This week’s Everyday Hero is Dannielle Southton, who runs a nonprofit kitten rescue based in Orange County.
What You Need To Know
- Dannielle Southon runs Southon Rescue, which specializes in caring for neonatal kittens
- Southon became a full-time kitten foster in 2017 and started her rescue last fall
- Southon says she has fostered more than 450 kittens since 2019
Southon Rescue specializes in caring for neonatal kittens, assisting Orange County Animal Services and SPCA of Brevard.
“Neonats, they require 24/7 care,” Southon said. “They have to be fed every two to three hours, they have to have a constant heat source and they really are quite fragile.”
The rescue’s age limit is 4-weeks-old and the kittens are usually taken care of for about 12 weeks, she said.
Southon said she had been fostering kittens on and off since 2010, before becoming a full-time foster in 2017. She started Southon Rescue in September of last year.
“I wanted the ability to be able to be kind of a stopping point and a bridge between the citizens that are finding kittens and want to do the right thing, but also taking some of the pressure off of the county shelter,” Southon said.
Since she started counting in 2019, Southon said she has fostered more than 450 kittens.