Fostering Cats

My family fostered cats for about 4 years.  When I say “my family”, I really mean I did.  We fostered cats for a group called Riverside Rescue. They take in strays and some cats that would be put down at a shelter that doesn’t have a no-kill policy.  The cats always stayed in my room.  I had to make sure they were fed and keep the litter box clean.  I liked having cats in my room.  They had to stay in my room because we have a dog and we already had one cat.  We fostered a pair of twins, Isis and Bastet, and our cat Shadow got attached to them, so we adopted them.  We kept fostering cats after that, but we agreed that we wouldn’t adopt any more, three was enough.

My favorite cat that we fostered was a litter of kittens and their mom.  The mother had lost all but one of her kittens, and the three little black ones had lost their mother.  The mother adopted the three black ones to replace the ones she lost.  We had to help her by bottle feeding them, it was so cool.  We named the one orange kitten Nala.  The other three were Port, Starboard and Sir Edmund.  Sir Edmund was named after Sir Edmund Hilary, because he climbed EVERY THING!  You would walk in with or without the bottle and he’d try to claw his way up your leg.  Brush him off and sit down and he’d be at it again.  He climbed my shelves and anything else he could.

            We soon found that I have a special way with cats.  They would give me the shy ones that would hide from everyone.  I would just sit in my room and read a book or something and they would slowly get used to me.  After a while, they would stop hiding every time someone else came into the room.  I liked working with these cats.  The ones I remember the most are Cally, a pretty calico, Mrs. Kitty, a misty grey-and-white cat, and I have no idea how to spell the other one’s name because my dad named her and its Chinese, she was a cute little Siamese kitten.  Cally was absolutely terrified of everyone.  After a few weeks with me though, even she was able to get adopted out to a normal home.

            The adoptions were over the weekend, so we dropped them off on Saturday mornings and picked them up Sunday nights or afternoons.  We helped a lot with the bake sales the group did too.  Every so often they would have a bake sale in front of the Petsmart where they had the cats.  We would make chocolate cupcakes.  We frosted them with white frosting and put chocolate chips on them upside down to look like paw prints.  We would be there for hours or my mom would just drop me off and I would be there manning the booth.