Lessons Learned

Dear Fosters Kittens:

When I decided to become a foster parent, I did it because of my love of animals and a desire to help.  I quickly knew that each and every one of you was going to touch my heart and that fostering you was going to be fun, challenging, heartbreaking and a wonderful experience for my whole family.  What I did not realize is that while you really needed my help, I really needed you too.

You have changed me as a person and I will be forever grateful.  So on this day of Thanksgiving, I wanted to take a minute to just say thank you for the life lessons you have taught me. 

To Sadie who we adopted at age 11 - you taught me that love has no age.

To Doyle who I just could not let go - you taught me that a forever connection can be made in an instant.

To Charlie who stopped moving for a week from unknown reasons and still has balance and allergies issues - you taught me that your don't have to be perfectly healthy to be a perfect match for the right little girl.

To Nigella who is still learning to be social - you taught that you do not have to be "typical" to inspire love in those around you.

To Abner who is our first small animal foster - you taught me to not get too set in my ways and always be open to new things.

To Ali who was too weak to stand - you taught me to never give up and always keep fighting. 

To Gus who was scared, cold and alone - you taught me that a little love can make a huge difference.

To Christopher, Pluto, Savvi, Glory Eddie, and too many others who went to the rainbow bridge - you taught me to put others first and know when it is time to let go.

To Neko whose leg swelled up three times its normal size - you taught me that weird things happen, but just go with the flow and things will turn out OK.

To Victoria who was too feral to touch for a month - you taught me patience and persistence does pay off.

To Neptune who was so sick you were not expect to survive the weekend - you taught me that miracles do happen.

To Jude who spent her entire 6 month long life with us - you taught me that it does not matter how long your life is, it only matters what you do with it.  Use whatever time you have in this life to share your skills and talents with others. And most importantly, reach out to touch others hearts.  The love you share will come back to you.  Anyone can make a difference in this world if they just try.

So to all my fosters, the ones listed here and the many, many others, I am thankful for the life lessons you have taught me, the love you have shared and the difference you have made in my life. 

I will never know all the details of  your life before me or the road you will travel after you leave me, but in the words of the band Rascal Flatts, I will always be thankful for the "Broken Road" that led you to me.

Love,
Your Foster Mom
Michelle

The Grass Isn't Always Greener

The grass isn't always greener on the other side of the fence.  Sometimes it is just scary.  At least that is what my kittens are feeling right now.  For over a month, Frankie, Twyla and Hyde have been in my house.  They have gotten used to the room they are in and to me.  Twyla was progressing well with her socialization.  Frankie and Hyde were not. 

But then, as I mentioned in a previous post, they got sick.  Twyla actually had already been sick, but this week she got much sicker.  And Frankie and Hyde started showing odd symptoms too.  So on Friday it was off to the shelter to see the vet to try and figure out what it going on.

The news is mixed.  Twyla is definitely getting worse.  Her congestion is concerning and it is time to get more aggressive with her treatment.  She will now be on an oral antibiotic, SQ fluids, force feeding as needed and an injectible medication.  I am happy that she is social enough to tolerate this sort of treatment.  But I am sad to say that I had to send her to another foster home for her treatment.  While I have no problem with the level of care she needs, one of the medications (the injectible medication called Penject) is something that I am dangerously allergic to.  Even just getting it on my skin can cause my throat to swell.  As much as I love Twyla, it is not safe for me to give her the treatment she needs.  So she has gone to the home of an awesome foster mom who is amazing with feral kittens but just does not have the time to socialize on a regular basis anymore.  She is also a vet tech so Twyla is in very good hands until she is off the Penject and can return to me.

Frankie and Hyde are also on medication.  Their vet exam was inconclusive, mostly because they are still so feral it was difficult for the vet staff to handle them.  But given the symptoms I was reporting seeing in my house and the fact that Frankie's lungs sounded a little harsh, they are now on meds.

