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Hello Foster Thread! This week my partner and I got our first foster kitty together? (My first ever, while my partner's fostered a few times before.) Meet Josephine:  Josephine is ten years old, and super sweet. She was surrendered by her owners after she got stressed out by some renovations they were doing and started peeing and pooping everywhere but the litter box. We're also her second foster -- her previous was a single person who couldn't give her the attention she needs (she's a very loving kitty). From what I gather, she started having digestive issues as well as the outside-the-box thing, and so she was under medical observation for a week or two at the headquarters before being assigned to us. She's been doing really well at our place, and on a digestion-support diet. (Regular bowel movements, and all in the box so far). For the first two days we had her in the spare room to give her time to adjust, but she was pretty intent on seeing the rest of our apartment, so we let her out last night (but put her back in the room overnight, since that's also where her food and litter tray are for now). According to my partner she's a really easy foster -- a lot of cats through this organisation are feral and need to be acclimated to humans for the first time. If anything, she's too friendly! Anyway, here are some pictures of her settling in:   What are you doing kitty? That's my forums account! You don't even have thumbs!  All tired out after  ing She seemed to have settled in pretty well, so today I swung by the pet store and picked her up half an ounce of the dankest BC Bud.  Yeah, that's the good stuff...  (I only offered her a tiny piece, in case it upset her digestion, and she mostly sniffed it and rolled around on it.)  ... and done. (She's currently even more thoroughly passed out than this.)
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Jan 19, 2018 05:32
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So, just in case anyone is actually still reading this: Josephine update! This morning we discovered that she'd pooped partly out of the litterbox. It seemed like an honest mistake, though, and not a deliberate passive/aggressive poop-in-the-middle-of-the-floor thing. (As an aside, because of her digestive stuff, we have to continue updating her medical log, including ranking her poops on the Bristol scale. So far they've all been within the 2-4 range, mostly a perfect 2-3.) So, toys. She's a middle-aged kitty, so we expect her not to be the most active or playful, but so far she hasn't shown much interest in the wands or ping pong balls she came with. But this evening, my partner heard a weird kind of yowling out of the spare room, and rushed in to find Josephine with a hair elastic in her mouth. Apparently this is the toy of choice -- she loves to chase hair elastics when we shoot them across the room, and gives us little prey-hunting chirps as encouragement. I'm just really impressed at her acuity in communicating that to us. Oh yeah, she's kinda taken over that armchair in the last photo, and is currently chilling there.
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Jan 20, 2018 08:45
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Dosan Yvormes posted:Keep posting so we can continue to follow, Josephine looks adorable and glad that you have found something that interests her. Will do! Lol I'm going to have to try and get video of her with the hair elastics. She's taken to finding one and bringing it to us in her mouth, meowing all the while (with her mouth full), then dropping it at our feet like a dog.
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Jan 21, 2018 07:43
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A few more photos: We moved in a few months ago, so still have a few boxes left to unpack. I was tackling one of those, and the obvious happened:  Also, Josephine has pretty much claimed this armchair as hers, now:   Related to fostering, someone reminded me last night that Bob Ross used to volunteer with his local wildlife rescue (and rescue squirrels himself). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1koOWsj70d4
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Jan 21, 2018 23:41
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Chili posted:Alrighty folks, I need help. This is probably more a "general cat" question but we're all family here and this is a problem that I know a lof rescues/new home kitties deal with. Did things ever get better with Monty? Josephine (our foster) also has litterbox issues, and they do seem to be at least partly related to anxiety. But one thing they mentioned to us at the foster HQ is that she "likes a clean litterbox". They actually gave us two litterboxes to give her more options, and we clean them daily. Pretty much the only times she's pooped or peed outside the litterbox have been when we left it more than a day. (And she's been much better now that we're more on top of it.) Speaking of Josephine...     Just a girl and her snek.  Neüterhead are a local charity that put on metal shows to raise money for spaying and neutering cats and dogs. I got home from the show, put the shirt down, and had it instantly occupied.  Favourite chilling on the rug pose.  Adoption profile pic.
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Apr 26, 2018 00:23
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OK a few more... She really loves that snek.  Laundry 1  Laundry 2  She's like this with every box.
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Apr 26, 2018 00:29
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Gorgar posted:Josephine is really pretty. Is that snake thing meant to be a cat toy, or did she just decide she liked it? It is totally just a thing we had, which she decided she liked. Now we just leave it in the spots she likes to sleep and she snuggles up to it.
