That Was A Short Trip! (a.k.a foster "failure")

I took Doyle and Muffin in on Tuesday to be fixed and adopted out to their forever homes. As I mentioned, I was very sad to see Doyle go. Not that Muffin was not a great cat - she was. I was attached to her as well. There was just something special about Doyle that tugged at my heart and made me hate giving him back to the shelter. But I did it anyway.

I went back to the shelter on Thursday to attend a training on how best to bottle feed kittens. I was thrilled to attend this training because I had felt like I did not know what I was doing when Doyle and his brother Domino were only a week old and had to have supplemental bottle feedings.

In the few short days between dropping Doyle and Muffin off and when I attended the training, I missed Doyle terribly. I still had Dora and Nirvana, so I still had that fun kitten interaction, but there just seemed to be something missing from our house. While I was at the shelter for the training I looked to see if Doyle and Muffin were on the adoption floor or had adoptions pending just like I did with my previous fosters. When I did not see either of them, I asked the foster coordinator how they were doing. She told me that they were fine. They were both in the surgery room since they had just been fixed that morning and I could go in and see them if I wanted to check on them. Which of course I did.

They were in a cage together and obviously groggy from surgery. Muffin just kind of butted her head up against the cage and purred at me when I came over. But as soon as I started talking, Doyle opened his eyes and started meowing and stumbled up to the front of the cage trying to get to me. Even the people in the surgery area noticed how much he wanted to see me.

Needless to say, I had the foster coordinator put a hold on him for 24 hours so I could talk about him with the rest of my household and see if they would mind if we kept him. Thankfully they did not and he came home with me the next day. My niece, Paige was staying at her grandmother's the day I brought him home and so she did not see him until after her dance class on Saturday. When she saw him all she said was "Doyle, you got your first collar!" (I bought him a kitten collar when I adopted him). Her mom asked if she wanted to know why Doyle was back. Paige replied that he was going to stay with us until he went to his forever home. When her mom told her that our home was his forever home and that he was staying with us forever, Paige was so happy she ran over and hugged her mom and said "You're the Best!"

So now it has happened, my first (and hopefully last) foster "failure". The shelter calls a foster family adopting an animal a foster "failure" because the point is to foster them until they can be adopted out to another home, not to keep them yourself. But they use quotes around "failure" because they have still achieved their goal of adopting the animal in a good loving forever home. And somehow, no one at the shelter seemed at all surprised that Doyle had found his forever home with us. I think they knew he was going to stay with us well before we did.

So here is the latest addition to our forever family - Doyle.

Bon Voyage

Doyle and his Mom, Muffin, went back to the shelter today to be fixed and put up for adoption. I am really, really going to miss Doyle. I told the shelter that if he did not get adopted within the normal amount of time for a kitten to be adopted, to let me know so I could come take him back.

I am rather depressed about giving him up today so I am kinda blah. However, I need to not keep the fosters if I want to keep doing fostering. And since in the half hour I was at the shelter today, they received over 14 cat surrenders, the need is as great as ever.

I still have Nirvana and Dora. Dora is not gaining weight as quickly as she should so she is staying with me and starting on some medications. They are leaving Nirvana with me so Dora does not get lonely and it also buys us so time to work on breaking Nirvana of his habits of chewing on hands when playing.

Please send some good thoughts to Muffin and Doyle as they start of their way to their forever homes.

You Get What You Teach

This is Nirvana. Or, as I have nicknamed him since he arrived, P.K. What does P.K. stand for you ask? It stands for Psycho Kitty.

Since he arrived he has been annoying and hyper. He does not play nicely with the other kittens. He is too rough with them and his play bites are too hard. The other kittens will cry out and try to get away from him when he gets too rough but he just chases them down until I pick him up and move him away from them. He is staying in my room right now because I can not put him in my "foster room" with the mother cat, her kitten and our other visitor Dora. I can't do this because Muffin, the mom cat, can't stand him. He kept jumping and biting her tail and swatting at her until she finally ended up pinning him to the ground with his neck in her mouth to stop him. This is a common thing for mother cats to do to kittens to teach them that they are getting too rough and need to stop. They are not actually hurting the kitten. It is how they learn to have manners around other cats. If the kitten does not respond the mother will get more and more rough until the kitten is pinned and can not move. This is what Muffin was doing to P.K. Even then he did not get the hint and I had to separate him from her so she would not accidentally hurt him.

