CAts go to school
Remember these kittens from our November 2012 letter? Well, some of these feral kittens were part of a trial student-foster program for feral kittens. Here’s their story…
A feline foster-mom and teacher at Springwood Middle School suggested bringing feral foster kittens into her classroom for the students to help socialize. Feral kittens from a Whiskey Creek farm colony and a Parksville colony (see pictures) that CatSpan trapped were brought into the classroom each day and looked after by the students. The interaction with the students helped the kittens to feel comfortable in noisy and busy settings enabling adoption sooner than would have been possible at regular foster homes. Sometimes, in a regular foster setting, feral kittens are never socialized and must be returned to the colony they were trapped from. This successful foster program was captured on film by a Qualicum student and photographer Anton Seaman and the link to his video is: http://bit.ly/11j5gSj. The school foster program is about 3 minutes into the video, although we recommend you watch and enjoy the entire video.
This is a wonderful example of a combined community effort to help cats in need. Volunteers from CatSpan, Qualicum Cat Rescue and Springwood Middle School together helped save these feral kittens from a difficult outdoor life and find good homes for them. The good news is this school foster program will carry on whenever more feral kittens need to be socialized.
A feline foster-mom and teacher at Springwood Middle School suggested bringing feral foster kittens into her classroom for the students to help socialize. Feral kittens from a Whiskey Creek farm colony and a Parksville colony (see pictures) that CatSpan trapped were brought into the classroom each day and looked after by the students. The interaction with the students helped the kittens to feel comfortable in noisy and busy settings enabling adoption sooner than would have been possible at regular foster homes. Sometimes, in a regular foster setting, feral kittens are never socialized and must be returned to the colony they were trapped from. This successful foster program was captured on film by a Qualicum student and photographer Anton Seaman and the link to his video is: http://bit.ly/11j5gSj. The school foster program is about 3 minutes into the video, although we recommend you watch and enjoy the entire video.
This is a wonderful example of a combined community effort to help cats in need. Volunteers from CatSpan, Qualicum Cat Rescue and Springwood Middle School together helped save these feral kittens from a difficult outdoor life and find good homes for them. The good news is this school foster program will carry on whenever more feral kittens need to be socialized.