How I got into "official" cat fostering
Warning: long data dump
Shortly before the pandemic, both my cats died (old age) and I sold my home in Redding and moved back down to Bay Area to help my mom with my dad. At first they thought he had Alzheimer's but now they know it is Parkinson's. Anyway, mom couldn't handle him alone, so either I came down or he had to go to a home. Catless, I came down.
I've always rescued cats from time to time, I think I was 12 when I brought my first litter of kittens home - three black and one grey. BTW at the time I was just learning about punnet squares in school and so I speculated that both daddy and mommy were black but recessive for grey. I haven't heavily studied cat genetics, but I believe gray is just black with the "reduced" allele and it is recessive. However its not uncommon for a litter of cats to have multiple fathers, so there's no way to know with that litter.
But until last year, I never worked with an official rescue.
In 2022 I found Caroline. She was sitting in the middle of the street and a pickup truck was coming. I flagged the pickup truck to stop, she ran across the street from me, the driver (who had presumably his daughter on passenger side) gave a thank you wave, and then continued. Caroline then ran back to me. She was dirty, skinny, clearly in need of help. She was a Butterfly Tabby (aka Classic Tabby or Bullseye Tabby), there's a feral colony near me where they are a common. There's was an older lady who lives in a camper in front of her son's house who fed them but she didn't do TNR. All she fed them was dry.
Took her in to the vet, despite her being the size of a 12 week old cat, her teeth said she was six months. And she had bad gum disease, she couldn't eat dry. And she had a bad eye, but the vet was able to fix it with surgery. She also had kidney disease and that ultimately did her in, and she was deaf. She was just put together all wrong and quite possibly multi-generational inbred. But she was so so so sweet, hence the name Caroline. She probably was born feral but she was a low IQ cat and they often are less feisty by nature and until her gum disease made it impossible to eat, she had that sweet older woman feeding her.
Before I found out she had kidney disease, I knew she needed playmates. The older cats in the house just didn't want to play. A friend of the family had two cats they thought were both girls from a "backyard breeder" (not a proper cattery) but she couldn't keep them because her son with his rottweiler who kills squirrels was moving back in. So I took them. They were (are) boys.
They clearly have some ragdoll genetics but are not actual ragdoll, the backyard breeder likely bred a ragdoll with something else hoping to get in on the ragdoll market. Pip is all black, Joey is seal point, both long hair. Joey figured out Caroline was deaf and would tap her to get her attention when he wanted to play with her, it was the cutest thing to watch.
Later that year I found Shoshana. I was in Pittsburg, CA and heard what sounded like a kitten in a storm drain so I had to stop to find it. As soon as I did, she came crawling out from under a chain-link gate, behind which was the commercial garbage dumpster she had been living under. Obviously dirty and hungry, so I took her home. Family thinks she was born feral because feral cats do breed in that part of Pittsburg but I've had feral kittens before, she wasn't feral, she at least had grown up around around people if not born in a home and then abandoned. It was near a city park, that's where a lot of people dump unwanted cats. I'm convinced that's what happened. She only likes me, no one else, but even around other people she doesn't act feral. I'm allergic to colognes and scented fabric softener etc. so I never wear them, I think that's why cats so often just like me even when the cat doesn't like others---I don't have an artificial scent to me that I think sometimes bothers cats.
Shortly after that, Caroline's kidney disease progressed and she died.
2025, my brother in prison (jail I think technically at the time, as not convicted yet) met another inmate who was taking care of a prison yard cat named "Sully" (meant to sound like "Celly" which is what they call their cell mates). She was born on the prison yard in August 2024 but when she was about 10 weeks, her mother and siblings all vanished. Rumor is a corrections officer tasered the mother however I was warned that such rumors among inmates are often false. Anyway, this inmate started taking care of Sully. March of 2025, while my brother was there, Sully had a litter of six kittens. This inmate, with the cooperation of a corrections officer who also is a cat person, found homes for five of them. Sully and her male kitten Star were all that were left. The inmate got a tip from the cat friendly CO that the prison was planning on having animal control trap the cats. He tried to get his girlfriend to come out from Illinois to take them but that fell through, so my brother called me.
July 5th of 2025, I went and picked up Sully and Star (with help of the corrections officer, we brought in the cat carriers, the inmates caught the cats, the CO brought them to us). Star immediately took to me but Sully did not, she spent all her time hiding. Both immediately figured out the litter box and the cat fountain, buy Sully acted VERY feral towards me.
July 8th around midnight, I heard a squeak from under my dresser. I thought it was Star playing with a cat toy. Morning of the 9th, I heard the squeak again. Star was on the cat tree. I looked under my dresser to see if Sully was playing and got the fiercest hiss I have ever heard. And while she was hissing, I heard the squeak. Then I knew.
I put some towels in front of the dresser to make her feel safe and for the first week, she wouldn't even allow me to look. I was allowed to replace her empty wet food bowl with a filled one, but that was it. She also didn't let Star go under there, however, when she did come out from under there - she would play with Star.
She had a routine. She would come out, eat some dry, drink some water, use the litter box, and then sit on the cat tree or play with star until it was time to return to her nest. As Star wasn't allowed near the nest, he would sleep on my bed, and I saw her intently watching this.
When the litter was one week old, she moved it. Feral cats like to do that because they (presumably) fear predators smelling the litter. I walked in on her when she was moving the litter. I immediately left the room, but damage done, I had spooked her and she left one kitten behind and she did not go to get it. So I picked it up and placed it in front of her new nesting location. She came out, looked at me, washed the kitten, and brought it into the new nest.
She never hissed at me again. She figured out I was not a danger.
She kept moving the litter, not liking any of the places she chose, so at 10 days old I made her a nesting box. Within a few hours she moved them in and kept them there, nursing them outside the box when they got too big for her to nurse them inside the box. At about 10 days, she started letting Star near the kittens, and he actually helped raise them! Even washing their butts to help them poop.
I visit the inmate that took care of her once a month, he and I have developed a good friendship. He's an author and has turned me on to some good reading, like Piers Anthony.
Anyway, I got connected with a local rescue to help me vaccinate/spay/neuter and find homes for them, and I also volunteer to clean the Petco kennels the rescue uses - I'm scheduled once a week (Wednesday mornings) but since the Petco is close to me, I often cover for other people. Evenings, they have high school volunteers do it but mornings, they prefer an adult volunteer clean the kennels. That makes sense for a variety of reasons. I also volunteer on adoption weekends and I look for abandoned cats - I walk a lot so I'm perfect for that. When I find an abandoned cat, I notify the rescue which notifies a feral TNR group they work with so the cat can be trapped and if its not feral but abandoned, the rescue (when there's an available foster) will take it.
On Monday, I am taking two more fosters, two "Siamese". I use quotes because with papers, they really are just seal-point domestic short-hair. I least I think they are seal-point domestic short-hair, I haven't seen them yet, but that's usually what people mean when they say "Siamese" for cats without papers.
I feel like I have found my tribe, I wish I had gotten into organized cat rescue decades ago.