That is not the worst of it. He is the same way with people. He bites, he scratches and in general just acts like the psycho kitty that I have nicknamed him. He chases anything that moves - hands, feet, hair, computer cursors. Even as I type this he is chasing and trying to bite my fingers.

Then why, you might ask, am I willing to foster him? Well, for one thing, it is only for a few days while he gains a few ounces. But the real answer is - it is not his fault. Kittens are not naturally like this. They do all bite and scratch and pounce on things that move while they learn their "hunting" skills, but they do not usually bite or scratch hard enough to really hurt.

The behavior that he is showing right now is learned behavior most likely caused by the person who turned him in to the shelter. He either has had no social interaction with people and does not know how to interact with people or this was how he was taught to play.

I do not think he has had no socialization because when he is calm he is very sweet and loving and he always wants to be with the people in the house. If he is separated from me for any length of time he cries until I come back. And he is learning that I do not like him to be rough. He is not a malicious or mean animal, he just wants to play. I think that the problem is that he was taught to play rough. People think that is is funny or cute when their tiny few week old kitten attacks their hand and wrestles with them or jumps on their back. They do not think about how annoying that behavior will be when the kittens is 2 months old and has stronger, sharper teeth and claws that actually hurt when he plays how he was taught. Just like people like to cuddle puppies in their laps and then don't understand why they can't keep their full grown heavy dog off of them.

Don't get me wrong, I know how hard it is to keep this sort of stuff in mind when dealing with a baby. I have had to work hard in the last two weeks to wean Doyle off of cuddling up on my chest like he is used to from when I had to help feed him. I still want to cuddle him next to me because he is so soft and sweet and nothing feels nicer than snuggling with a kitten. However, I also do not want to stick someone with a cat that keeps trying to climb on their chest. I guess what I am saying is before you teach your baby animal to act a certain way, be sure that you still want them to act that way when they are a larger full grown adult.

As for P.K., I will put up with him. Since it is late at night, he has gotten tired and in the amount of time it has taken me to write this post, he has given up his rough "playing" and curled up to sleep on the corner of my bed. I do not know what his story was before arriving at the shelter, but I am willing to bet that his previous owner taught him to be this rough when he was younger (probably unknowingly) and when he got older and was too hard to handle, dumped him off in the shelter for someone else to deal with the problem.

Of course, I could be wrong. His previous owners could have loved him to death and liked that he is so crazy and are heartbroken that they had to give him up. I will never really know. All I know if that he will have a harder time finding a home the way he is right now. So, for as long as I have him, I will continue to try to unteach him what he has learned and instead teach him to play gently and lovingly all the while trying to ignore the scratches covering my hands and feet. I see a lot of Neosporin in my future but giving P.K. a better chance at finding a home is worth it.

Updated Photos - Part 2

This is my baby, Doyle. At about seven and a half weeks he is almost all grown up and ready to go to a forever home. He is lying in his favorite spot, on my pillow next to me.

This is Dora, one of our visiting friends.

This is our other visitor, who was named Nirvana by the person who turned him in to the shelter. So far, my niece, Paige, is amused by the name and wants to keep it. She is only four and obviously has no idea who Nirvana was; she just thinks it is a fun word to say.



Every body should be big enough and old enough to return to the shelter for adoption by the middle of next week. It is funny to see that even at this young of an age, the kittens have definite distinct personalities. Nirvana seems to be a little bit hyper and tends to want to fight and nip and scratch more than the other two and hates to be picked up. He is, however, very sweet once he uses up his energy and he is learning manners now that he is here with me. Dora is the typical kitten. She is the perfect pet for a kid. She loves to run around and play with toys and follow you wherever you go. She also does not mind being picked up but if you hold her for too long she will wiggle to get down. Doyle is rather timid and tends to get scared by the faster movements and loud toys that little kids have. He seems to like being with the adults in the house. He also would prefer to curl up next to you and sleep rather than run around and play.

