During the first day of motherhood, Poppy seemed torn between being a kitten and assuming the role of a mother. She was still running to greet me, asking for cuddles, trying to get me to play with her, and then suddenly scurrying back to her babies. Until one moment I actually got to witness the beginning of her transformation: the babies were in the box and Poppy was eating near the box, throwing quick glances at the crying kitties now and again. Suddenly, out of the blue, as she looked at me, an involuntary, threatening growl arose from the depths of her body. Of course, she was growling at the potential threat to her offspring! After that, for a little while she still kept running to me, trying to be my 'baby', but again those ominous grumbles would sound from deep within her, telling her to be cautious, to keep her guard up. Nature was taking over from nurture right in front of my eyes, instincts were kicking in when absolutely needed. This was awe-inspiring, and quite humb...

 Yes, and then there's Tabs, or Tabitha, to be pedantic. She was born on a farm, and the legend goes that within the first couple of weeks of her life she managed to get caught in a hay bale (although nobody knows for sure, which is very common with farm cats). And so tiny Tabs had tried her mightiest to get out all by herself. Turns out, not a great idea. She ended up with a twisted spine, and two hind legs that couldn't quite receive all the messages from the brain. On top of it all, Tabs was diagnosed with double incontinence. So, she was going to be a little different from any kitten we'd met thus far. We called her Tabs the Pisspot, with utmost affection. And she didn't mind, she had a great self-deprecating sense of humour (which has been shown to be good for one's mental well-being;). Owing to her 'troubles' she was on some serious drugs, but she was also seriously keen on just saying 'no' to them;) This means that at first it was a bit of a s...

 Unfortunately, this little story here doesn't have a machine that goes Bing! But it does have a very cute little feline protagonist called Poppy. So here you go - this is Poppy: Poppy came to us to recuperate after a surgery on her salivary glands. That also meant that she was on some hardcore pain meds (her vets had given me very strict instructions on how and in what exact quantities to administer them), as well as antibiotics for about a week. She was 9 months old, almost alarmingly skinny (the only other cat we'd had whose vertebrae were palpable and visible was Mystery the renal cat, and she was gravely ill). Nonetheless, Poppy's surgery had gone well, she was doing well and after two weeks with us a vet said her wound had healed nicely and she seemed in good health in general. I noticed she was eating like a picky horse - she would consume tons of only one particular wet cat food, everything else made her stools soft or she just turned her nose up at it. But she wasn...

 Perhaps we should start by admitting that 'shy' in this context is often a euphemism. It's an umbrella term for the timid, wild, semi-feral, unsocialised or scared kittens, and possibly a few more. And those kinds of kittens need to be fostered and (re)socialized, as not many people out there are keen on adopting 'troubled' feline individuals. Claudia Jean, shy and then some Anyway, I'll keep using 'shy' here - it's kinda cute, too, and it implies helplessness. And what's more appealing to our good side than a chance to help someone small and vulnerable, to be someone's (very patient) personal Batman/Jesus/Superman? The very first shy kitten we had I called Maris. I called her Maris in honour of Niles Crane's elusive wife in Frasier - one of the best ever off-screen characters in my opinion. So, just like Niles' Maris from Frasier , my Maris was never to be seen. You see, I was a true novice back then and I thought that having a che...

  Our very first foster couple were siblings BeaBea and DomDom.DomDom was white with a striped ginger tail and a few ginger spots dotted around his body, BeaBea was a classic calico, or is it Tortoiseshell - I'm always confused. Tricolour, anyway. DomDom was perhaps the runt of the litter – very small, shy, and sickly. In a way, DomDom was our great learning curve. For example, he taught us how the delicate ones have to be handled. Delicately, it turns out😉. Delicately, but with conviction. I don't think I'd ever actually held anyone that small and frail before in my life. So I felt a bit like a bull in a china shop, afraid I might accidentally break him or somehow make him even sicker than he already was. However, I quickly realised that he needed me to be assertive, as this would make him feel safe, so I threw aside my self-doubt and decided to go with the flow. Let him guide me, so to speak. And ultimately he probably became my confidence guru in the world of felines. T...

 We have now been fostering tiny felines for a couple of years. It wasn’t planned; it just happened. Like most things, I guess. To be honest, the concept had never seemed like a possibility for us. Even when we adopted our first cat from our then neighbours who were fostering cats, dogs and pretty much any other animals you can think of, even then we never thought we could ever do it ourselves! Vader But fast forward four years when one day one of our new neighbours asked if we could look after a couple of her foster kittens for a week or so, and we just said ‘yes’. This means that our first two fosters were really just a small babysitting affair. And after that it started to feel more and more natural to say ‘yes’. Although, to be truthful, to have any more than 2 foster kittens in the house at once never seemed like something we would be able to do, or perhaps even want to do. And at first, we never had more than two at a time. The most we had in our first year was the Fab Five. ...