Because of a lack of an available car, Frankie and Hyde had to spend the night at the shelter Friday night.  I was not able to pick them up until almost 1pm the next day.  They were well taken care of by the wonderful staff at the shelter but for them, this was definitely NOT fun.  They were in a strange place, being poked and prodded by strangers, and just where did they think they were putting that thermometer?!  They were in a strange cage, the smells were different, they could hear dogs barking and there were just SO many strangers.

When feral kittens experience a stress like this they can go two ways.   They can either regress and act more feral or do what Frankie and Hyde have done.  They have decided the grass was not greener on the other side of the fence and are very happy to be home!

Hyde has suddenly started purring very quietly at me, is enjoying and occasionally even soliciting attention with a head butt.  This is a huge step forward for him.  He is in the odd stage where he wants this attention, but at the same time, it makes him nervous.  So the trick right now is to keep the interactions short.  The old saying applies here:  Always leave them wanting more.

As for Frankie, she has not has such a dramatic leap in her socialization, but she has improved.  She still hisses if startled while in her crate.  But she is now allowing me to pet her without the distraction of food.  And for the first time ever, I was able to pick her up and move her a few feet without having to scruff her.  Frankie actually would probably make faster progress if she was not crated but since I need to be able to get my hands on her to medicate them, both remain crated for the time being.

I have actually consulted with some other wonderful feral foster people regarding Frankie and Hyde and everyone pretty much has the same thought that I did.  They need to be uncrated and learn to want to come near me, but first I need to get them healthy.  Right now, I am avoiding the stress of giving them medication by mixing it into their baby food.  I am hopeful that I will continue to be able to trick them into taking the medication this way.

In the mean time.  They have decided that I am not so bad in comparison to the world out there.  And I am enjoying the extra one of a kind affection type of affection that comes from a feral kitten who is starting to really enjoy being with me.

No Photos Please!

Do you know who hates cameras almost as much as a drunk celebrity sneaking out of a club after doing something foolish?  Feral kittens.

You may have noticed that there are not that many photos in this blog even though I truly do think that pictures help tell a story.  But the well being and stress level of my kittens has to come first.  And feral kittens do not like their picture taken.

When you think of it from their perspective, they are just getting used to how you look and the room around them.  Now all of a sudden there is a strange device blocking their view of your face.  Then the device makes odd clicking noises and often flashes a bright light in their face.  And it happens again and again.  Or even worse than blocking your face, that strange item get put really close to them and really freaks them out.  So I usually hold off on the photos until they are much more comfortable with me and I usually let them sniff the camera to see it is harmless first.

That being said, we are not likely to have an updates on progress in terms of socialization for a while.  Twyla is very sick and as of today Hyde and Frankie are both limping for no known reason.  At this point it is unclear as to whether they are limping due to injuries of some point, or if it is a side effect of a virus.  I will have to monitor them and see how it goes.

So to hold you until I can do a true blog update, here are some faces to put to the names you have been reading about for over a month now.

This is Twyla, my sickest little girl.  I am happy to report her hydration is starting to improve.  She continue to be the most social of the group.

Twyla

This is Frankie, the most feral of the group.  She is really not fond of people or other animals, but she will come around eventually.

Frankie

This is Hyde, my only boy.  He was the one who was initially in bite quarantine because he bit a staff member for vaccines.   He still struggles to be OK with being touched but is better than Frankie.

Hyde

And just for fun, this is my cat, Charlie, lounging in one of his favorite spots - Paige's pajama drawer.  At one point he was sicker and  more feral than all of this litter.  Whenever I get discouraged, I can look at him and see that there is always hope.

Charlie

SICK is a Four Letter Word

What does every feral foster mom fear the most?  Getting bitten?  Nope.  Having a socialization set-back?  Nope.  Getting too attached to a foster?  Nope, that happens all the time.  What I (and most feral foster moms) fear more than anything is their feral fosters getting sick.  And I am sad to say that we have been struck by illness here in the Animal House.

Twyla, my dilute tortie girl is not feeling well.  She was doing well right after I released the litter from their crate.  All three of them were very happy and acting as expected for their individual personalities (a topic I will cover at a later date).

