Kitty Post May 2026

Some of the adorable kittens at Beltsville Community Cats.

KITTEN SEASON IS HERE!

Fourteen kittens from four litters in just six days!  It seems pretty clear that Kitten Season is here once again.

Beltsville Community Cats took in our first litter of kittens of the season on April 13 – three adorable little 2-week-old fluff balls. That weekend we had done a trapping project at several industrial yards in north Beltsville that weekend, and the word came back from the spay-neuter clinic on Monday that two of the ten cats we sent there were lactating mothers. That meant their babies had been without a mama to nurse them for between 24 to 48 hours. BCC volunteers rushed back to the trapping site to look for the babies, and on arrival we were told that one of the workers had three kittens in the cab of his truck! Without a mama to nurse them, the kittens had crawled out of their nest and were soon found by Abraham, the regular cat feeder at the work site. We quickly reunited those kittens with their mama at a nearby foster home and sweet “Juliet” began nursing her babies – and our volunteers breathed a big sigh of relief!

We continued searching for the second litter but to no avail. After several hours, with night approaching, we had to resort to Plan B – release the mom cat and let her go find her babies and take care of them. Normally we hold a cat for the night after surgery, to give them a safe space for recovery, but in this case the risk to the mama from the earlier release was outweighed by the risk to the babies from going another night without food.

Over the next few days, we continued searching for that second litter, and on April 17, we finally found them – that morning their mom had moved them under a truck. This simply was not a safe location for those young kittens, and we knew we couldn’t leave them there. So, we tried an old trapping trick: use the kittens as “bait” to try to catch the mom. We placed the three kittens in a carrier with a trap against the carrier door, hoping that mama would go into the trap to try to reach her crying babies. But this mom wasn’t having it. She had been trapped already, just two days before, and she was not interested in repeating that experience.

However, we did have another option for those kittens – to try merging them with Juliet’s litter. Both sets of kittens were very similar ages. And we had learned that Juliet was actually not a feral cat at all – she lets us pet her while she is nursing her babies It seems that Juliet is an abandoned pet, probably dumped in or near that industrial area. It’s hard to imagine her wandering there on her own, since there is no residential neighborhood nearby. In any case, Juliet accepted the additional trio of kittens with no fuss and is now gently caring for all six kittens. Her reward for proving to be such a loving girl is that she too will eventually get adopted to a forever home, just like her kittens. No way are we putting this sweet girl back out on the street!

In the middle of finding those two sets of kittens, BCC got another call – someone’s indoor-outdoor pet cat had given birth to seven kittens. We agreed that the family could “foster” them under BCC’s umbrella, receiving advice from our kitten experts as well as appropriate medical care such as vaccines and deworming treatment. When the kittens reach three months of age, BCC will get them spay-neutered and vaccinated and then advertise them for adoption. And we will be sure to help them get the mama cat spayed too, so that this cycle does not keep repeating itself.

The final kitten in BCC’s busy kitten was found all by himself in a garden apartment complex in Beltsville. We have heard reports of a pair of similar-aged kittens in the area, probably his siblings, so we are now trying to find those too. This little guy is about 10 weeks old, and he will be so much happier if we can reunite him with his sibs. Stay tuned!

All of these kittens will make wonderful pets. Kittens raised in a home from an early age are inevitably fearless, happy, loving little creatures who will adapt beautifully to their new forever homes when the time comes. We generally adopt out kittens in pairs, not as solos, because young kittens are much happier if they have a playmate. And it is definitely true that “two kittens are easier than one”! If you are interested in adopting kittens from BCC, please reach out to us via email at hello@beltsvillecats.net.