Foster mom venting

Are there any pet foster moms on EV?

I've been a foster for feral kittens for two years now. I love it.
Seeing these little guys grow from scared, skinny little things into healthy, social and playful pets is amazing. It doesn't matter that their crate takes up a huge part of my living room. Doesn't matter that my hallway is currently being used as a storage room for cat food, toys, blankets and kitty litter or that I'm constantly cleaning up dry food and litter.
It's all worth it! Last year the organisation I volunteer for has adopted out 130 kittens!

But we can't always win. Some kittens are already too far gone when we take them in. And some of them just fade away despite all the care we give them. Last year I lost two.

This year, I lost 5 within one week :'(

We picked up a feral mom with 4 kittens.
That same night we tried introducing her to another 3 orphaned kittens who refused to drink from a bottle and had to be force fed. Mom immediately accepted them. They tried to nurse from her, but the smallest one passed away the next day. The other two stopped nursing and were losing weight. We took them to another foster mom who is very experienced in bottle feeding orphans. Unfortunately the two orphans also didn't make it.
Mom's own 4 kittens initially were doing great. They were nursing and gaining weight.
But then their weight started dropping and they also stopped nursing from their mom. When I went to check up on them two of them were in respiratory distress. I rushed to the pharmacy to get some fructose to give them an energy boost, but by the time I got back mom had killed them. She sensed that they were ill and did what her instincts told her to do. It seems cruel to us, but in fact she was ending the suffering of her babies.
Her two remaining babies had to be force fed. She did a great job by keeping them clean and warm. We were carefully optimistic, since they were keeping down their milk and despite being ill they looked good and were active and alert.

Unfortunately this morning we lost the two remaining kittens, Romeo and Rebel.
They just quietly and peacefully slipped away.

I feel so incredibly beat down and disillusioned.
We see so much pain and suffering just because people don't take their responsibility. They don't spay or neuter, and they dump their pets when they become inconvenient.

RIP Quin, Ronaldo, Rio, Rebel and Romeo.



Last edited on 2016-08-21 at 05:00:14 by Féline

Awww... I'm sorry. Some people these days are cold-hearted to their animals. What did the animals (cats, in this case) do? They're just being bullies to their pets. When I hear something like this is makes me MAD. I have already decided that I am going to have a house full of rescued animals, and own an animal shelter that does not kill pets to make room. (If I ever earn enough money!) People abusing animals just makes me mad and sad. Thank you for rescuing them. I hope you can save lots more cats!

I fostered dogs until we adopted ours.

I had a beautiful, sweet, full-of-life five year old male boxer come into my care with heartworms in 2012. We were dosing him on preventative to prevent any new larvae from growing for approximately three months before we started heartworm treatment. He was in a lot of pain after the first dose of medication, but the vet that the rescue chose to use did not board heartworm patients for monitoring because the cost was too exuberant for the rescue; so they sent him home with me. We got through the first night, and went in the next day for a second dose of the medication that destroys the worms. He passed away in my living room, quite dramatically, an hour after we returned home. The rescue paid to have a necropsy done and found that the heartworms were much more severe than they had anticipated.

He was my very first foster, and the experience was completely heartbreaking and maddening. It killed me to think that his previous owner could have prevented his pain and suffering for just a few dollars a month, but instead allowed him to be susceptible to such a horrendous disease and then dump him in a shelter to die when it became inconvenient.

I'm sorry that you've gone through this experience, too. It's painful to know that you did all you could but that it wasn't enough for this litter of kittens. But there will be more and others that you can and do save, so don't give up. There are always success stories.

I'm so sorry you had to go through that.
I'm glad we don't have heartworm or rabies around here.

I've often thought about fostering kittens but I just don't know that I could deal with the heartbreak.

Growing up a neighbor (and old family friend) to a horse trader I have seen all sorts of cases, both with happy and not-so-happy endings.

By far the most heart-wrenching was a little POA gelding. Seriously, he would have won any color class - he was that gorgeous. This horse had been dumped at a cattle auction with no papers and had been found that morning under a hay shed/loft.

