Kitten Underground

My bags are packed and I am ready to go . . . . . . . .

rescue kittens!!!!!

I really do have a packed bag ready to go. Filled with all the essential items necessary to feed, clean and warm the tiniest of babies. Nestled firmly in my car so that I can be ready at a moments notice to sneak motherless kittens out of harms way. But I should start from the beginning . . . .

I have been a devoted feline foster mom for the past few years. I was "convinced" in late spring of 2011 to first time foster a litter of underage kittens from the shelter I volunteered at as a cat cuddler. They just needed a bit of socialization and care and a loving place to get bigger for a few week, I was told. I drove home with five hissy spitty balls of fur about four weeks old and recently separated from their not so social mama. They took about three days to stop the hissing and start the playing, but about seven days for me to notice patches of hair loss. They had ringworm. Shelter people are shuddering right now, but I was ringworm innocent. All I knew was that I was already in love.

Sorry about the "advertisement" I don't have many original photos anymore, just some of my early (and pretty bad) attempts to create marketing flyer's for my shelter's foster program!

As I was still absorbing information about ringworm and how to treat it, another litter of kittens came in covered in ringworm, so I thought why not! My bathroom was already contaminated what is four more cuttie pies running around. Of course, I didn't realize that I would be dipping NINE little bodies into a bucket of smelly lyme-sulpher solution weekly and giving them medication daily for over three months! Oh, and I learned how to take hair cultures, that was fun! I could bore you for hours about ringworm, but I won't. I'll just say, it's annoying, but not impossible.

I also didn't think ahead about my bathroom and nine growing kittens. So within a couple weeks of their arrival, I cleared all but the bed out of my bedroom and slept on the couch so these guys had more room to run, grow and play but also stay safely separated from my own cats.

This is what I came home to every day. Hard to resist, isn't? I had so much fun with them. I would go into the bedroom and be covered with kittens in seconds, I just love it! Of course, in addition to the dips and medication came constant deep cleaning. I steam cleaned the whole room every other day and would use a bleach (icky!) solution every once in a while to kill the fungus in the environment. Ringworm is highly contagious between cats and humans and moves about on hair follicles, which means it can go everywhere if you're not careful! I had, I'm sure, a very humorous outfit I would wear when I was with them and an odd procedure to make sure I was decontaminated when I left, but I was always so happy to spend time with the goofballs.

That being said, I brought these guys home in early May and by the time they were ready to go up for adoption in early August ringworm free, I was READY for them to find homes. I loved them dearly and wanted only the best for them, but I also wanted my bedroom back!

I learned two very important lessons about myself:

1) If I can learn to handle ringworm, I can handle just about anything when it came to fostering cats

and

2) I had no inclinations towards hoarding. I loved them, but I didn't want to keep them forever! They all went back to the shelter easy peasy, and while I fretted and hovered, all were adopted within two weeks!

Unfortunately, I also learned two very disturbing facts about shelters:

1) Many animal shelters euthanize perfectly healthy kittens and cats with ringworm (or even just suspected of ringworm) all throughout the US because it is too time consuming and labor intensive to cure. Even if it doesn't affect their overall health at all! (I and those babies were merely lucky to be at a shelter that did not!)

and

2) The more research I did, the more I realized that the Animal Sheltering system in the US is broken! Most don't actually "shelter" animals. They hold them as required by law, euthanize most and adopt out only a few. I was SHOCKED, and HORRIFIED to find out 70% of cats on an average who enter the shelter system, do not make it out ALIVE. Can you even fathom that the highest percentage of those killed are most often kittens? I couldn't!

I shudder to think that only a happy accident of location, (Petaluma, California and the Petaluma Animal Shelter) allowed my ringworm 9 to live and thrive and find loving furrever homes!