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.