When we first signed up to be fosters for animals at the local humane society, our family planned on only fostering dogs and puppies. However, kitten season means the shelter gets multiple calls a day for kitten intakes. Many of those kittens are so young that they need bottle fed. The amazing people that are willing to foster and work around the clock to take care of these animals and feed them deserve so much praise.
And those people have lives that they have, sometimes, put on hold to be able to bottle feed young kittens every 2 hours, 4 hours, etc. The young woman fostering these three was one of those who bottle fed them around the clock. She made sure that they were eating food on their own and litter trained before decided to take a little vacation to get some much needed and much deserved rest. When I saw their faces on the post asking for someone to foster them for a week so she could go on a vacation, my heart melted and I convinced my husband that we had to help out.
Yes, he gave me an eye roll.
So, what does fostering entail?
Though this may not be the case with every shelter, the one we foster with provided almost everything we needed. We already have a crate, so they gave us food (both canned and dry), bowls, and throw away boxes to act as litter boxes. Throw away boxes are nice, because you just toss it out at the end, no need to clean it and no lugging a used one around. We were offered litter, but we decided to purchase it because I wanted to make sure we got clumping litter. To give the kittens something to play on, we decided to buy a tree stand, which was only $25. I will admit that I was shocked it was that inexpensive.
We did find out that the water and dry food bowl could not be in the same location. Otherwise, the kittens were jumping around and in the bowls and spilling everything. Do make sure you get a wide based bowl for the water to prevent it from tipping over. We also put some scrap rags down for extra protection for spilling.
Overall, it was easier than I thought it would be. Feed them morning and evening, clean their litters once a day at least. My daughter enjoyed getting them out and playing with them.
We had to do one at a time or else they bolted. I highly recommend getting one of those toys that is a stick with streamers on the end. Like this:
I did learn, and every friend around got a good laugh at how true this is, that kittens have this thing where they like to play and lay in their litter. That’s a gross factor that I had trouble getting over and didn’t. So, there was lots of hand washing.
Overall, I’m glad we did it.