All in all, I think they each will make a great pet for the families that will adopt them because the shelter is so good at making sure they go to a family that matches their personalities rather than just to the first person that wants them.

Updated Photos

Here are some updated photos of my current foster crew:


This is Muffin, the Mom, sitting in my childhood rocking chair and also watching our resident squirrel who we have nicked named "ballsy squirrel" for what I think is a pretty obvious reason. :)

Isn't it Ironic?

I picked up another kitten yesterday. He is another single kitten from a different litter than Doyle or Dora. They sent him home with me because he needed to put on a little bit more weight just like Dora does. The options for him were to stay at the shelter in a cage for the week that he was likely to need to gain the few ounces that he needed or to come home and live with me for that week. We all thought that coming home with me was the best option for him. So now I have three kittens from three different litters.

What is the ironic part you ask? It can be hard to introduce a kitten from another litter into a house that already has a mother cat and her kitten(s). Part of the reason that Doyle and his brother Domino had so much trouble when they were just born was that their mother was young herself and just was not a very protective or attentive mother. The ironic part is that is the same quality that is allowing her to now accept two other kittens from other litters. Since she does not do much for her own kitten and just basically lets me take care of him, she does not mind that there is now two additional kittens around now. Any Doyle his having a blast playing with his new friends.

Annoying Computers and Fun Friends

Well, I have not posted about my foster kitties for a while because our Internet connection has been so bad that I have been lucky to get online once a day to even check my mail. I also had more recent photos of Doyle to post and for some reason the photo program deleted them off the camera without putting them on my computer.. Oh well.

Doyle is doing really well now. He is huge! He is now just a few days over 7 weeks and he is already 2 lbs. (A kitten has to be at least two pounds and 8 weeks old in order to be placed up for adoption). I will be turning him in to the shelter in just about a week. It does not seem possible. I am going to miss him terribly. I have seriously considered keeping him because I got so attached to him helping him go from a sick little kitten to a happy healthy (kinda chubby) young cat. My main reason for NOT keeping him is that right now, the 4 year old in my house does not know that keeping a foster animal is an option and I like it that way. Doyle is also very attached to me. Whenever I let him and his mother out of the foster room for some exercise he comes and finds me and goes to sleep on me for a while before he goes to play.

His brother Domino is doing just as well in his bottle fed home. They are both on target to be put up for adoption at 8 weeks as scheduled. I felt bad for Doyle because since Dominio was moved to a bottle fed home, Doyle essentially turned into an only child. I asked the people at the shelter for some suggestions on how to let him get the rough and tumble play that he needs to grow into a social cat which he would normally get from interacting with his litter mates. When I tried to play that way with him he would end up chewing and jumping on my hand which is exactly what we don't want him to learn.

Thankfully, the shelter had a great suggestion - a playmate! Turns out that they had a kitten from another foster home that was significantly smaller than its brother and sister. The litter mates were ready to be adopted out but the small kitten, named Dora, was old enough but not big enough. Rather than keep the mom and all three kittens with their foster family and tie up that house for another few weeks, they put the litter mates and the mom up for adoption and sent Dora home with me - thereby freeing up that foster home to take in another litter.

I took Dora home, introduced her to Doyle and his mom, Muffin and after a few minutes of hesitation, both kittens were running around playing and Muffin was acting like Dora had been with us all along. It is working out great because Dora gets to put on the weight she needs and Doyle has someone to play with. They will both go up for adoption when Doyle hits 8 weeks. Although I hear that Dora's original foster mother is also considering keeping her. It seems we foster mothers tend to get attached to the runts and sickly kittens because we have to help them so much. They are usually little fighters that just worm their way into your heart.

I am still trying to stay strong and not keep Doyle because I know that the more cats I have, the less I can foster, but we shall see what happens next week when they actually try and pry him out of my hands. I will try to make it back here to post some updated pictures of him and some of our visitor, Dora. That is providing my computer doesn't eat the pictures again and my Internet connection doesn't decide to go on vacation again. Gotta love technology. :o)