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Apr 26, 2018 21:09
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StrixNebulosa posted:https://twitter.com/glassbottommeg/status/1032727988541050882 This is actually sounding like the next step for our foster. About two months ago, she started peeing and pooping *everywhere* when we were doing some travelling. Apparently she gets really anxious when her environment changes. (She was originally surrendered because she started doing this in response to a move and a reno). Anyway, we took her back to the shelter while we finished our summer travels, and have tried to foster her again this week. Unfortunately she's gone outside the litterbox more than in. She's also been through two foster homes before us, and had the same issues. On the advice of the shelter, we've been trying calming cat hormones (feliway), calming cat supplements (nutricalm), and there is a possible option to put her on SSRIs. We're also trying putting her in a cage while we're out during the day (also on the advice of our foster coordinator), but this is pretty heartbreaking, plus she happily poops/pees when our backs are turned anyway. We also can't really keep living with all of our furniture and rugs either packed away or covered with pee pads. She's a super cuddly, human-friendly cat, but it really seems like the solution is going to be an outdoor shelter, and/or becoming a barn cat. She just doesn't seem fit for human habitation. Fortunately, it sounds like the shelter has connections and this is a possibility. We're feeling pretty down about it all, though.
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Sep 13, 2018 21:13
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We have a new foster! Her name is Mika, and she is a sweetheart. She was surrendered by someone via Craigslist (the shelter we volunteer for trawls Craigslist looking for those kind of ads). She's quite young, but has had one litter. She also still needs to be spayed, which will likely happen in the next week or two. She's very chill, though, and I doubt there will be much trouble getting her adopted.  
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Sep 28, 2018 23:27
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Yeah, considering they'd already managed to let her have one litter of kittens, it's probably general shittiness about knowing how to care for cats (or caring enough to find out). Also in Vancouver it can be super-hard to find a rental that allows pets, so that's the more charitable explanation. She's settling in well, though. We let her out of the bedroom last night and moved the cat tree to a window.   She's soooo lanky. That cat tree has a scratch post 33 inches off the ground, and she can touch the top of it with her front paws.
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Sep 29, 2018 02:13
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Mika's adoption profile will be going up soon, so I made a thing
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Oct 29, 2018 07:36
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:She’s beautiful Her http://www.orphankittenrescue.com/cats/mika-a1/ They actually just rotated her to the front of their gallery, so I think she's getting a lot of views. We have someone coming to meet her on Friday, and also have a friend who's interested. I don't think it'll take long for her to find a home. Gonna miss her though.
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Nov 7, 2018 21:40
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love this cat design profile
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I. M. Gei posted:the one or two “low-cost” options I found would cost us several hundred dollars to fix all of them. This is a rough situation. Have you considered putting up a GoFundMe (or doing some other kind of fundraising) to get the ferals spayed and neutered? If you want some inspiration, this is a whole organisation that does this locally: http://www.neuterhead.com/
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Nov 12, 2018 02:23
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Pander posted:So frustrating. The org we work with has a few connections of places that will take unadoptable cats. Basically they're people out in the country who set up sheds to be cat-cosy but not human-habitable, and keep the cats in there.
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Jan 11, 2019 02:36
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In happier news: Mika is getting adopted! We had high hopes for the nice gay couple who saw her before christmas. They were asking tons of questions, and seemed like they'd be great cat-parents. They were quite taken by her, but we think they decided to take on a more challenging cat. Anyway, a Belgian couple came and saw her last week, and decided to take her. They also seemed nice, albeit a little more introverted, but have been pretty engaged since making the decision. The foster org usually wants adopters to take the cat as soon as possible, but one of them has a work conference this weekend, and they wanted to make sure they were both around as much as possible for Mika's first week. (All good signs!) That all said, we're a little sad, and Mika's been extra-cuddly this last week. I almost think she knows... Here she is in a box: 
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Jan 11, 2019 02:45
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Aww, Chilli. That's really hard.  But yeah, what everyone else said -- you've done right by them, and you're doing right by them by getting them into places that would be best.
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Jan 11, 2019 22:13
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Welp, back on the fostering train again. Last week we took into our care a little black kitty, they reckon about a year old, who was found with nine (!) kittens. The folks who rescued her have been taking care of her with the kittens, but they're big enough to be getting independent, and she really need a bit of space (they have a lot of cats at their place, being the local cat rescue people in that neighbourhood, and there being a feral cat colony in a nearby park). Her name is Bathsheba, although I'm tempted to be calling her Batshub-niggurath, the black cat of a thousand young. Her talents so far include making blanket forts and staying in them for 12+ hour stretches. She's intensely shy. So far we're just happy that she comes out at night to eat and use the litter box, and that she's occasionally let us get near enough to give our fingers a quick sniff. I'll post photos once she's actually up to being in a place with decent light.
