I Can Stop At #6... Right?
“Melissa. I think you need an intervention.” This statement came from my best friend while I was saying something about feeding 9 cats. “Only four of them are ours!”, I protested. I'm only slightly fudging the truth here. Yes, we only have four permanent furry family members. But every foster cat that lives with us is treated like family. While they're with us they are loved and cared as if they were our own. “And you can stop any time you want, right?” Toni was teasing me about the amount of cats coming through our house. The truth is, I don't want to stop fostering. It's not an addiction that keeps us going back for more litters. It's more like a calling. I always knew that I wanted to do some kind of volunteer work with an animal shelter when the time was right. It was a dream come true to be able to help save litters of kittens.
So a few days after that conversation, I did it again. I had been watching the daily intake numbers at the shelter and doing the math. The intake on May 27 was 79. That means they had 79 new animals brought into the shelter in one day. The next day I contacted Tiane and asked if she had any litters with no mama that would be able to safely join our current fosters. She said that she did, without a doubt, and I made plans to pick up a new litter the following day.
Before I tell you about litter #6, I want to tell you about the shelter's situation that week to give you an idea of what they're dealing with. Like I said, I was doing the math. Today, I added up their intake for the week. Now keep in mind that that Monday was a holiday and the shelter was closed so this wasn't even a full week. Intake for the week was 254. Yes, you read that correctly. They had 254 animals come in in less than a week. And how many adoptions were there, you ask? 54. That's it.
Some times, as I've said before, there is just not enough room at the Inn. I don't have to tell you what happens next. Euthanizing animals is heart breaking to consider, trust me, I'm right there with ya. “But that's not right!” The arguments here could go on forever but before you get too angry with the shelters, consider this... It's employees like the ones at the shelter that fight for every single life. I gotta give mad props to the folks who work at our shelter. After spending just a few weeks working with them when we started fostering, I knew that these people are nothing short of amazing. I could tell that for most of them it is not merely a job. They work tirelessly to find rescues that will take some of their animals. We've seen first hand with Baxter how they will personally campaign to help find homes for animals who are running out of time. They work hard to find foster families for the oodles and oodles of kittens that they don't have room for. So this is why fostering is so important. Weeks like this where the intake numbers are through the roof. This is where I start to feel like I'm making a difference. Families like ours are helping to save entire litters of kittens and puppies by fostering. So we picked up our 6th litter. It ended up being only 2 kittens, a brother and a sister. We're calling them Benny and Joon. Benny is a scrawny orange tabby. Joon is black and white with the cutest little white tip on one ear. They are numbers 28 and 29 of the fosters to stay with us. So we now have 11 cats living in our house. Yes, we are crazy. Yes, we will do it again :)
