Opening hours extended to cope with kittens

January 7 2009

Starting today, Wednesday 7th January 2009, the RSPCA is extending its opening hours on a Wednesday evening from 4pm to 7pm. This is to cope with the enormous influx of kittens the Society has seen during the last few months.

The extended opening hours will run during January and February.

"It's an unfortunate reality that the message about desexing is being ignored by a small minority of irresponsible owners who do not desex their cats," said Richard Barry, spokesman for the RSPCA. "The result of not desexing cats is an excess of kittens and we have been inundated with them for almost three months.

“Because there are so many of them we have decided to extend our opening hours to give people the opportunity to visit them after work hours during the week and we hope they will find new homes.

The RSPCA routinely sees a rise in kitten numbers between October and January/February but this year has been exceptional.

“There is no doubt that this year has seen a significant and, frankly, unmanageable rise in the number of kittens arriving at our door,” said Barry. “In many cases those kittens arrive after spending hours at the side of a road in either a box or a bag… And those are the lucky ones. More than 10,000 kittens are euthanased every year in WA and despite all animal welfare agencies repeating the message about desexing cats, people still don’t do it.

The RSPCA is now running its “Dumped” campaign to advertise its extended opening hours.

If you are interested in giving one of the kittens a new home, please visit us at our Malaga Headquarters at 108 Malaga Drive (corner of Reid Highway) Malaga. Or alternatively call us on 9209 9300.