Uh, whut?

If you find a baby kitten, do you know what the best thing for the kitten is?

To NOT touch the baby kitten, unless you already know the mother is deceased or there is imminent life-threatening danger approaching.

Often it looks as if the baby kitten has been abandoned, when in reality, the mother may not be far away and may be searching for food of her own. She may be scared of people and may be purposely avoiding you seeing her.

Taking a nursing kitten away from her mother is depriving the kitten of essential antibodies she will need to ward off disease and infection, and she'll face a lower survival rate without her mother's milk.

So what's the best thing to do? Look but don't touch!

I would rather see a kitten be collected and given to a shelter than to grow up to be a feral cat that people shoot at, poison and consider pests.

I don't know about this. I know that here, even a bottlefed kitten brought to the shelter is liable to be put down almost immediately. Depending on how close to capacity your shelter is, I could see advocating a policy like this. At least a feral cat has a chance/will not necessarily be summarily euthanized.

Except that 99% of the time, the people DON'T bother to raise the kitten, the drop it off at the shelter. The shelter which is already overloaded with kittens being bottle fed and taking up time and resources.

ETA: in theory, yah, it would be great to take it in and not let it roam wild. In reality, the kitten has a better chance being raised outside by its mother than it does beig dropped off at a shelter that already has its resources stretched thin.

Basically you're saying the shelter is saying "leave it in the wild where it will hopefully survive (and likely produce more kittens) because we don't feel like dealing with it!"

A properly maintained feral colony should be TNRed and any kittens young enough to be socialized into homes (and any friendly older cats) ought to be caught and placed. I do not know of any shelters in my area that actually deal with feral cats/colonies besides killing the cats if they end up in the shelter. I remember when I worked at the grooming place as a receptionist several years ago an older man called-I think he was desperately calling any animal-related place that might be able to help him - and asked if we dealt with feral cats, because there were cats overrunning his property. Being a grooming place of course, I told him we did not, and suggested he call Animal Control. He told me he had tried that route already, and they told him to buy his own traps and catch the cats himself, and he explained that he was old and had physical issues that made it hard for him to do that sort of thing. I was sympathetic, because since when is it anyone else's responsibility but Animal Control to deal with dangerous, possibly disease carrying animals? Rescues and caring individuals look after feral colonies out of the goodness of their hearts, but it is not their responsibility to do so.

Shelters don't have to kill things, they do so because it's the easiest way to deal with the problem. The days of the old "catch and kill" credo are coming to an end, and things are changing rapidly.

Of course I'd rather see a kitten taken and hand raised and found a super awesome home than euthanised...

BUT

I'd rather see a kitten taken to a shelter and euthanised than to be left out to continue breeding and harming wildlife.

I can't blame shelters, there is simply not enough resources to save every animal.

TNR is interesting to me. Does anyone have some good links about this? In what areas do they use it and how the approach has worked?

A properly maintained feral colony should be TNRed and any kittens young enough to be socialized into homes (and any friendly older cats) ought to be caught and placed.

A properly maintained feral colony should be TNRed and any kittens young enough to be socialized into homes (and any friendly older cats) ought to be caught and placed.

TNR is interesting to me. Does anyone have some good links about this? In what areas do they use it and how the approach has worked?

I'd rather see a kitten taken to a shelter and euthanised than to be left out to continue breeding and harming wildlife.