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Sep 17, 2019 05:57
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Photos! "You can't see me! I'm a puddle of darkness."  "Ack!" The wooden spoon has some treats on it. We haven't yet got to the point where she'll eat in front of us or let us touch her, but she did eat them after I left the room. (So far she only eats a whole bowl of food at night while we're sleeping.) Also, last night we left the door of the room open so she could explore the apartment. We left a small bowl with some treats on as a test of whether she actually went out. They were gone in the morning!
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Sep 18, 2019 23:06
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coolusername posted:I've been fostering this cat for 6 months and he still hasn't found a home cause no one wants an ugly abandoned adult boy, and I leave the country next year. I don't know what I can do and if he goes back to the foster home they'll have to basically keep him in a pound situation for god knows how long. He's so affectionate and attached to me and I don't want him to get thrown on the streets again. You're fostering through an organisation, right? Just explain the situation to them. It definitely happens that people lose the ability to foster due to moving / landlords / whatever. They should be able to transfer your foster to another foster home (assuming he doesn't get adopted). Also I assure you people will adopt ugly cats. Pretty much the only cats that are hard to adopt are ones that pee everywhere.
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Sep 26, 2019 05:53
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In other fostering news, my partner and I were out at a party in a park on Saturday, and a woman wandered by with a cat carrier containing a 1yo mother and two kittens. My partner intercepted her and talked with her a bit, then came to where I was talking with another friend of ours (who has also fostered for the same org). So we all go over to the kittens. Turns out the woman has a whole lot of animals, but is super poor and can't afford to keep them, or to get all of them spayed. This was the momma cat's second litter. The woman had just been to the SPCA, who told her they weren't taking cats at this time (wtf?), but she'd already said her goodbyes to them, so she was just wandering the park looking for people to give them away to. So yeah, we were straight into foster-mode and figuring out how to get them into the system. We currently have our very shy foster, or we would have offered to take them. Fortunately our friend didn't have any current fosters, so was all "welp, guess I'm fostering again". She took them home, got them into the operations centre the next day for a health assessment, and has been posting tons of photos on Facebook and Instagram. She also had to do a FB post along the lines of "Stop trying to adopt these cats, they're not ready. Go adopt one of these ones from the same organisation that are ready." lol
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Sep 26, 2019 06:02
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Elranthan posted:there is a suspicious lack of photographic evidence of these "kittens"... OK fine, you made me dig these images out of Facebook.   (It was worth it. Enjoy the kittens!)
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Sep 28, 2019 06:23
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mistaya posted:I signed up for cat fostering with the local humane society but they keep sending me available puppy information instead (even though I specifically signed up for cat/kitten and said I couldn't manage dogs in my application...) which is a bit disheartening. I should probably try contacting them again, even though they haven't responded to my other emails. It's worth trying a phonecall. I know our foster coordinator (and the organisation in general) are perpetually busy and overworked.
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Oct 7, 2019 06:56
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Bathsheba progress: she now responds to treats, and will half-emerge from her pillow fort to get them. She also sometimes comes out to her food bowl while I'm in the room and on the computer. We've also seen/heard her coming out to feed during the day. Baby steps, but steps nonetheless!
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Oct 7, 2019 07:05
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Sm15s2HCUQ (not mine, just seemed apropos)
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Oct 31, 2019 21:14
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Welp, back on the fostering train again. Lead out in cuffs posted:Bathsheba progress: she now responds to treats, and will half-emerge from her pillow fort to get them. She also sometimes comes out to her food bowl while I'm in the room and on the computer. We've also seen/heard her coming out to feed during the day. Further Bathsheba updates:
She's still skittish and likes to hide behind furniture, but she's actively hanging out with us, and is (sometimes) enjoying being petted. This is from spending 18 hours a day hiding under a pillow. So much progress in just six weeks! We'll need to be setting up her  Click for video PS: that's her favourite toy, most likely because it simulates a bird / moth. She's such an efficient huntress. PPS: 'scuse the cat litter all over that rug. She's also unusually efficient at spreading it everywhere.
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Oct 31, 2019 21:32
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What a saga! I'm glad things have worked out* and your family is reunited. And yeah, you're good people. * Except for the whole thing of Butters needing medication for the rest of this life. He's looking so comfy and photogenic again though. 
