FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Kittenpalooza Hits St. Vital Center August 14th to 23rd

Winnipeg, MB, August 13, 2019: Dozens and dozens of kittens will be strutting their stuff at St. Vital Center's community booth, looking for new forever homes during Kittenpalooza, Craig Street Cats annual kitten adoption event.

"We're opening a miniature adoption centre in the mall," says CSC Executive Director, Lynne Scott.  "Each day will see different cats and kittens joining us, hoping to be adopted."  According to Scott, adoption counsellors will be on hand during all mall hours, ready to help visitors take home their new best friends.  "We're working hard to find homes for all the cats in our care, in order that we can respond to more of the desperate pleas for help coming our way.  Each week our staff take calls asking for help for over 1,000 cats."  

New to Kittenpalooza this year is a "Kitten Therapy" area, or cuddle zone, where shoppers may relax and cuddle a kitten for a few minutes.  Special guest, Dr. Keri Hudson Reykdal, star of Animal Planet's Dr. Keri: Prairie Vet, will join CSC on Sunday, August 18th, from 11 to 2.

About Craig Street Cats:  Craig Street Cats is a non-profit organization working to humanely reduce Winnipeg's free roaming cat population, rescue kittens and educate the public about community cats.  CSC is the largest cat specific animal welfare organization in winnipeg, caring for over 750 cats in its managed colonies, foster homes and adoption centre.
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Craig Street Cats' largest project in 2018 was the River Bank Cats.  A large colony, estimated to hold over 100 cats and kittens.  Our work with this colony was featured on an episode of Dr. Keri: Prairie Vet, but a half hour television program can't really give you an idea of what goes into the management of a colony this size.

Since CSC took over management of the colony, many important things have happened.  First and foremost, volunteer community trappers have committed to feeding the cats every day, regardless of weather, hardship, or confrontation.  Bitter cold, torrential downpour, blazing heat, driving snow, icy trail, slippery mud, illness, injury, threats from irate people -- none of these obstacles have stopped these heroes from making sure the cats are fed.

These same community trappers have given up a considerable chunk of their personal time to trap the cats, bring them in for surgery and vaccinations, and then return the cats to the river bank.  In total, 63 cats and kittens have been pulled from the colony.  32 adult cats spayed or neutered, and vaccinated; 31 kittens placed in our adoption program.

So far this year, only 2 kittens have been sighted.  With any luck, they will be trapped and placed for adoption soon, and their mother spayed, vaccinated and returned to the colony.
Let's stop and think about that for a moment. 

If CSC had not stepped in to manage this colony, those 32 adult cats and 31 kittens would have continued to reproduce.  Statistically, only 8 of the kittens would have survived long enough to mate, but that would make a total of 40 breeding adults, producing at least 2 litters of kittens this year.  If half of the cats were female, that would be at least 200 kittens born to the colony this year.  150 of them would have died before 3 months of age.  50 breeding adults might have been added to the colony.  Next year, over 400 kittens would have been born to the colony, with 100 of them joining the breeding population.  With no vaccinations, all of the cats would have been subject to viral infections like distemper and rabies.  The numbers would have continued to climb, until the natural food supply was exhausted.  Then starvation would have set in.  The cats, being territorial, would have remained at the colony site, and continued to breed.  It would not have been pretty.