My weakness for kittens

Ever since I was a tiny child, I have adored cats, and especially kittens. When I was five and got my first kitten, I was overjoyed and obsessed over him day and night. When I was eight and got my second kitten, I was so happy I cried for the first time in my young little life.

I wish I could have kittens in my house all the time, but without the expense of their veterinary care, the stigma of being a crazy cat lady, or the divorce of my husband. In recent years, I've found  a way to accomplish this: I foster one litter of kittens each spring. This way, I get the enjoyment of having new kittens once a year without having an actual increase in the population of cats at my house.

Tiny ball of viciousness is slapping at my face with her feather paws.

This year's kittens are two tiny, feral little puff balls that had been found wandering motherless in a Tuscaloosa apartment complex. At six weeks of age, the little female was an itty-bitty ball of viciousness who would hiss and swat you in the face with her pinkie-size paw, which feels a lot like being attacked with a feather. Her brother was less angry, but would stare blankly at people like he had no idea what we were. To socialize them, I carried them around with me in a baby sling every where that I went, a practice that I call "attachment kittening."

This was my view looking down for a couple of weeks.

I have found that kittens really want to be warm and snuggled, even when they are too unaccustomed to people to realize that we can be the source of warm snuggliness. By forcing them to be close to you and have the warmth and closeness that they need, they learn. From day one, the little tabby girl would hiss and slap at me when I touched her, but she would immediately start purring when I put her in the sling and held her close to my body.

My attachment kittening worked, and they are now social, playful, joyful little bundles of energy. The little boy loves to come bouncing across the house to land at my feet and rear himself up on his hind legs like a miniature grizzly bear. His sister is still more reserved, but she will now cry to be picked up and let in and out of the ferret cage in which they sleep, and she loves to use my lap as a trampoline. Yesterday I caught her trying to nurse on Jackson's fleece dog bed, making sweet little suckling noises and kneading the fleece with her tiny paws, and it reminded me how much the poor, orphaned little thing had been through, and made me admire her spunk at the way she tried to defend herself and her brother from strange humans when she was so tiny.

They're growing up!

They're getting bigger now, and in just a couple of weeks they'll be getting spayed and neutered and the boy will go to a new family who have named him Zed. We're still looking for a home for his sister, but I'm hopeful that we will find one soon. I'm getting so much enjoyment out of these little guys every day that it makes the daily litter box cleanings worthwhile.

I guess this is a little late

So, I began this blog almost a year ago with the intention of posting regularly, but immediately after, some bad things happened, and I didn't want to post for a while.

One-Eyed Jack was an awesome cat.

First, I had a wonderful foster cat who was killed by a dog I was babysitting. It happened while I was home but out of the room, and I witnessed the last seconds of it before the cat died in my arms on the way to the vet. It was pretty terrible, and it was a big blow to my faith in myself as an animal rescuer. Anyone experienced with rescue (or who works heavily with animals in any capacity) knows that you don't leave unfamiliar animals together unsupervised. But I'd been with all the animals relaxing quietly for hours and figured, "hey, it's ok for me to go do something else on the other end of the house" and then I didn't respond quickly when I heard my dog Mary barking frantically, trying to get me to come help. It was a series of careless mistakes that I will never repeat.

Mary's eyes are now completely cloudy.

Then, Mary went blind. She had cataracts, which we knew about, and planned to have surgically removed. But when I took her to the veterinary opthamologist, we found out that she also had macular degeneration, which is not fixable. Suddenly I found out that my most beloved dog, my trusted companion of so many of my most important years, had a permanent disability about which I could do nothing.

Moose

I didn't foster for many months, until finally, I agreed to foster a beautiful, elderly, Neapolitan Mastiff named Moose who came from a situation of horrible neglect.  A true gentle giant, he was a wonderful lumbering, cuddling presence in my home, but Moose was a terribly anxious dog. He became almost instantly so attached to me that he would have terrible attacks of panic whenever I left the room and he couldn't follow me. We worked and worked and worked on this, but then, one night, he got gastric torsion, which is something that happens commonly in anxious, giant dogs. We got him to the emergency vet quickly, but his age, anxiety, and infirm health meant that he was not a viable candidate for the invasive surgery and intensive aftercare that would have been needed to save him, and we, along with the president and vice president of the rescue through which I fostered him, had to make the decision to put him down, and he died as we hugged and caressed his giant old body.

But some good things happened too.

Mary proved to be the most badass old blind dog that has ever lived. For dogs, the sense of sight comes third in importance, after smell and hearing, unlike in humans who rely on it primarily. I bought every book I could find on living with and training blind dogs and quickly figured out that Mary already knew everything she needed to know to be a happy blind dog, since most of it is basic obedience, and she's been practicing that since she became mine at six weeks old. I have to watch her around ledges and stairs, but not much else has changed. She can still swim in the river, ride in the canoe, play with kittens, and do everything else that she loves to do and that I love her for doing. Her years of foraging around camp sites in the dark with her nose have more than prepared her for a sightless old age.

I have gotten more involved with a great rescue in Birmingham where I live. I pulled a young male Great Dane from a kill shelter in rural Alabama and he proved to be a wonderful dog who might have a future as a therapy dog and has since been adopted by a wonderful family. I am currently fostering two kittens can knock you over with their cuteness who came to me as tiny, hissing ferals and are now purring, loving little darlings. I also have two foster Dane puppies who are filling my home with their puppy energy and curiosity.

Sweet, wonderful Jimmy was left tied to a fence at a kill shelter in
rural Alabama. He's now been adopted into a loving home.

Animal rescue is hard, and it often sucks. There are bad, terribly irresponsible, and often cruel people in the world who leave messes on other peoples' hands. I really wish that the people who made the decision to purchase the Dane puppies that I have now had taken the time to teach them how to behave in a house. I wish that the people who spent thousands of dollars importing Moose from Italy had cared for him for the first seven years of his life. I wish that the people who had bred all of these purebred dogs had thought more about what they were doing, and thought about all of the millions of dogs euthanized in the US each year because there are not homes for them, and I wish that the people who buy purebred dogs from pet stores realized that they are feeding the puppy mill industry, and that everyone spayed and neutered their pets.

But there's no hope for the hopeless. It is hard for me to even express how  rewarding it is for me to see an animal that has come from a terrible, desperate place, and become a loved family member. The Christmas cards that I get from people who have adopted my fosters are the highlight of my year. Seeing a dog that was left to die become happy and well cared for in the center of a loving family makes everything worthwhile. All of the poop I pick up, the vigilant hours I spend supervising, the time I spend training an animal that is not even mine...it's worth it.