A Volunteer's Story
Fostering by Liz Webber
Liz Webber is a volunteer foster carer for the RSPCA. Here she recounts some of her experiences with fostering many cats and kittens for us.
"How can you bear to part with them?" is the usual response when I tell people about fostering cats and kittens. "With great difficulty" is the answer, but after only six years of fostering and not parting with them, I would now have over sixty cats and the inspector would be coming round to take them away.
Most of the sixty have been kittens and naturally I fall in love with all of them within minutes of their arrival. Kittens need lots of attention and a litter of growing kittens can empty their food bowls and fill their litter trays at an astonishing rate. There are low points, such as worming them which makes me feel like a wicked witch, squirting nasty stuff down their throats as they're expecting food or a cuddle.
Also there's the worry if they're not well (diarrhoea seems to be a fairly common and messy problem) and having permanently scratched arms and legs from being used as a cross between a scratching post and a climbing frame.
However, none of this can make fostering feel anything like hard work; there are just too many good bits. The first pleasure for me is naming the kittens: I love to pour over a book of baby names and choose a name for each one, even if they only keep it for a few weeks. Then there's playing with them and watching them sleep, eat and grow. There is no better therapy at the end of a hard day than sitting down with a glass of wine, something good on Radio 4 and a lapful of soft, warm, sleepy, purring kittens.
When the time comes for them to move on, kittens normally let you know that they're ready. My kittens learn to climb to the top of the canvas wardrobe in their room and look down on me with great pride. They also start to take more interest in escaping than in having their meals. Letting go is hard but it's nice to know that they have had a good start in life and are going to loving homes.
The best bit of fostering would have to be the three cats I didn't part with. Callie arrived one Christmas to be 'fattened up'. I never managed to put much weight on her but she had eighteen happy if not very healthy months with me. Tansy was a tiny, very noisy, one-eyed kitten, loved by everyone but picked by no-one. I finally decided not to part with her and she is now a still tiny, still noisy three year old. Rhea, the latest addition was a great mother to her four kittens but much too shy to sell herself when she went to the cattery to be re-homed. She soon made herself at home when she came back last Christmas and is now ruling the roost.
If you are interested in becoming a foster carer, please contact June on 01453 755 857 or email volunteer@rspcastroud.org.uk for more details.