He had the trailer parked on a flat grassy area with a big tree (I've never seen him do this, not for horses with horrible injuries or even the very very old ones), and instead of shooing the horses out like he usually does, turned his truck off and left it. If you knew how out of character this was for this old time cowboy, it would put your stomach in knots wondering what was in that trailer.

He opened the door and the little guy's ears and eyes definitely perked up when he saw a bunch of little girls. He slowly hobbled out of the trailer and over to us, unable to put any weight on his front right leg. Immediately he started munching on the grass (something he hadn't had in a long time, judging by the ribs showing) and let us brush him off (he was also covered in ooollld mud) and braid his mane. Anyway, his front right leg was obviously broken somewhere between his elbow and forearm. Nobody knew how it happened, and this old cowboy who wouldn't even call a vet out for his own horses, called a vet for this one. There was old caked blood and maggots everywhere and the smell was awful. Someone had put a large piece of pvc pipe over it and glued it as a makeshift cast, and it had been left on wayyyy too long. The leg was so misshapen and swollen over the pvc that it was hard to look away - it was a like a car accident. His body would have random shakes, and even to us little girls it was obvious he was very very sick.

Anyway, when the vet arrived he quickly told us there was nothing to do. He said even if he amputated the leg (which would have to be done - the hoof was falling off and the entire thing swollen with infection), managed to beat the infection; the cost of trying to save this horse with the low quality of life it had to look forward to compared to the odds that he'd live through it... the vet said he would not even try. It was best to put the poor guy down.

Since the leg was essentially dead the vet said he believed he actually wasn't in a terrible amount of pain from it anymore. That it looked like the nerves were no longer functioning there as the entire leg seemed well, rotten. The wide-spread infection is what was bothering him the most. After talking with the neighbor for a few minutes the vet said he'd be back tomorrow to send him to heaven, and that we needed to give him love before he could pass away. I tell you what, my friends and I have never been so motivated to love on and care for a horse. We gave him a bath and he could not stop nickering the entire time. We ignored the leg (that the vet had cleaned up and bandaged as much as he could, but had to leave the pvc pipe on as he believed it was the only thing holding it together) and got this poor pony's coat as clean as we could. He had all the grass he could eat, and we picked some more for him so he wouldn't have to graze to get it. We brought him a water bucket and re-filled it with fresh cool water every few hours. By that next day he seemed much more relaxed and happy than the pony who wobbled out of the trailer. When the vet came to put him down it only took the sedative before his poor heart gave out.

I know this really isn't a foster story (whoops), and it has the saddest ending. I have temporarily fostered numerous horses in the past... but when I opened the memory bank of the little guys that deserved to be remembered and learned from, he is #1.

p.s. I know the situation was less than ideal. Not trying to get any feathers ruffled because we did not go above and beyond to try and help him via vet care. But you gotta understand he was mainly under the care of several young girls at this huge ranch that did all of their own vet work. After 20 years, that instance is the only instance I know of for a vet to be called out. He was brought to that ranch because that old hardened cowboy's heart went out to the neglected guy and he knew he deserved better than that. The way he carried his head at the end and thoroughly enjoyed our company... you could tell at one time he had been loved by another little girl. We just did what we could to remind him that not all humans are horrible.

p.s.s. sorry for the longest post in the history of posts.

Last edited on 2016-08-24 at 13:11:05 by `strider

Honestly - sometimes all you can do is show them love before you do the best thing for them by ending it. It's one of the hardest choices we as animal lovers will ever have to make but by putting the animal's needs first and not your own - it becomes one of the easiest. It sounds like you guys showed him tons of love and affection and brightened his last days in a way that gave him peace. It sucks, but you all did right by him.

Wow, what a story. You definitely made him feel loved and gave him the chance to have some dignity before he died.

Like Ruki said, sometimes all we can do is keep them warm and comfortable and love them for whatever short time they have.