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Nov 10, 2019 20:25
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Bathsheba status: cute. She's started hanging out with us for at least half the time we're around, beginning to get comfortable being up on furniture, and even jumps up on the bed with us sometimes. Turns out she's a toe biter, so we generally shut her out of our room when we sleep. She also really loves wrestling violently with our faux fur rug in the bedroom. She's still a bit leary of hands, but will let us pet her now quite often, especially around feeding times. Oh, and she's pretty photogenic now that she'll let us get close enough with a camera:    
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Nov 10, 2019 20:31
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Antivehicular posted:Seriously, how did that cat have nine kittens? She's so tiny! It is a mystery. I dunno, one theory I have is that she picked up another mother's brood and took care of them on top of her own. But apparently cats can have really big litters. I think the most recorded was 15 or something. Remember to spay or neuter your animals folks.
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Nov 11, 2019 09:23
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So Bathsheba is getting adopted! We're a bit sad (my partner especially) because she's been getting really close with us, but we're glad she's getting a forever home. Also, we managed to adopt her to a friend of mine. She (the friend) recently separated from her husband, and the husband got to keep their cat. I think she and Bathsheba will be good companions for each other. Also, we get to visit!  / 
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Jan 14, 2020 05:53
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The post/av energy was too strong. I had to actualise it.
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Feb 6, 2020 21:19
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Chili posted:Haha, that is very adorable, and appreciated. I love my ziggytar and will prolly change it back someday, but I'll definitely wear this as a badge of honor for a bit! No worries! Also it's a slow-cycle gif. Your ziggytar isn't gone! 
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Feb 6, 2020 21:43
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Yeah - in most cases the animal still needs fostering with someone, whether that's you or someone else. I don't see why they'd be annoyed at that. The agency we volunteer for charges an adoption fee to cover food and sterilization. As long as you're paying that fee when you foster fail, I don't see what the problem would be.
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Feb 22, 2020 05:24
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The friend who adopted (Beth)Sheba sent some photos, which I wanted to share. I'm just quoting my post from last year, when she was literally hiding under a pillow 16+ hours a day, and shaking whenever we got close: Lead out in cuffs posted:Photos! And here she is now in her perma-home...    The world's biggest snugglepuss.
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Apr 5, 2020 08:35
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And in other updates, here are two kitties we catsat for another foster during February. They were from a semi-feral colony in a barn. They're definitely related, maybe sisters, maybe some other way. This is Plum:  And this is Peach:  Sometimes they'd be really cute and snuggly together:  But Peach tended to want that more than Plum, sometimes with negative outcomes:  They were really adorable, though. Apparently the foster org seemed to think they might be unadoptable, and need to be sent to a barn, but I think they've made a ton of progress, both with their foster and with us. They were cuddly, played a lot, and even came and slept on our bed a few times.
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Apr 5, 2020 08:41
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mistaya posted:Well you said you found them in some jasmine ivy so maybe Jasmine for the girl and Rajah for the boy? +1 to this.
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May 15, 2020 19:34
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mcmagic posted:Oops! Aww.
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May 17, 2020 10:59
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Alder posted:I'm glad he got a new forever home Yep. It's always hard to see them go, and taking time to grieve is normal and good, but yay on him getting a permanent family!
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May 17, 2020 20:30
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mcmagic posted:I only had him for like 10 days. Apparently cats are flying off the shelves these days. For real. Lockdown makes people who were on the fence suddenly decide they need an animal. The agency we've fostered for literally doesn't have any more cats for people to foster right now, and there are only eight up for adoption when usually there are dozens. Apparently there's a waiting list for kittens.
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May 18, 2020 05:47
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Good Soldier Svejk posted:So my wife and I recently adopted two rescue cats and the smaller of the two was really skittish and found his way into a gap in our unfinished basement ceiling. This is the start of his second day up there. We've seen him a few times but so far it doesn't seem like he's come out to get food. We put water/food up in the ceiling where I last saw him so hopefully he'll at least get something, maybe. Shy cats need a hiding place to hang out most of the time until they get used to you. This process could take weeks or months. If he seems to be eating, drinking and using the litter box, then it might be ok to leave him up there until he's ready. If not, then for sure be prepared to open up the ceiling. If you do that, just make sure there's a hidey hole somewhere he can get to easily, since the process of extracting him from the ceiling will be pretty traumatic for him. It might also be a good idea to shut the cats out of the basement in future if you can.
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Jun 1, 2020 17:43
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Good Soldier Svejk posted:So good news. Didn't have to cut down my whole ceiling. Congrats! And sorry about the damage. Also daww he's so cute. And the top of that cupboard looks like a good spot for a shy cat to hang out while he gets used to you.
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Jun 2, 2020 22:08
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