittens.

Unweaned kittens need round the clock are, including bottle feeding every few hours. They are a large part of the 70 percent of cats who are euthanized after entering shelters around the country.

Kitten season, when most kittens are born, runs from March into September, although kittens can be found at any time of the year.

The Neonatal Kitten Care Workshop will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Feb. 17 at the Atlantic County Public Library's Galloway Township branch at 306 East Jimmie Leeds Road.

The National Kitten Coalition estimates that last year alone, more than 10,000 kittens benefitted from the same kind of lifesaving training that it will offer in Atlantic County on Saturday. Details of the event are as follows.

Please register by email by Feb. 14 at boardwalk@alleycat.org. Everyone who registers and attends will receive a free tote bag filled with goodies for them and their cats.

Rosemarie Crawford, director of educational programs, instructor and co-founder of the National Kitten Coalition, will explain what to do when people come across newborn kittens. Crawford will cover how to assess kittens’ condition, stabilize them, keep them warm and bottle-feed them.

Alice Burton, Alley Cat Allies’ associate director of animal shelter and animal control engagement, will also give perspectives from her firsthand experience of rescuing kittens in the field.

Alley Cat Allies has a long history of dedication to the people and cats of Atlantic County. In recent months, Alley Cat Allies has also hosted an educational program on CPR for cats and dogs, and two trainings on Trap-Neuter-Return for community cats. The Alley Cat Allies Boardwalk Cats Project is part of an Atlantic City-endorsed Trap-Neuter-Return program for community cats that is a national model.

Alley Cat Allies, headquartered in Bethesda, Md., protects and improve cats’ lives through innovative, cutting-edge programs. Founded in 1990, Alley Cat Allies has more than 650,000 supporters and helps tens of thousands of individuals, communities and organizations save and improve the lives of millions of cats and kittens worldwide. Its website is www.alleycat.org, and Alley Cat Allies is on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and YouTube.

Photo: Courtesy of Alley Cat Allies