September 23, 2009

Kittens preside over the Manhattan apartment of animal rescuer Tammy Cross. (Zootoo Pet News Photo by Amy Lieberman)

2K Orphaned Kittens Put Woman in Debt: A New Yorker goes $10,000 in debt to save thousands of kittens. And she'll keep them until adulthood, if need be, until they find homes.

NEW YORK -- Afternoon sun pours through Tammy Cross’ Upper West Side one-bedroom apartment, bouncing off her salmon walls and soaking into her plush white couches. Yet the brightness fails to immediately illuminate the apartment’s rotating fixtures: kittens, all 15 of them.

One-by-one, the animals, as young as four weeks, poke their fluffy, minuscule heads out of the “nursery,” or Cross’ bathroom, and approach the company with an ease their foster mother says comes from the attention she has delivered to each of her approximate 2,200 "babies." They strut around on this early fall day, all bearing inquisitive expressions and names like "Willie," "Chunky" and "Wild Thing."

Cross, 51, bottle-feeds these orphaned and stray kittens, who often come to her sick, but always needing a home. Each weekend, Cross shows her kittens to prospective owners on the corner of Columbus Avenue and 72nd Street.

Cross founded Kitten Little Rescue Inc., a New York City Mayor’s Alliance-affiliated nonprofit organization three years ago. Cross has been tending to stray felines for 18 years, and housing them for the past 15 years in her cozy and surprisingly clean, apartment.

Kitten Little Rescue Inc. got its start 20 years ago, when Cross shopped for catfood for her two pets at an Upper West Side bodega late one night. The store clerk showed her four newborn kittens, huddled together in the basement. A car had hit their mother and the cow’s milk he was feeding them out of a teaspoon did not suffice -- one baby had already died.

“It was evident that the rest of these kittens were going to die,” Cross recalled. “The guy wanted to do the right thing but he didn’t know how -- he asked me to take them. I didn’t know, either, but I figured it out.”

Cross contacted the ASPCA, which later called on her to help bottle-feed stray kittens -- a time consuming task few public organizations have the resources or individuals to handle.

“Since then, there has been about five days in 18 years where I haven’t had kittens living with me,” Cross said.

Cross spoke with Zootoo Pet News on a Friday afternoon, after a morning spent bringing some of her current brood to the veterinarian.

“When they are this young, around four to five weeks, you have to give them a bottle every six hours,” she explained. “But if you get them when they are even younger than that, you have to be there to bottle-feed them every two hours, or so.”

She uses a human baby bottle, as opposed to a syringe, because it allows the kittens to drink at their own comfortable pace.

Kitten Little Rescue has a volunteer staff, but only two foster homes, and one individual who bottle-feeds, caring for the feeblest of the strays. Almost all of the animals come to Cross through New York City’s Animal Care and Control.

“My situation with ACC is, ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you, when I have room,’” Cross explained of the demand for her services. “I take what I can, but I got to be honest -- it isn’t even a fraction of what needs to be done. What needs to be done is more trap, neuter and return, and people need to spay and neuter their cats.

“The kittens that I can’t take haunt me. Knowing that they are likely going to be destroyed, that I can only do so much, is just a really difficult thing to take.”

Aside from feeding the kittens, Cross tends to their medical needs: Fleas and diarrhea are common.

Cross cleans the apartment daily, getting down on her hands and knees to scrub the bathroom floor each morning. The kittens naturally gravitate toward the litter box, she says, but that understanding settles around the time they start eating solid food, at approximately six to seven weeks.

Kitten Little Rescue charges $150 to adopt a kitten, and $175 for an exotic breed. The fee, though, is barely enough to cover the animals’ medical and other needs, Cross says, noting that it costs $125 alone to get a kitten spayed or neutered. A recent graduate of nursing school, the New Yorker has gone $10,000 in debt to save those thousands of kittens. And she'll keep them until adulthood, if need be, until they find homes.

This month, one cat found a family after living with Cross for three years.

Yet the New Yorker says the joy she derives from saving those kittens is worth the debt.

“These animals -- I don’t know how to fully explain it, but I think they have a lot more wisdom than we do, and something about them brings out the goodness in most people,” she said. “I have had a seven-day-old kitten teach me more than a human has in our whole association. It’s really a learning experience. It’s not selfless work -- it’s very rewarding to me.”

Cross and Kitten Little Rescue volunteers, as well as adoptable kittens, are stationed at Columbus Avenue and 72nd Street each weekend afternoon, as long as it is over 60 degrees and sunny. At the end of October, they move to “The Pet Stop,” a pet store on Columbus Avenue, between 87th and 88th streets.

Amy Lieberman is a Zootoo Pet News correspondent covering the New York area and can be reached at alieberman@zootoo.com.