Fostering kittens: Cat protection society of Victoria foster care program interview with Debra who fosters kittens

Sometimes, Debra Hargraves rises in the early hours of the morning to fix a bottle for her young charges.

“It is like having babies, except my babies slept through,” she laughs.

Many years after welcoming her own children, it is kittens, not human babies, that Hargraves cares for in the dead of night as one of The Cat Protection Society of Victoria’s foster carers.

While voluntary, it is a job Hargraves takes seriously. She and daughter Kylie Cecere share the care of the kittens, while Hargraves’ partner Nigel also pitches in to clean out kitty litter trays.

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Hargraves told 9honey she used to volunteer as a wildlife rescuer but a health condition made it difficult to go into the bush to get foliage. That is when she heard about cat fostering.

She worked with one organisation before joining The Cat Protection Society of Victoria at the start of 2023.

The mother-daughter duo have cared for almost 100 kittens, many requiring round-the clock care.

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On the day Hargraves spoke to 9honey, the pair had 10 kittens in their care, including six neonates; three who are awaiting being desexed before going up for adoption and one who is underweight and is being cared for by them after she was ‘bullied’ by her siblings in her previous foster care home.

All require high-level of care, which can include feeding, bathing, being given medication, taken to the vet and socialised so they are ready to go to their forever home.

The Cat Protection Society of Victoria is one of the busiest cat shelters in the state.

When 9honey spoke to the organisation last week it had 230 cats and kittens in its care and a further 150 with its volunteer foster carers.

Its foster care program allows kittens and cats with health or behavioural problems to be cared for in a home environment until they are ready for adoption. Occasionally, a senior cat will live out the remainder of its life in foster care.

Debra and Kylie take in the most vulnerable of all the kittens, some of which are just days’ old.

Incubators are set up in their home, where the youngest kittens spend their first one to two weeks, only taken out to be fed and cleaned before being placed back inside.

“I have got two incubators at the moment and they get fed every three hours,” Hargraves said.

“At the moment, their last feed is 11pm and then I get up and do it again at 5am. But sometimes I have to do 1am and 4am feeds.”

Every day Hargraves makes up a batch of formula to last 24 hours, which she feeds to the neonates using a syringe with a teat on the end.

“I give them a little bath, but they don’t stay clean for long,” Hargraves said.

“Then we put them back into the incubator until the next feed.”

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As they grow, they move to a crate, and she leaves the incubator door open “so when they get cold they can go in”.

As they get older, she makes up a special feed, and Hargraves adds play and cuddles to their routine to ensure they are socialised enough for adoption.

She keeps the kittens until they return to the shelter to be desexed when they are 10 weeks old and weigh at least 900 grams, after which they are put up for adoption.

“I drop them back the night before,” Hargraves said. “I still get emotional each time, but I do a goody bag with a card about what they like or don’t like.

“I put in a couple of toys and some photos of when they were really little.”

Despite having cared for so many kittens, Hargraves gets attached to all of them and admits to sometimes shedding a tear when it comes time to hand them back.

Three of her five cats are what she calls ‘foster fails’ – kittens she kept after becoming too attached. 

“One, I thought there was something wrong with her. The others I just fell for – there was just something about them.”

Apart from this occupational hazard of wanting to keep all the kittens, Hargraves loves caring for the kittens and has a knack for it.

According to The Cat Protection Society of Victoria, Debra and Kylie’s kittens always come back well socialised and friendly, and because of this, are adopted quickly.

She has also been called on over the years to take in older kittens and cats experiencing health or behaviour problems to get them ready for adoption.

She will stroke a kitten or cat while it eats to get a shy cat to become more sociable, and regularly plays the radio in the room used by the older kittens so they are more likely to tolerate a noisy household.

Still, the job doesn’t come without heartache, with three kittens dying over the years to unknown causes, leaving her devastated.

The Cat Protection Society of Victoria is currently run off its feet due a longer than normal kitten season, which has resulted in an influx of unwanted kittens and cats that have been surrendered or are strays.

Figures show there has also been an increase in unwanted kittens and cats in recent years.

So far this year, 280 kittens have required foster care – up 62 per cent on the same period last year and more than double 2023.

The organisation’s foster care manager Xavier Santelli said February and March saw a 200 per cent increase in cats going into foster care compared with the same period in 2024, and 300 per cent higher than 2023.

“At one point, we had around the same number of cats in in foster care as the shelter,” he said.

“These numbers are a powerful reminder of how essential [foster carers] are to our work. We truly couldn’t do this without [them].”

The biggest problem is the failure of cat owners to desex their cats in a timely manner.

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Female cats can become pregnant from four months of age. An undesexed female cat can produce up to 12 kittens a year over her lifetime, and her 180 kittens can result in more than 5000 kittens.

A male cat can father up to 120 kittens every year.

The organisation runs a vet clinic and public clinic that desexed 2053 cats last year alone.

It also offers two programs to make desexing more affordable.

A community desexing program is for cat owners who have concession or health cards, while its last litter program takes in unwanted litters of kittens in return for desexing a mother for free before returning her to the owner.

Those two programs resulted in a further 843 cats being desexed last year.

The organisation is launching a fundraising campaign on May 19, with all money raised going towards its foster care program.

Information about its foster care program can be found here. Donations to the organisation can be made here.

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