Wannabecottage: Crazy Cat Lady

Today I had the rescue that I foster for- New Start Kitty Rescue email me and ask how many cats we had fostered/rescued this year. I had to think about it- I know that it was not as many as 2011, which is when we first started. We began the cat rescue journey when I adopted my little calico kitten Truly from New Start back around Mother's Day 2010. She was a tiny little ball of fluff and I don't think I have ever been so attached to a kitten. I love cats and kittens- I always have, but this one was just special to me. She was just so sweet and cuddly and funny.

We noticed she started walking funny in September.. a strange wobbly gait like she was trying not to fall over. We took her to the vet who thought she may have pulled a muscle and we were just supposed to watch her. But it got so much worse.. she would walk and just fall over, like her back legs would give out. It got to the point where I just carried her with me all around the house. Eventually we wound up taking her back to a different vet for another opinion, and then told me they thought it might be rabies. She was never outdoors, but they thought it could come from her mother or the Amish farm that she was born at. Sadly, she went downhill and she died with me sitting next to her at the vet when she was not even 6 months old. I have never cried so much as I did over that tiny kitten. They did an autopsy on her and found out that she was hydro cephalic-totally surprising the vets and us.

This led to us starting to foster for the cat rescue where we got Truly. The first year we found homes for around 25 cats and kittens. I think this year was around 10.

The first batch was a mother cat who we had last year as a kitten.. We got a call from the people who adopted her who said they had suddenly developed allergies to her, and could we take her back? And -oh by the way- they didn't get her fixed and she was pregnant. So we took her back and she had 5 gorgeous kittens- Allie, Annie, Augie, Ace and Prince (who was claimed and named already lol).

We found homes for Prince and Auggie and Ace, but we still have Annie, Allie and Mittens the mom here at the house.

Then we had a little Beauty show up crying outside our house last summer. For days we could hear her outside but we could never catch her. She was a fast little kitten! Finally one night we snuck outside with a towel and a flashlight and managed to catch her among the rhododendrums. When we got her inside, we saw that she had a rip-roaring eye infection. We managed to clear it up and she turned into a sweet loving kitten. We called her Beauty but she has been adopted and renamed Stellaluna, mainly because of her big batlike ears.

Adoption success story! Another little rescue kitten was baby Buckets. My son's girlfriend's brother found a tiny kitten on the side of the road late one night. Her other siblings had not been so lucky or rescued soon enough. They brought her over and she was the tiniest, scrappiest little girl. They named her Buckets and it stuck.. for some reason it really fit her. She was adopted by a wonderful med student going to University of Rochester- very spoiled with all kinds of cat toys and a pillow on his bed.

So they were the major stand out adoptions this year. I think we had a couple of older cats that we found homes for too. One project that I'd like to feature here is our cat room, which we ~~hopefully~~ will get done this year before we leave for OBX in March. It will allow us to take more cats and have a separate area, apart from the house, for potential adopters to visit.

When Truly died, I really wasn't sure I would want another kitten-that I would foster instead and get to enjoy kittens all the time. Little did we know (but we kind of suspected- knowing us!) that we'd wind up keeping the unadoptables and the feral mother, raising the number of our own cats to 5 along with my daughter's two cats that we are watching while she is living in Japan. Cats definitely are like potato chips.. you can't have just one!

And in memorian- our oldest cat, Tucker, passed away this year at 15. She was an odd, anti-social little girl but loved to sit by my computer or on the back of my chair 24/7. I sure do miss her.