Mattering

Like so many cat lovers, I have done (and continue to do) a fair share of fostering. Most of the time, it's a wonderful experience: watching your itty-bitties grow into full-fledged kittens, seeing their markings come out over the weeks, getting the first purr that isn't food-related...the list goes on and on.

Then, the day you've been thinking about without really thinking about comes. The day they go up for adoption. There have been times I've avoided this day by adopting the fosters myself. It's especially hard to give up your first bottle babies (Heidi and Alice) or the abandoned adult you rescued from a foreclosed home(Trooper). After fostering close to 30 cats and kittens over the past two years, even I realize it's not possible to make them all permanent members of the family.

I'm fortunate to foster through a local humane society, and I know they have a rigorous adoption policy. Having been the associate director there for 18 months, I also know that rotten people get animals. I have to say that my anxiety over adoption outweighs any feeling of doing good. I've had people tell me that they think it's great that I foster, and although I thank them I feel that because I can't make every pet owner a loving guardian and caretaker that I haven't done enough. Sound familiar?

I cry like child when I take them in for adoption. I feel guilty that I can't keep them. And then I look at the other people who open their homes to these poor, previously unwanted and unloved souls and ask myself what I think of them. I think: how wonderful that they gave this animal a chance to have a loving and stable home; how great that this kitty had someone love them for weeks or months; how lucky they are that the people at the shelter will do everything they can within the law (and maybe sometimes outside of it) to make sure that cat gets a forever home. Then I remind myself that I am one of those people. It helps. I also know that by continuing to foster, I'm giving more kittens a chance to grow up healthy and well-socialized, making them better candidates for adoption. I know that most, if not all, of my muffins have gone into good homes and if I hadn't initially stepped in to care for them, their lives would have taken a much different course. My friends have often reminded me that animals have gotten great homes as a direct result of my action. The same is true for your fosters.

Fostering is much like the starfish story. A man is walking on the beach that is covered with starfish. He comes upon a child picking up the starfish and throwing them back into the sea. "Why are you doing that? You'll never save them all. It doesn't matter," he scoffs. The child looks at him, tosses a starfish into the sea and replies, "It does to that one." The next time you tell yourself that you're never going to foster again because being so close to man's inhumanity to those we have domesticated is awfu; and because it always hurts in the end, remember that story and help as many starfish as you can. It DOES matter.