06/12/2026
"It is just a free kitten on Facebook! Why are you so upset! Mind your own business!" (How many times do I hear this a year? A hundred?)
Do you know WHY rescuers get so upset when they see "free kittens" on Facebook or Craigslist? - ALL year, rescuers volunteer their time and energy trying to spay/neuter the maximum number of animals in our communities. It is exhausting work. The owner paperwork, the transport, the clinics, hundreds of cats per a year being loaded and unloaded. Rescues are trying to help the community dig themselves out these cats. We do it because we love animals. We want to see less suffering.
And then someone allows their one female cat to give birth. And then a hundred other people do the same (because it is just one female cat and it just a few kittens, right?) ....And now we have a 500-700 unaltered kitties heading right back out to the community.
Undoing ALL that work. All that time. All those hours. Rescuers get calls about cats dying during pregnancy. Kittens not being cared for after birth. Kittens suffering outdoors and injuries and viruses and all sorts of horrible, haunting stories. A huge contributor to all that suffering?.... Free kittens 😢
While there is no national database tracking spay/neuter, animal welfare professionals note that the vast majority of kittens given away for free online do not get spayed or neutered.
We have reached the time of year (June/July/Aug/Sept) where most rescuers are drowning in kittens. Which means, many rescuers are forced to helplessly watch kittens being given away online. It is such a horrible thing to watch, seeing all that hard work, tossed out the window. More kittens entering the community, a vicious cycle of free kittens producing more free kittens 😭😭
Please spay and neuter. Be part of the solution. Help your community get ahead. There is no way out of this unless we are all doing our part. The animals count on each and every one of us. ❤️🙌