But then on Sunday I noticed that Twyla was not playing as much.  And as the week progressed, she got more and more lethargic, lost interest in playing and in her food.  She was dehydrated and had lost weight.  I tried different foods and offered her more baby food.  By Wednesday she was weak and no longer even showed interest in baby food, which she LOVES.

So yesterday she had a vet check.  She did not really have any obvious easy to read symptoms.  Her eyes were a little watery, but not full blown upper respiratory infection discharge.  Her stool was a little loose and smelly but that is common of a kitten eating a lot of baby food.  She just did not want to eat and was dehydrated.  Because of this, the vet check did not find anything really concrete.  But it did rule out some pretty serious issues like distemper or pneumonia and such.  She falls into the nebulous category of failure to thrive.

What is failure to thrive?  Failure to thrive (also known as fading kitten syndrome in very young kittens) is not disease.  It is a name given to a group of symptoms that don't seem to have an easily found cause.  It is usually a combination of lethargy (reduced energy), lack of appetite and not eating, dehydration, and diarrhea.  Since these symptoms can be caused by infection, parasites, birth defects and a whole host of other diseases, it is often hard to narrow down exactly what the problem is with a kitten showing signs of failure to thrive.  It is a serious matter because many kittens can and do die from failure to thrive.  It is usually treated with a combination of medications in case of infection or parasites and supportive care such as force feeding, fluids under the skin (Sub-Q fluids) and making sure the kitten stays warm.

Thankfully, I have a lot of experience with failure to thrive kittens.  It is actually my other specialty.  Kittens in my home are usually feral, failure to thrive, or both.

So Twyla is now on an antibiotic twice a day, a dewormer once a day for three days and SubQ fluids once a day (or more if needed).  Treating any kitten for an illness like an upper respiratory infection (URI) or failure to thrive can be hard.  But treating a feral kitten brings with it its own set of challenges.  The most obvious being that it is hard to treat a feral kitten.  They just barely trust you.  Now you start shoving syringes with yucky tasting medications in their mouth, jabbing them with needles and putting fluids under their skin and sometimes even forcing food into their mouth when they don't feel like eating.

They do not like it.  At all.  They will probably try to bite you.  And I don't blame them.  When your feral gets as sick as Twyla is right now, you can pretty much kiss any of your socialization progress goodbye.  And that goes for any siblings too.  If you think that Frankie and Hyde do not understand that Twyla does not like me pinning her down and sticking her with a needle, you are kidding yourself.  Frankie and Hyde want nothing to do with me right now.  At all.

So for the time being, everyone is back in a crate.  Twyla is in her own to give her space and hopefully to keep her siblings from getting sick.  Frankie and Hyde are crated so they can get some preventative dewormer and so I can try and get them to trust me again.  But the reality is that just giving Twyla the care she needs to pull through this will probably take most of my time for the next week and none of the litter is likely to make any progress while I am medicating.

The other major factor in treating a feral kitten is stress.  A stressed kitten does not recover as well or as quickly as a calm one.  That is part of the reason sick kittens are sent into foster rather than staying in a stressful shelter environment.  So when treating ferals you have to maintain a balancing act.  ANY medical treatment is extremely stressful for a feral kitten.  Always work with your vet (or foster coordinator) to be sure that whatever treatment is being done is worth the stress it is going to cause in an unsocial animal.  It can be a hard balancing act.  Twyla is at the point that she needs the treatment to survive.  And she is social enough that she will likely be able to handle the stress.  I have unfortunately in the past, have had two ferals that were so sick that any treatment was a long shot.  One kitten named Pluto was still dangerously feral and had lost the will to live.  I realized Pluto was unlikely to be able to tolerate intensive supportive care he needed to have a chance at survival and with the help of the staff/vets made the hard decision to euthanize him so he would not suffer.  His brother Neptune was actually even sicker, but much more social and after a long hard road, he did pull through.

Neptune staying warm in my arms.

