My first kitten fostering gig is done. After two months, in a score out of ten, it was somewhat of a less than perfect result as far as socialising the two of them enough for adoption goes. My sister and I have agreed, by mutual understanding, that I’m no kitten whisperer. If it had been the nephew fostering them, he would have had them like putty in his hands well before it was hand back time. From now on I’ll only get the kits and cats to foster which aren’t too challenging, my sister has assured me.

For those who aren’t aware, my sister does cat rescue and rehoming work, and I finally put my hand up to do fostering gigs for her. Not against my will, it must be said, but when it was clear that she had a helluva lot going on, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to step up and help out.

Speaking for myself, I survived my first gig more or less intact, but it’s been curtains for my curtains. Whilst these kits were, in a manner of speaking, taken out of the wild (eight weeks old, filthy, hungry, and mum nowhere to be seen) I couldn’t quite take the wild out of them in the time they were with me. The floor to ceiling curtains across my sliding doors were just the ticket for them to leap onto either from the couch or from a standing start. I had to admit that it was rather impressive to see a kitten launch itself halfway up a curtain in one go, just from the sheer power of its haunches, despite the destruction it wrought in doing so. I was quite jealous, actually. At least they were gratifyingly responsive to my roars of disapproval when they did this, although I can’t help a sneaking suspicion that the way they would both take off afterwards, no matter which kit was doing what, became part of a game to them.

Sis said that she’d replace my decimated curtains, but I said no. After all, she and her husband already self-fund a lot of the rescue and re-homing costs themselves, so adding to it seems a bit stingy. I’m going to get vertical blinds instead of curtains, which I think will be kitten-proof, but kittens will kitten, so we’ll see.

Then there was the shagging. Now, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that 4-month-old kits shouldn’t be shagging, but they did – or did a simulacrum of it. The wee girl clearly had a precocious puberty and underwent a heat spell, and the boy – her brother! – did what boys do when sex is on offer. I don’t think he did the full thing, but he knew the moves. The nephew and I googled to see if it was actually a thing that 4-month-old kits can go on heat, and it seems that it’s not unknown, although sis said that she’d never seen it for herself. I must admit that there was something a little disturbing about it, and decided that that was something I wouldn’t miss.

I fed my foster kits well and gave them a safe place to grow and do kitten things for a couple of months. I talked to them in the requisite goo-goo voice, but I never quite managed to socialise them enough to want pats from me. If I did manage to touch them, they often reacted as though I’d touched them with an electric cattle prod. They definitely needed a more determinedly tactile person than me to force some love on them.

That’s not to say there wasn’t progress. They started stealing my chair when I got up from the dining table or from my couch, and went from pooping on my bed when I was in the bathroom where their litter box was, but too scared to venture in there while I was there, to comfortably crapping in their litter box in front of me. I’d previously purchased a mattress protector for my bed which I used on the outside of it during the time of the kittens, and that worked a treat in protecting my duvet. Plus, the mattress protector washed up good as new, with no stain on it. When I sent the poo picture to the nephew – a true kitten-whisperer, and the now designated fosterer of difficult kits – he just laconically replied “I’ve had worse”. Not quite the response I was looking for, but once he described it to me, I conceded that he’d won that round.

A week ago my sister came to collect the kittens for de-sexing and the final round of socialising them at her place before putting them up for adoption. I had them waiting for her in the closed bathroom for easy capture – at least, that’s what I thought. Sis’s husband and I waited in my lounge while she went to do the capture, but as soon as she went into the bathroom we began to hear the most almighty banging and crashing coming from there. Her husband looked at me boggle-eyed and said he’d never heard that before. He reckoned it sounded like she had a lion in there. Eventually the clamour subsided, and sis came out with a kitten each in a carrier crate. She didn’t have a hair out of place, or had raised a sweat. Apparently, they’d panicked a bit when she went in there, as they’d forgotten her by then, so she was a stranger to all intents and purposes, and they’d tried to climb the walls of the shower to escape. However, after a wee while they both ran into the carrier crates of their own accord whilst she just stood there, and sis simply shut the doors of them when they were inside.

I did feel a bit bad about what felt like a betrayal of them when they must have been starting to feel secure in being with me, but I know that their lives will ultimately go well after a little bit of ‘pain’, so I console myself with that. And I missed their wee faces looking at me out of the window while I was mowing my lawns.

My next fostering gig is starting today. This time I’m getting an older cat who is being put up for adoption straight away, so I shouldn’t have her for long. I anticipate a slightly less eventful period, this time.

Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-portrait-of-lion-247502/