Fostering Kittens

Katie Moody. "Lector"(2018)

The big service project I did this year was fostering kittens. My family has 2 adult cats that we adopted when they were kittens. We all missed having kittens around, and when we heard about the Animal Care Leauge's foster program, we wanted to go try it out. The Animal Care League is an animal shelter in Oak Park. They have dogs, cats, rabbits, and other small animals. In August, we met with Allan, the director of the cat program at the shelter. He told us they had just brought in a kitten from the streets who has chewed on an electrical cord and got shocked. He has burns on his mouth and neck from the shock. The kitten's name was Lector, but we changed it to Oliver. Oliver is a little white and tabby cat with a ton of energy. He has to wear a cone around his neck for part of the time while his burns healed. We took Oliver home and set him up. We would give him antibiotics every day, and played with him constantly. He was a very sweet little cat. We had him for about 2 weeks. By the time he went back to the shelter, he was much healthier, and many of his burns had healed. This was a very fun and successful foster.

Meredith Moody. "Lexi" (2018)

Later in September, we received an email from Allan that they had just found 2 very small kittens on the street. They were too little to stay in the shelter, so they needed a home for them. We went that afternoon to pick up 2 tiny adorable kittens named Lexi and George. They were both about a month old. These were some of the smallest kittens I had ever seen. They only weighed 1 pound! We started to encounter problems when we got home. Lexi had really bad diarrhea. We thought it was just from stress, or from eating actual kitten food for the first time. These kitties had only every drank their mom's milk, or eaten what they could find. We could tell right away that George was doing better than Lexi. George was a typical high energy kitten running and jumping.

Lexi was very lethargic and just wanted to be held and cuddled. We weren't immediately concerned because we thought she was just having a harder time adjusting than her brother. We started worrying when she wasn't eating or drinking. She continued to have diarrhea, but not drinking anything. This is not good because she was very dehydrated. We took her to the shelter because they have a vet. They said she was dehydrated and had some sort of intestinal virus. They gave her intravenous and subcutaneous fluids to rehydrate her. They also gave us some medicine for her intestinal problems and gave her some really rich food so she would eat it. We would take her back every day for intravenous fluids, and to check on her. She started eating and drinking again. She had a very good appetite and would try to steal her brother's food. She was doing so much better. Unfortunately, the next morning, my mom found Lexi in her bed not breathing. Sadly, she had died in her sleep. We felt very sad. She was getting better but still died. We took peace in the fact that she wasn't suffering anymore, and had seemingly just stopped breathing in her sleep. The vet wasn't sure why exactly she died. they thought she may have had a common virus in kittens that can be fatal. She was tested, and it was negative, but it may have been a false negative, or she hadn't contracted it yet.

Katie Moody. "George" (2018)

George did not seem affected by his sister's death. He continued to be a happy healthy kitten. As George got older, the vet told us he had to be neutered. This was mid-October and he was about 2 months old. We took George in for his surgery and came back to pick him up later. When we got back, the surgeon had some news for us. The surgery went perfectly, but it turns out George was a girl! They ended up spaying her instead of neutering. This was quite surprising. To this day, we still don't know if Lexi was a boy, or if they were 2 girls. The shelter originally told us that it was a boy and a girl. Lexi had longer hair, and George had short hair. They said the long-haired one was a girl. This didn't change much. We started calling her Georgie instead of George. Georgie was a crazy kitten. She loved to run and play and especially loved to play with toys. We would let her run around the house and explore. She liked to play with the TV when it was on. She liked the moving figures. We ended up having Georgie for a total of 2 months and 1 week. We took her back to the shelter, and she was adopted by a young couple almost immediately. In conclusion, this was a very emotional, and trying experience. Taking care of such an innocent creature takes a lot of time and energy. I think this experience has helped me learn more about empathy in my medical career. This was a fun and intense experience that I definitely want to do again.

CM "Georgie" (2018)

CM "Oliver" (2018)