This is why I say SICK is a four letter word and am annoyed that illness has once again visited our foster home.  But while this is a discouraging set back, I will just have to grin and bear it.  I am putting all my thoughts and hopes into helping Twyla recover from whatever has caused her to go failure to thrive.  When she is better (knock on wood), we will likely be back to square one on socialization.  I will take a minute to rage at fate or the gods or whatever force sent this illness to my babies and then take a deep breath, grab the baby food and convince these little ones once again that they can trust me.

Moving On Up

In a previous post I mentioned that sometimes, after a feral has settled in and starts showing you their true personality, you may find that your foster home is not the best place for them.  I that happens, the best thing you as a foster mom can do is let them go.  With that in mind, I wanted to let everyone know that Abbey, my youngest feral has moved on to another wonderful foster home.

Why did she leave, you may ask?  She is not feral anymore.  But she is feisty.  She is also at least a pound and a half smaller than my older ferals.  Typical of single kitten, she has issues with play biting and being too rough.  Up until now, the older ferals have tolerated her jumping on them and biting them but as she gets bigger, the biting gets harder.  And as they get more comfortable in my home, they become less tolerant.  The writing has been on the wall for a few days now, but yesterday they finally started to fight back. 

Normally, I am all for letting other kittens teach a fresh kitten boundaries and manners.  It is the best and quickest way to eliminate mouthy biting kitten behaviors and it is what nature intended.  But since Abbey is so much smaller than her foster siblings and was just not getting their more gentle corrections, I was becoming concerned that she was going to get hurt.  She did get into a tiff with Frankie, the least tolerant of the litter yesterday.  I was able to intervene before it got bad because I never let the groups interact unless I am in the room with them.  But it became clear that Abbey would not be able to be unsupervised with Frankie, Twyla and Hyde and that she was starting to get annoyed about being in a crate. 

Luckily, when I took her into the shelter for her routine vaccines last night, another wonderful foster mom who has tons of experience with feisty, mouthy kittens offered to take her and let her more gentle foster (and adult cat) teach her the manners she needs to learn.  And I have already gotten a report that she is running, jumping and playing with her new siblings and enjoying life outside the crate.  So, even though I will miss her cute little face, I am happy for her.

As for my other litter, they will be going through a change very soon too.  They have reached the point that it is time to give them more freedom.  They are too big for the crate and are getting more and more used to me reaching toward them in the confined space of the ring pen.  All will come toward me for baby food.  So it is just about time to take a deep breath, jump off that cliff and let them out of the crate for good.  They will have the freedom of the entire foster room. This is always a hard step because in some ways, it is like going back to step one. 

There is a concept in special education that is called generalizing a skill.  It means being able to perform a skill or task in multiple different settings, at different times, with different people.  This is not an automatic accomplishment.  It needs to be taught.  It is why your toddler can say trick or treat at home, but not when actually out trick or treating.  Or the dog who aces the "sit" command stares at its owner in confusion when asked to sit in training class.

My kittens have not yet generalized their social skills.  They are OK with being petted, picked up, eating baby food and playing with toys - with me.  In the ring pen.  When I am sitting in a certain place.  Change any of those variables and they are no longer OK.  Once I let them out of the crate for good they will have to "relearn" these skills in the new setting.  It will challenge them and make them nervous so we will have to take it slow.  This can lead to frustration on the part of the foster mom because in your mind they are regressing.  But in truth, they are learning to generalize skills they have already learned and you need to give them as much time as they need to learn.

This "setback" will happen anytime you bring a new location or person into the mix.  But if you are prepared for it and understand why it is happening it makes it easier to deal with without getting discouraged. 

Just keep in mind - you are expanding their world and that can sometimes be scary for them.  Give them as much time as they need and you will see that as their world grows, so do the rewards.  The first time a feral kitten approaches you in the cage is a great feeling, but the first time a feral kitten crosses a room to be with you is amazing and I can't wait to get there with my current babies.

