This is mundane and pointless and, yet, I must share…
Yes, my poem. My cats.
Nice cats.
Lovely!
Two of them aren’t with me anymore. But I still have their photos.
Thank you very much.
It’s right up there with Hop on Pop except better because cats.
I am fostering* a kitten so I am the frequent recipient of noms lately.
Who am I kidding, he’s going to be a foster fail. He has severe eye issues and by the time they are resolved I will be too attached.*
**Who am I kidding, I am already too attached.
That is AWESOME, lalaith. 
Wile E, I’m a two-time foster failure. Welcome aboard. Pics please when the little booger’s better.
I LOVE it! I smiled all the way through except when I was outright laughing!
High praise indeed.
Two in the poem were foster failures. My first attempt, a pair of 3 week old orphaned sisters. I’m glad there were only two in the litter.
I’ve only succeeded in fostering once and wish I hadn’t. (He’s in there too. He had ringworm and the shelter would have killed him because that’s an automatic kill for them. Took quite the while to cure.) Here he is. The friends who adopted him butchered him with declawing. They utterly refused to consider using nail caps. It broke a 20 year friendship. But one good thing came out of it. The shelter agreed to have the county lawyers look into if their adoption contract can be changed to include no declawing.
So I understand foster failure.
And, yes, pics definitely as Helena requested.
Oh thank god.
Because I was seriously beginning to think it must suck.
I mean, sure, the guy I wrote it for laughed his head off when I got to the “ouch ouch ouch” part, but he knows me and the cats. I was really beginning to think that no one who didn’t know me and the cats would like it and it was terrible.
So thank you very much for the feedback!
This is perfect. It’s cute and painful and very feline. I wish it was an actual book so I could read it to my eighteen-month-old niece, who lives with two cats and who knows what sound cats make. (“Meow”, for those curious.) She loves books.
It’s not my first failure … I guess most of mine are foster failures. I am not posting pics of him yet because his eyes are seriously bad looking and not for the squeamish. It doesn’t slow him down though, he just managed to climb up on top of my printer on top of a cart and was doing the lion king pose.
Let’s rename those foster failures “foster successes” – for the kitties, that is!
Now I’m purring.
Best I can do for your niece. If you’ve got a tablet, you can load these on there and scroll through them as you read it to her:
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That I understand. What I don’t understand is how to give them away. I’ve never before let anything go that I loved so much.
However, since he left the ringworm behind, now I have a legitimate reason I can’t foster. Because I can’t bring a kitten here. They’d catch the ringworm and with the incubation period, it might not show until they were back at the shelter. And then the shelter would kill them. Can’t risk that.
So I still volunteer. But I’m hoping to not foster again.
I get it. My little one didn’t look so hot with the ringworm and all the white hair from his face gone. (Thank goodness, being so young, it grew back quickly. But then it fell out again — ringworm kept coming back.)
When your little one is better.
Awww.
That was great, thank you!
It’s not easy and why I had many “failures” in the past. It helps if there are multiples and you have a trusted rescue to send them to when they are old enough to be adopted. We have a lady that does both wildlife rescue/rehab, kittens and the occasional puppy. She works with a local no-kill shelter and she has a network of people to help with fostering. I have kept some of the kittens that have required more medical care, get them over the hump of their treatment and then usually send them to her after a couple weeks so I often don’t have them by the time they reach they age where they are running around and playing and being adorable. I usually send the puppies directly to the shelter. I also felt I had enough cats and these guys would be going to new homes where they would get more one on one attention from their new persons.
This guy had too many issues and of course I have had to keep him longer and have grown attached. All my other cats (except one) don’t seem to mind him and that probably helped him infiltrate.
The elbow picture looks like boobs, or a butt. Good job 
You’re most welcome.
I wish my butt were small enough to be nommed. They’ve tried nomming my butt, but it’s so big they can’t open their mouths wide enough to get a bite.
Both times I took in orphaned ones young enough they had to be bottle fed. The level of attachment that creates in me is through the roof. You rearrange your entire life for them because they have to be fed every few hours; so every few hours I’d have to be back at the house for a kitten feeding. Both times they ended up getting sick. (I’ve wondered if orphaned kittens have a higher illness rate than kittens with a healthy mother.) The first two developed coccidia and the last one ringworm and I kept them till they were better (well, in the case of the coccidia until I thought it was better - they had a clear fecal check, but it ended up recurring for months off-and-on). So I had them for quite the while, well into the running around and playing and being adorable stage. (I ended up adopting the first two at 12 weeks and the last one was adopted at 16 weeks.) And I was so firmly “mother” to them. It positively delighted me how much I was mother to them. Their happy cries when they saw me, the way they used me as a base of exploration, the way they’d fall asleep on me as I struggled to stay awake because they were so small I was afraid I’d crush them if I fell asleep.
I provide this perfect kitten home and it turns out I’m not the only one who has a problem when the bond is ruptured. For the last one, (now former) friends and neighbors of mine adopted him. I’d known them for 20 years (never thought they’d mutilate him by declawing and would never have let them adopt him if they’d told me — before the adoption they were fine with the idea of nail caps). While I was fostering him, I brought him over to their house regularly. So he was familiar with all of them, had been handled by them frequently. He’d been around their cats and dogs. I dropped him off with a big box of his toys, food and even a shirt I’d slept in for days. So I thought the transition wouldn’t be hard for him. I was wrong. All that stuff I’d read about how kittens forget their moms (which I thought was bunk) turned out was bunk. He got so stressed that he peed on the floor (which he never, not once did when I had him) and – far worse – got so constipated that in four days he was in pain, had an emergency trip to the vet and had to have an enema. It was not an easy transition for him.
Made me realize that in a lot of ways, I provided the perfect home for that orphaned kitten. Everything is focused on him. Life is made smooth and filled with affection, sensitivity to his slightest need, love, play, his every material and emotional need instantly met. It’s kitten heaven. Then he had to go from this paradise to a real world environment…and it wasn’t easy for him either.
Yeah, that was part of it with the last one ---- I’ve got three cats and they all loved him. They don’t always get along among themselves, but each and every one of them loved this new baby. It was hysterically funny to me to see this kitten, maybe a pound, pound-and-a-half, chasing a 13 pound cat around the house. And the 13 pounder played gently with him, chased him, but never pounced on him (which she did with the others when they were kittens – reason why they don’t always get along now is she still does – she’s aggressive with them while with this kitten it was play). Late at night, when he got into the really active stage he would wear the cats out one at a time, each cat would last about an hour’s worth of play, then three hours later when all three cats were pooped from playing, I’d go in for the last hour and finally tire the kitten out. Those four hour play sessions were amazing to watch. When he was gone, I could tell the other cats missed him. One crawled under a chair and pretty much stayed there for days. (And my “friends” refused to even consider the idea of my bringing him back here for a visitation. Funny how you think you know someone and they turn out to be so different than you thought.)
No, I really don’t want to foster again.