Crazy Cat Lady

It's official. I am now doomed to be known as a crazy cat lady. This is because I just turned 36, I'm single with no children and have 11 cats in my house. 11 cats? Did I just say 11 cats? Yes I did. I should have 12, but one is at the vet due to health problems.

I realize that I have lost my mind and need help but I am not sure there is any hope for me. :o)

Ok, here is the rundown of why I currently have 11 cats. My roommate has one cat (Fidget). I have two. Sadie, my 13 year old girl and Doyle, my former foster kitten. That makes three cats. The others are foster kittens.

First I have Arista. She is the kitten that stopped eating on me and had to be force fed for a while. Now, with a change in food, she is doing fine and just needs to gain some more weight. Next came Darcy and Julius. They are a socialization foster.

The Friday before the July 4th holiday I went into the shelter to get food and checked in with the foster people to let them know that I was actually going to be around for the holiday in case they got any "emergency fosters" that needed a place for the holiday weekend. Turns out they did. They asked me to take home Magic, Tiger and Dandelion. They had just that day come in from another foster home to be adopted out because they were 8 weeks. What was not mentioned until they were dropped off was that they had some issues with going outside the litter box. One kitten was also too small to be fixed yet. And the foster family they were with was leaving that day for vacation and could not take them back.

Well a kitten with litter box issues can not be adopted because they will just be returned. Since I have some LB issues around my senior cat due to her age, I have experience with problems like this and the supplies to deal with it. I agreed to take them home for the weekend and see if I could figure out what the litter box problem really was. It was a real good thing that I did. The most common reason for a cat going outside the litter box is a health problem. Withing 24 hours I realized that one of the kittens (Dandelion) had blood in his urine. I brought him back to the shelter as soon as they reopened after the holiday to be looked at by the vet. He has a bad UTI (urinary tract infection) which can be very dangerous for a kitten. He will stay at the shelter until this clears up and he stops having blood in his urine.

(For those of you keeping count we are now at 9 cats).

On the 9th, I took my niece to the shelter to visit. She likes to go in and visit with Muffin who was our foster when she was caring for her kittens. She is Doyle's mother. Mother cats do not get adopted out quickly so we visit her often. While I was there I saw that two of the foster kittens that I had recently returned to them to be adopted out were still there waiting for a home. I was not surprised that Griffin was still there because he does not like other cats. The fact the Lulu was still there was very surprising to me. She was adorable and great with kids. A kitten like that usually would go in less than 48 hours.

I went out back to check on Dandelion and could tell that they were packed to the rafters with cats, many of them kittens. I mentioned that I was surprised that Lulu was still there and they told me that people were not adopting kittens quickly like they had in the past and that they were running out of space for them.

Since I had just brought Lulu in from foster earlier in the week and still had her sister, Arista, at home, I offered to take her back home with me if they needed to free up space. They talked about it and asked me how many I currently had in the house. Lulu was already on the adoption floor and was likely to get adopted that weekend because she was so good with kids, but they had cages full of kittens in the holding area that were fixed and ready to go. There was just no room on the adoption floor. And since they had so little space, they had to put more kittens in a cage than they normally would which leads to them getting sick. (Think of how quickly the flu goes through a school. It is the same concept). Normally the shelter would not ask anyone to take on more than what I already had but they are desperate right now.

Being the sucker that I am, I went home that day with three more kittens. They are all fixed and old enoughto be adopted out. They just need a place to stay and someone to feed them until space opens up on the adoption floor. They are sneezing and get some meds as a precaution, but they are not much work. So Pixie, Chica and Duncan joined our foster crew.

So there you have it. 12 cats. I know I am crazy. But from what I could see, the shelter is soon going to have to start turning kittens away due to lack of space. Having this many in my house is a temporary thing because of the combination of kitten season and a bad economy.

Of course the real heroes in all of this are my roommate and her husband who are actually the owners of this house and have been amazing in putting up with me and my animal craziness even though it can be annoying at times. They did not even threaten to boot me out the door when I reminded them that we had agreed to watch my sister's Shitzu this weekend so her husband could take her away for her 40th birthday.

So this coming weekend it will be 2 adult cats, 10 kittens, one freaked out 5lb. dog, a thrilled 4 year old, a tired foster mother and two roommates plotting the foster mother's early demise. I will check back in with an update and pictures soon. :o)