A Light at the End of the Tunnel

One of the most important things that anyone working with feral kittens needs to spend some time on is actually thinking about what the word "feral" means.  There is an assumption that the word feral can be interchanged with aggressive which is not true and paints these animals in the wrong light.  The definition of feral is actually very simple.

Feral means to exist in a wild or untamed state.

Think about that for a minute because it perfectly describes what you are dealing with when working with a feral kitten.  It is existing in an untamed state.  A wild untamed animal is not instinctively aggressive.  In fact, if you see them interacting with each other, wild animals can be sensitive, kind and loving.  It is only when they are faced with a potentially threatening situation that a feral animal is likely to become aggressive. 

In a feral kitten the flight or fight response is very active.  If given the choice, the majority of the kittens will choose to flee rather than fight.  But in a shelter or foster setting, we take that choice away from them so they are left with no other choice than to fight.  From their perspective, it is truly a matter of life and death.  So next time you see a feral kitten hissing or swatting in a cage, keep in mind that while it is definitely dangerous in its current cornered, untamed state and should be approached with caution, it is not a naturally aggressive or mean animal. 

Even when my feral babies are hissing at me or trying to bite me,  I know that it is a product of their untamed state and do not take it personally or think it implies anything about their personality.  The good thing is that they do not have to stay untamed.  And at one point in the socialization process, you will see a subtle shift in the kittens' behavior.  It is when they take that first step away from being untamed and cross over that fine line into tame territory. 

For me, as a feral foster mom, I see that step as the light at the end of the tunnel.  It is a glimpse into the future of my babies lives.  The first time I can look at them and see the loving house pets they will eventually become.  The road is still long, and there is still tons of work to do, but the end is in sight.

How did we get to the point where I can see that light?  I knew I was going to be tied up all weekend at an adoption event at the shelter I foster for, so I decided that this weekend was a good one for some tough love.  At the stage they are at, my kittens have gotten used to the baby food and the play time out of the cage.  And they have definitely made the connection that these fun things come only when I am around.  So although they may not want me to touch them, they do want me to come around.  This weekend, when I "went away" so did the fun treats and play time.  They got dry food and water and were kept crated.  The only time I spent in the room was to check on them early in the morning and before bed be sure they were physically OK. 

Today, after a long night's sleep and working on the good vibes of having watched 122 adult cats find homes over the weekend, I went back to being "mommy" and bringing fun things - with one major difference.  No more free rides.  If they wanted the yummy baby food or the play time out the cage, they had to let me pick them up and handle them first.  Before they could come out of the cage, each kitten was picked up, put on my lap and petted whether they liked it or not.  If they fought too much, they went back into the crate to watch their siblings run around.  Baby food would no longer come to them, they had to come to it.  And it was in my lap. Of course, they were not happy with this change at first, but after a few short sessions, I am happy to report that they have all crossed that fine line on the way to being tamed. 

The baby of the group, who is now named Abbey, is actively snuggling and just need to get big enough for adoption - and learn not to bite while playing.  Twyla continues to be the most social of the older group.  She will meow to come out of the cage and climb all 4 feet on me to get the baby food.  She is almost to the point that she actually enjoys the petting and will purr for me occasionally.  Her siblings, Frankie and the newly named Hyde, both made the huge step of willingly putting both paws on my leg to get to the baby food in my lap.  And while that may not seem like a big deal, it is the first time that they have willingly touched me with anything other than the tip of their nose.  Yes, the baby food is the incentive, but they had the option to move away from me and instead chose to stand on me to get their treat.  So today is a good day.

Don't get me wrong. There is still a long way to go.  My roommate happened to open the door to the room at ask me about dinner and all three kittens bolted like the feral kittens they still are.  But there was even a positive in that too.  The path to their "safe" crate was blocked and they felt threatened.  But rather than trying to jump the ring pen and bolt for the corners of the room, they hid behind me.  I have been accepted as something that will keep them safe. 

These small gestures of trust are the first signs of the light at the end of a long, dark, twisting tunnel.  And let me tell you, its a beautiful thing to behold.