Meanwhile, over in the Kitten Nursery . . .

Regular readers of my blog know that my daughter Clara and I have been volunteering at the local humane society for about a year, mainly walking and socializing dogs. And that, over the last several weeks, we started volunteering in the kitten nursery.

We take care of teeny, tiny kittens 3-6 weeks old who don't have a mom and who need help being fed and learning to eat. We also socialize them and tend to their general care.

Once they leave the nursery, they usually go to foster care for a few weeks and get "fixed" before returning to the Humane society to be put up for adoption.

I would never have started to volunteer at the Humane Society, if it weren't for Clara's need to do "community service" for high school, her insistence that she do her hours there, and the need for under-16 year olds to have a parent partner. And, it makes me wonder whether others do volunteer work and what your experience has been. When we first moved to our current community, I did volunteer work in the "well baby" clinic for the public health department. I weighed and measured babies and did some light translation. Once we had children, I devoted my volunteer hours to working in the schools, first in the classroom and then helping to support their sports teams. 

And now I find myself helping motherless kittens get strong enough to find a loving home. We recently got an email that over 100 kittens have come through the nursery, and we're starting to see our first graduates going up for adoption. That's 100 little souls that have been saved through the good work of volunteers. I feel privileged to be one of them.