Peninsula Humane Society Visit #3

April Li
October 10th, 2015 12-3 PM
Peninsula Humane Society
Morgan Little
650-340-7022 ext. 382

            Before I had started working at the Peninsula Humane Society's Kitten Nursery, I think I skimmed over most of the job description, and instead had only seen the word "kitten." To be honest, I thought that I would spend my time playing with or "socializing" the kittens to human interaction and the six visits would pass quickly and easily. However, as I had learned by my third visit, this was definitely not the case. The Kitten Nursery was home to kittens, yes, but they were very young, most of them around three to five weeks old and required a fair amount care to make sure that they would grow up healthily. I was very shocked and a little sad when I realized that there was also an alarmingly large number of kittens that were in the Kitten Nursery.
            However, it also reminded me why I wanted to work with animals in the first place for my PACT project. Overpopulation is an aspect of Animal Abuse, the social issue that I wanted to address, and because people had not spayed or neutered their animals (cats in this case), it resulted in an overabundance of kittens—something that I had not realized was possible before. As a result, not only do these kittens often grow up in poor condition, they would in turn become a part of the problem themselves, if/when they reached adulthood. The Kitten Nursery would keep them safe and healthy, help the cycle end by spaying and neutering them, and also ultimately help the kittens find a home.