Around two years ago, I was browsing on YouTube (as one does), and I discovered a channel called Kitten Lady. I was drawn to this channel by the adorable kittens in the thumbnails but stayed because of the messages Hannah Shaw (Kitten Lady) put in her videos. When you visit an animal shelter, a majority of animals you see are either adults or older puppies and kittens. But where are the youngest ones? The answer is that they are either at a foster, or the shelter just doesn’t have enough resources to take them in, causing them to have to be euthanized or left on the streets. Extremely young kittens take up a lot of resources and time that many shelters just don’t have, and that’s why they depend on fosters to take in these kittens. So many kittens are born on the street every year, and many of them end up not surviving, but the ones that do end up getting to an animal shelter still have struggles to go through to survive.
Kittens between the age of 0-8 weeks need round-the-clock care, sometimes with feedings every two hours at the beginning, and many animal shelters do not have enough employees to be able to care for them, and so many of these vulnerable kittens end up having to be euthanized due to lack of resources. This can be avoided through people agreeing to foster young kittens. Of course, a person needs to be able to dedicate the time to fostering, as you can’t just take a kitten and then not be able to care for it!
Fostering isn’t just solely limited to kittens though. I’m most knowledgeable about kittens and cats as that’s what I have been mainly focused on for the past two years, but dogs and cats of all ages need foster homes due to overcrowding of shelters or special needs of the animal. Sometimes a perfectly friendly pet does not get along with other animals, and has to be euthanized simply because they cannot handle living in a shelter.
Ever since learning about fostering, I’ve always wanted to do it, but of course I’m a college student with no stable income, so it’s going to have to wait a while until I can dedicate my time. Since I was unable to foster kittens during high school, I decided to start volunteering at an animal shelter. Every once in a while, one of the employees would come out of the back room holding a tiny kitten, and I would remember exactly why I was volunteering.
Fig 2. My Cat Soon After He Was Adopted; Image By Author
My cat was a foster kitten, and I always wish I had found out the name or contact info of the people who fostered him, because I will be eternally grateful to them for taking in a vulnerable kitten who ended up growing up into such a loving cat. Learning that my cat was one of those tiny foster kittens on YouTube only fueled my desire to help.
Not everyone is suited for fostering an animal, but if you are able to, I would strongly encourage it. I can’t foster right now, but I desperately wish I could, so instead I will try and spread awareness. Vulnerable kittens and puppies die everyday because there is no one to care for them. If I could foster even one kitten, I would be happy knowing I saved at least one life. A small action can have a large impact.