an onion, a bbq and a vegetable scale....

I had been hovering over my email inbox for days, hoping that Alison would contact me and tell me she had kittens ready to foster. Last Thursday the email finally came. After calling Alison to say I was on the way, we jumped in the car so we could get to the SPCA before Alison went home for the evening.

The SFSPCA names hundreds of kittens each year so they get a little creative (or it was close to lunch time) and we got kittens named after chip flavors. Onion is a sweet little girl kitty and BBQ is a fiery black and white boy with a cute black mark on his nose. When they handed me the kittens, each weighing just over a pound, I couldn’t get over how small they were.



We took them home to the space we had disinfected and prepared especially for them. Old towels were handy to line the box with and everything was prepared just as they had taught us in the orientation class the Saturday before. At first the kittens tentatively explored their little space, but soon they were running around chasing each other and making us laugh.

Each morning I weigh them in a vegetable scale provided by the SPCA. Three times a day I feed them special kitty food provided for us. On Friday Onion seemed not to be eating well and when I weighed her on Saturday morning, she had not gained. So I called the veterinary tech and they gave me some suggestions for getting her to eat.

By Monday Onion had lost weight so I emailed the foster office and they set me up with a veterinary appointment. I took both kittens in and the tech weighed them to confirm Onions weight and be sure that BBQ was OK. Then they brought out several different types of food, offering each to Onion until we hit on one that she liked. I was impressed when the doctor came in and, rather than just pick Onion up and start examining her, she let Onion continue to eat and just watched her from a distance. Everyone was compassionate and tender toward the kittens.

Onion was given some subcutaneous fluids and anti-nausea medications. They sent me home with a bag of special foods to try her on, including several containers of the type she had eaten. While I was at the office, I met another foster mom, and we had a nice chat sharing our experiences with kittens.




Its fun to wake up every morning and check in with adorable little kittens. They know me now and come running out of their box when they hear me in the kitchen. I love kittens, but I never imagined how rewarding it would be to take in these little guys.

Just watching them makes me smile.

smile away while you watch them play in this video....



---Brenda


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