Dutch animal shelters filling up with kittens dumped on the street

Animal shelters throughout the Netherlands are overflowing with kittens, RTL Nieuws reports after speaking with various animal ambulances and shelters. Young cats and kittens have been dumped “extremely often” this summer.

“We have been around for over 50 years, but we have never been so full. This year is really bad,” a spokesperson for the animal ambulance in The Hague told the broadcaster. Their hospital usually only takes in sick or injured cats. But now they also care for healthy dumped kittens because the shelters are full. “Normally, 30 cats can stay in our hospital, but now there are more than a hundred. And that number doesn’t seem to be going down.”

The animal ambulance suspects the pandemic is behind the problem. “A lot of people then thought: oh nice, we’re getting a cat. But owners didn’t have their cats spayed or neutered. The result of that is now on the street,” the spokesperson said.

“Our fears are coming true,” Gerrit de Boom of the animal ambulance in Vianen said about this “very bad development.” According to him, people get a cat and think raising one litter of kittens will be fun. “But they forget that thousands of kittens are born at the same time. Now they want to go on holiday, but the boarding houses are full, or they think they are too expensive. So they think: then on the street.”

The animal shelter in Gorinchem has to use its meeting room as an extra shelter for the many kittens it's caring for. “Last year, I already saw the problem coming, but it has definitely gotten worse this year. The kittens are also almost all sick. They have runny noses, inflamed eyes, diarrhea, you name it,” a spokesperson said. She also blames the coronavirus pandemic, “when everyone wanted affection from a pet.”

The Direnlot Foundation, which supports about 300 animal shelters and animal ambulances, “constantly hears cries for help,” a spokesperson told RTL. “We see kittens being dumped en masse, but also rabbits, rodents, and turtles.”

Early this month, PvdD parliamentarian Frank Wassenberg asked parliamentary questions about the overflowing animal shelters. “If the minister had carried out the wishes of parliament in 2018, the problem would have been much less,” he told RTL, referring to an adopted motion for a mandatory reflection period for the purchase of pets. “A reflection period will significantly reduce the number of impulse purchases. But, the Minister has so far refused to look into this. That is extremely frustrating. And you see where it leads: again, huge numbers of discarded and dumped pets.”

The PvdD also pushed for a mandatory microchip for cats, which Minister Piet Adema of Agriculture, Nature, and Food Quality agreed to early this year. “And I will continue to insist in the coming period to arrange it quickly,” Wassenberg said. A microchip would make it easier to track down the owner of a dumped cat.