I started my foster experience up north, in Pennsylvania.  The local S.P.C.A. reached out to me one day while I was visiting.  I recently lost my own cat of 20 years, so I was just there looking around.  I had never heard of kitten fostering, but the employee on duty explained the details of their program.  I considered it for a bit and went back to them and got started! 

I will never forget my first bottle baby, named Baby, of course.  No tail, maybe 6oz., single, sick and a purr bucket!  When Baby got to be big enough, I went to the shelter and took home two more kittens to help teach her how to be a kitten.  

Having bottle babies or a single bottle baby, it changes everything.  Your life is scheduled around the next feeding and catering to the needs of the kittens.  Our kitchen area is the bottle baby area with a tent and heating pad and of course the feeding station. Our office becomes the “Kitty Cave” when they are old enough.  It is by far the most rewarding hobby / job I have ever had!  I love it and we will continue to foster as long as we can.  We keep a log of the kitten names, and to date we have taken care of 106 bottle babies. 

It is very hard to give the babies back to the shelter at 2 lbs, but very rewarding to know that the shelter is able to find them forever homes because we helped them.  When we moved to Florida in 2014,  I was told about Cat Depot almost right away.  I went and signed up right away.  There are so many wonderful people in this organization and the Facebook Foster Page (available to registered foster volunteers) has been extremely helpful in many ways as far as having a support system to help each other through the process!

Our Foster Failure was #51, Norman.  We adopted him up north, although he was not a baby, he was 5.  He loves Florida and has gotten used to the Fosters that we bring in.  Norman is an ” only ” cat kind of guy, so when we bring in the babies, he doesn’t care until they start running around.  They have taught him how to play and it has been fun watching Norman learn from the babies as well! We don’t think he has ever seen another cat/kitten until he met the foster kittens.  I guess we would say that Norman, our Foster failure is our most memorable since we ended up adopting him.

Renee McFadden
Foster Volunteer