Kitten Rescue is a wonderful nonprofit organization in Los Angeles that rescues about 1,000 cats and kittens a year, and also adopts out approximately the same number. In the eleven years they've been operating, they've adopted out approximately 9,200 cats and kittens. They are a group of dedicated volunteers who, in the City of Angels , can truly be considered angels themselves. President Ben Lehrer spoke with Green Paw about this most worthwhile cause.

Kitten Rescue was founded in 1997 by Sue Romaine. After visiting local animal shelters, Sue noticed people would come in during kitten season with "boxes and boxes of kittens," according to Ben. "They would just take them in the box and the shelters would euthanize them right away." Until recently, if the kittens were under eight weeks old, that was shelter policy. They were defined as unweened if they were under eight weeks old, even though a seven-week-old kitten can eat. The policy was most applied to kittens five weeks old and under.

“They just don't have the personnel to help them eat or bottle feed them so the answer is to kill them,” says Ben. "Sue would intercept these people, take the kitties, raise them, and then adopt them out. And in doing so, she just attracted other people who were interested in helping, and the organization just grew organically to the big behemoth it is today," says Ben. Today, Kitten Rescue has about 200 volunteers, of which 60 are very active. There are also about 120 volunteers who participate in fostering.

GP: What happens once you get a cat or kitten?

We are no-kill. Shelters euthanize for reasons of inability to take care of them if they're sick whether or not it's chronic or acute, terminal or nonterminal. And they also euthanize for lack of space. We don't do that. For example, over the past few years we have rescued cats with feline leukemia which is a fatal disease in most cats, usually within a year and a half. There are rescue groups who do euthanize them. But, we don't. We make accommodations for them.

Our biggest problem is that for every cat we rescue, there are another 50 we can't rescue. We have limited capacity. We can't keep growing and growing. It will overwhelm us financially and overwhelm our fosterbase. So we have to make intelligent decisions about who we take in. That said, everybody who's presented to us, gets considered. We have to consider what prospects for adoption does this cat have. And if you're offering us a 10-year-old leukemia cat, quite honestly, the prospects are not good . We're not a sanctuary. We're a rescue group. Unfortunately, we are not able to rescue everyone that needs help. The sad reality is that cat overpopulation in Los Angeles is so severe that we are not able to help everybody who needs help. The city and county shelters are fairly tight-lipped about statistics. They do acknowledge euthanzing 10,000 to 20,000 cats a year. The vast majority of those are kittens under eight weeks old.

GP: What about homeless and abandoned cats living on the streets?

There's no way to count that. But, you have to figure it's in the tens of thousands, if not more just judging by the feral colonies that are all over the city.

GP: How long have you been involved with Kitten Rescue?

I got involved a little more than six years ago slowly. A coworker, who was going on vacation, "lent" me two kittens to kitty-sit that she had found outside her apartment. Then when she came back she said her landlord wouldn't let her keep them. She tricked me basically. I got duped. I had adopted a pair of kittens from Kitten Rescue three years earlier and figured these guys would take them.

I went to an adoption event that Kitten Rescue was having and told them I had a pair of kittens that a coworker forced on me and wanted to know if they could take them. They said they were full and had no where to put them. But, if I was willing to hang onto them until they got spayed and neutered, healthy, and adoption-ready, I could place them for adoption through the organization. That sounded very reasonable to me. I enjoyed the experience and just started getting more and more involved and active in rescuing cats on my own, and next thing I knew, I was the president.

GP: What is the Casitas Hotel for Cats?

A little more than two years ago we purchased a private shelter in Atwater Village. When Kitten Rescue formed in 1997 it was always the goal to have our own shelter. Obviously it took a long time to work our way up to that and a lot of fund raising. It's an expensive proposition. Finally, a few years ago we were in a position to start investigating a piece of property. At the same time, the owner of an existing shelter wanted to get out of the rescue business and contacted us to see if we were interested in leasing the property. We leased it for about ten months and then purchased it outright. It's a permitted facility that can house up to 150 cats. It has two very large indoor-outdoor cage-free areas as well as a variety of enclosures and boarding cages.

GP: What is the process for adopting a cat or kitten from you?

We screen all of our adopters to meet certain adoption criteria with the goal being to find a good, safe match for the kitty's personality. Since the vast majority live in foster homes, the foster parents know what they're like. We want to try to make lifetime placements the first time around. When people surrender cats, we hear all kinds of stories. The primary reasons people give up cats are moving and allergies. The allergies can be latent conditions, such as, a new boyfriend, husband, girlfriend, wife, roommate. Less frequently, you get people who are just not able to take care of the cat anymore. For example, the cat is diagnosed with diabetes and they say "I can't do insulin shots two times a day. Can you take my cat?" That's a very unfortunate situation.

GP: Where do Kitten Rescue's cats and kittens come from?

The vast majority don't come from people surrendering them. Many come from city shelters. Most of those are under the age of eight weeks old and of those, a fair number are kittens under four weeks old that go into our network of bottle-feeders. A lot of our volunteers are active in TNR which stands for Trap, Neuter, Return. It's a way of managing the feral population of kittens that are just being born on the streets. When you do TNR, you inevitably come across tame strays or kittens who just come walking up to you. About 35 to 40 percent of our cats come from TNR.

I do a fair amount of TNR and I almost never am able to do a trapping project without coming across a cat or kitten that is adoptable, that has either been abandoned or was born on the street and is young enough to tame.

We have a number of volunteers who are very passionate about shelter rescue because it is a very sad situation for adult cats particularly who are surrendered to animal shelters. They're put in cages, in a scary environment, often becoming sick and then taken off the adoption list and put on the red list and then euthanized. In many cases, in just a matter of days from being turned in.

We have people monitoring shelters and taking cats out the best they can. The challenge is not taking out more than there's room for. Every time you go to a shelter to take a cat out, you're going to see a whole lot more that you want to take out. But where can you put them. It's a microcosm of the overall challenge we face that there are more cats that need rescuing than we can rescue.

When we purchased our shelter, the board of directors agreed that it would be nice if we celebrated by going and liberating a couple of families at one of the highest kill shelters since this was at the end of March. And around March and April the shelters are filled with moms and babies. We agreed to get two families out. I went to the South LA shelter and ended up coming out with five families -- four moms and 36 kittens.

We at Green Paw are eternally grateful to people like Ben and all the volunteers at Kitten Rescue. Please remember them when you think of adopting, volunteering, or donating to a worthy cause. The majority of funds they raise go directly to veterinary care and medications for the cats and kittens.

At one of the many adoption events Kitten Rescue participates in throughout Los Angeles.

For more information, please visit their website: www.kittenrescue.org