Calliope, her six kittens enjoying their ‘furever homes’

POLO — Calliope and her six Little Os all have found their “furever homes.”

Calliope, a roughly 2-year-old tuxedo cat, was adopted by a Polo man in late October, after she and her six kittens spent about seven months as the main focus of Project Humane Polo.

“The whole thing, it just turned out so great for her,” said Cheryl Galor, a co-founder of Project Humane Polo. “The guy that adopted her is private, so we respect that, but oh, she is in love with him.”

Founded in August 2020 by Galor, Ashley Rinehart and Pam Shore, Project Humane Polo utilizes a process known as trap-neuter-return, or trap-neuter-vaccinate-return — TNR or TNVR for short. It involves trapping, sterilizing and vaccinating community cats before returning them to the area where they were picked up.

The trio has ventured into fostering and homing some of the cats they pick up, although that wasn’t part of the original plan, Rinehart said in an August interview.

Calliope was picked up by Project Humane Polo in April and, after determining her former owner no longer wanted her, the plan became to get her spayed and rehomed, Rinehart said. That plan changed when it was discovered Calliope was pregnant.

On June 6, she gave birth to six healthy kittens: Ollie (formerly Opie), Onyx, Otis, Dixie (formerly Octavia), Goosie (formerly Odette) and Sophie (formerly Olivia).

The kittens’ owners brought them to the Milledgeville Vet Clinic to be fixed, microchipped, vaccinated against rabies and get a booster to their kitten shots on Tuesday, Nov. 7. All the procedures went well, Galor said.

“This is the first time Project Humane Polo has done something like this, because normally, no kitten, no kitty, no full-grown cat gets adopted until they are spayed or neutered,” she noted. “In this situation, just because they were so special, I wanted to wait until they were 5 months and over 4 pounds. The adopters, they’re so wonderful and all agreed to bring them.”

The kittens had to be taken from Calliope when they were just 28 days old because Calliope had fallen ill. She eventually recovered, but by then her milk had dried up and she was unable to feed her Little Os.

“It’s a big deal because all six kittens survived,” Galor said. “We’ve had litters before where one or all of them don’t make it.”

She added that the Little Os also are the largest litter with which Project Humane Polo has dealt.

“This was just one of those stories, and all six kittens survived,” Galor said. “All are beautiful disasters and they’re just the sweetest.”

Project Humane Polo can be contacted by phone at 815-627-6508, by email at projecthumanepolo@gmail.com or on their Facebook page.