There are days when all looks bright and shiny when it comes to fostering. You wake up and know you are helping animals to get a chance at a happy, fulfilling life in homes that will love them. If not for your efforts, the shelters could easily get overloaded to the point where euthanasia is the only option, just so that they don't run out of funds, resources and space. By taking on the workload of giving the cats/kittens a temporary home, you are giving them a chance they might not otherwise get. It's a wonderful feeling, even during the rough patches - like when you discover the dirtbox got well-used the night before and is now half empty, with the rest all over the floor... or the patches of wallpaper ever so lovingly removed in tiny kitten-paw-sized scraps... or the net curtains now having more 'net' and less 'curtain' than you recalled...
But then there are days when the world folds up and falls on your heart. The days where you discover that these wonderful, loving, warm little heartbeats must be stilled in the name of mercy. When keeping them alive, to brighten your days, is just selfishly prolonging their suffering or delaying the inevitable. When the vet tells you, in the kindest way possible, that extending the course of antibiotics is quite probably a waste of resources that could be used to successfully save another family of kittens that have a better chance of beating the illness.
Today was a day that said it all, in every way. In the midst of weeks of fine weather and summer heat, today was windy, cold and wet. A poet might say the world started weeping, for it knew the fact that we were trying so hard not to acknowledge - that these lovely kittens had no future that didn't involve large amounts of cost for future owners, illness and suffering for the kittens, and - in the meantime - a possibly constant drain on the resources of a wonderful organisation who does everything it can to give every animal the best chance of a loving life.
Some days, life just isn't fair.
The aftermath for us, the fosterers: A long and chemically-stringent cleanup of their entire living area, inside and out, to make sure that there are no 'bugs' left behind that could infect any future foster cats... a period of mourning, while we try to untangle the heartstrings these little balls of innocent love got attached to in us... and a hard think and talk about whether we can do this again.
I think we could. I know if we did it wouldn't be easy - there would be the fear that it might somehow - despite everything we were told by the vet - be caused by something here and thus happen again... the worry that we won't give them as loving a temporary home as they deserve because we don't want to feel the loss of handing them back just as we find ourselves getting attached again... the concern that with all the prices going up, and donated supplies to the shelter getting tighter, that we won't be able to afford to 'top up' the food/litter...
These are hard choices, decisions that need to be well thought out BEFORE you take on the responsibility for the innocent lives you will be entrusted with.
The pay-off is great, for those willing to see it that way... but it carries a price. For those who can, please do... for those who aren't sure, go talk to the staff at the shelter... but for those who think "I don't want to face times like this..." then please, don't. Give food, give money, give resources... those are VITAL things that mean you are still giving, still doing a 'good thing'... and without you, the rest have no chance at all.
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