Four kittens rescued Monday from a pile of trash at a recycling centre in the Cowichan Valley are now being cared for by a rescue organization in Victoria.
Sharon Rubin of Itty Bitty Kitty Committee says the five-to-six week old kittens were discovered at the Bings Creek facility.
“At the transfer station they had found these four kittens inside the newly dumped pile of garbage from the truck that just came in.”
Rubin says the kittens were apparently put in a bag and left out with the trash, but it’s impossible to know where they had been left along the truck’s route.
She says the kittens were covered in fleas and had ear mites, which they would not have picked up while inside the truck.
The Foster Critters Feral Cat Rescue was contacted and removed the kittens from Bings Creek Recycling Centre, but then asked Itty Bitty Kitty Committee to help take care of them.
Rubin says rescue groups work together and try to cooperate as much as possible.
She says people should get their cats spayed, but many fail to do so, often because of the cost.
The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee is one of the organizations on Vancouver Island that offers low cost spaying and neutering, but has very limited service available.
Rubin says during the COVID pandemic there was a high demand for pets among people isolating at home and a number of people thought they could breed their cats and sell the kittens.
That market is now gone and it’s impossible to make a profit, but she says “not everybody has got the message and so they continue to breed and then they have this inventory that they don’t know what to do with.”
Rubin says prior to COVID they would get a surrender request once or twice a month and that is now up to five or six a day.
