tomorrow is betrayal day

Attention: It appears that some delightful person is passing around the URL to this post, trying to stir up cat lovers into a frenzy of hatred against me. Evidently the person in question has much more heart than brain (or reading comprehension). As anyone with a reasonable grasp of the English language should understand, here I was venting about my sorrow over parting with my FOSTER KITTENS. The word "foster" means that these are not the offspring of any cats I own. My personal pets (all rescued animals) are neutered (with the exception of the parrot, but no one has sex with her). Indeed, I am a volunteer for a nonprofit rescue group which takes the youngest and sickest feral and abandoned kittens. At times I set my frigging alarm clock so I can get up and bottlefeed ill and underweight feral kittens. As part of a small and lean rescue, I spend far too much of my own money on supplies and far too much time cleaning up kitten diarrhea and vomit. Besides assisting cats, I've also washed oiled birds at oilspills and handfed an orphaned baby beaver, as well as driven all over the state of California ferrying rescued rats around. So indeed, dear animal lovers with a poor grasp of reading knowledge, please go protest a veal farm or something and stop harassing someone who actually does put in a great deal of time every single frigging day towards helping animals. You also owe me an apology, but I won't hold my breath.


Some of my foster kittens are ready to be put up for adoption, and that means that tomorrow I'm going to take them down to the shelter. There they will be inoculated and put into a very small cage, where they will live, surrounded by the cries of the other cats, until someone adopts them. That could be a very long time for two of them indeed, because you see, they are black cats.

People often argue this point with me as though they are certain I must be mistaken about this. "Really? People don't like black cats? Where did you hear THAT from?" Funnily enough this argument sometimes comes from people who own orange cats, the number one most popular cat color. One of my current herd is a fluffy orange boy with a loud purr, and he's going to fly out of that pound. I'm not worried about him. But I am on the brink of tears already about my black kittens, and the word from my rescue is that the shelter already has a lot of black kittens rotting around in those little cages.

I hate taking my kittens down. During their time with me, they usually forget whatever horrible things happened to put them in the foster care predicament. They become bold and confident. They meet me at the door when I come home, and they create havoc on my bed when I'm trying to sleep. They frolic everywhere, and, poor deluded darlings, believe this is how their lives will be. Then the day comes, and their beloved lady sets them down on a cold, metal table and walks away, even when they cry after her.

The worst came one day two seasons ago, when I dropped off some kittens and watched as they were installed in their little cage. A few cages down some kittens languished that I'd dropped off a long time before. "Oh, no, you guys are still here!" I said. The poor things recognized me and were freaking out with joy, no doubt thinking, "I knew she'd come back for us! Now our nightmare is over!" I asked the shelter worker if he could take them out for me to hold, but he was harried and it would have involved breaking a rule (Shelter Rule # 5,432: No one -- not even a foster parent-- may handle a cat unless she has been pre-screened at the front desk and given a pass). Also, I needed to go pick up Iris at school. So I left without even holding them, and they cried so desperately as I walked out that door. I felt like the world's biggest jerk. Even now tears come to my eyes remembering that.