Cats in Great Meadow Correctional Facility photos by Jason McKibben for the Post-Star, January 10, 2014
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A litter of four kittens somehow made their way inside a maximum security prison in upstate New York, where they are being cared for by prison staff and inmates.
The kittens turned up at the Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Fort Ann a few months ago, and have their own safe, tidy and comfortable kitty-condo enclosure in the prison’s maintenance area workshop. The kittens can wander the room outside their condo at night.
The kittens are beautiful, clean and healthy today, but were in rough shape when they were first discovered, covered in hundreds of fleas. Staff members bottle fed the motherless babies.
Head electrician Bruce Porter, the kittens’ primary caregiver, who comes in early to tend his little charges, said: “I’ve got a soft heart for any sort of animal. I don’t mind helping them out a bit.”
An inmate who is fond of the kittens and has a way with cats helps care for the kittens on the weekends.
The prison has seen many cats in the past, when a now-closed farm operated close to the grounds.
Along with Sing-Sing and other prison facilities, Great Meadow follows the guidelines of a TNR program to humanely manage cat populations.
“You try and catch the cats, then you take them to a vet and have them treated and make sure everything’s OK with them and return them back to their area, with the exception of the kittens, where if you can get a suitable adoption we then adopt them out,” deputy superintendent of administration. Jeffery Lindstrand said. “There’s no extermination of them, no getting rid of them. If one were so sick that the vet said they had to be put down, that would be done, but we haven’t run into that at all.”
Prison employees and their families have adopted about 10 cats in the past couple of years. It is hoped that the current litter will find homes, either with prison staffers or members of the public, before spring arrives.
Bruce Porter is expected to adopt one of the kittens, who he has taken an especial liking to.
WNYT did a brief story on the kittens:
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Cats in Great Meadow Correctional Facility photos byJason McKibben for the Post-Star
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