As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, my wife and I love fostering animals for the Maryland SPCA here in Baltimore. The drag of it is, there are so many foster “parents” on the books with the MDSPCA that you only get a call about once every 4-6 months asking if you’re available. And just as our luck would have it, the last call we got was just days before we left for our tortuous fight with the Icelandic ash cloud back in May, which made it impossible to devote the two weeks the kittens needed before they were ready for adoption. I was pretty bummed, because, y’know, I love kittens, and it was very likely I wouldn’t get another call until this Fall.
Thankfully, I got another one on Wednesday, and promptly prepared our master bathroom for our fuzzy visitors. Five kittens, four boys, one girl, all named after Trueblood characters. Let the cuteness commence!
My bathroom is now full of kittens. There are 5 of them: Bill, Sookie, Sam, Lafayette and Eric. I’m fostering them for the MD SPCA. I’ll take more/better pictures later and share them on Friday but in the meantime, here’s a preview of the cute:
So, as I’ve blogged before, my wife and I are pretty active volunteers at the local SPCA. Our love of companion animals is well-documented throughout the site, from our tee designs to our philanthropicendeavors, but it also carries over into the three dimensional world.
About a month ago, we got a call from the volunteer coordinator over at the SPCA asking if we’d be able to foster a pair of puppies for a couple of weeks until they were old enough to be spayed and neutered before going up for adoption. Despite a split second of reticence brought on by memories of our first attempt at fostering a dog, I said “YES!” Cuteness trumps good sense 99.9% of the time.
So I drove up the next day on my lunch break to pick up Grace (fawn) and her brother Harlowe (black).
Enjoy the cuteness while it lasts!
About six hours later, I was seriously regretting my decision.
While these two are unassailably adorable, all of that goes out the window when they’re, y’know, awake. It’s ridiculous how much energy and poop is contained in those tiny bodies. I feel like the Ms. and I spent two weeks just following these two around with paper towels and sanitary wipes. The good news is, these two were both adopted on their first day of eligibility. As much of a headache as they were, I wanted nothing more than for them to end up in a loving home as soon as possible. As great as the staff and facilities at the Maryland SPCA are, a 2′3 kennel is a 2′3 kennel, and the best thing for these guys is a lot of space where they can run around, if only to tire them out so they revert to their cute and unconscious state. It’s kind of funny how they’d run and wrestle and scamper non-stop for 20 minutes, and then just more or less keel over onto their blanket and pass out. ON or OFF, there is no dimmer switch!
For whatever reason, being an SPCA foster parent tends to be something of a feast-or-famine proposition. Once we’d been approved as foster parents last January, it was a whole two months before we got a call asking us to care for an animal. After that 10-day stint, it was another two and a half months before our next call. Then, we get the call for Grace & Harlowe in mid-October, and the day we returned them two weeks later, we were sent home with 18-month old Jezebel and her six kittens!
Nom nom nom!
Nom nom nom!
Originally (and imaginatively) named Momcat and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, we slowly over the last two weeks got to know every member of the family on an intimate (very intimate—you should have seen the state of that litter box every 6-12 hours; yikes!) level. Being the jailbait strumpet single mom of six, Momcat became Jezebel.
Her brood is made up of two boys, Chunk and Thor, and four girls: Pixie, Rosebud, Clementine, and Valentina.
Sleepy Valentina
Rosebud!
EPIC CUTENESS.
Unlike Grace & Harlowe, these guys were a little more manageable when awake; small size and quiet voices are like that.
While we love every last one of these guys, I can say that I hope we get a little time off now. I miss living in a two bathroom household!
Sorry for the lack of updates, but I’ve been on vacation. Actually, I was away getting married to my long-time girlfriend. That is the reason for the lack of new art and updates here and on Facebook. Getting ready for your wedding can keep you busy, no matter how small you try to make it. Anyway, the exciting news is that we’re home now and we are fostering three adorable and mischievous kittens! This post is going to be very heavy on the pictures and videos because I had too many favorites to just pick one.
I also have a mischievous kitten story for you guys. The littlest of the kittens is a tiny calico girl named Laura. She weighs about 1.5 lbs (and that’s a generous estimate.) Saturday morning I went to check on our kittens and Laura was nowhere to be found. I totally freaked out. The kittens have been living in our upstairs bathroom, frolicking in our large empty bathtub and skittering about under the toilet. There aren’t many places for them to disappear, but this tiny Houdini had certainly managed to make herself scarce. I wondered if maybe she’d snuck out when I opened the door.
I woke up my wife and we called all our friends, enlisting them to tear apart our house for the better part of Independence Day. We worried our adult cats had gotten their paws on the missing kitten and eaten her. We worried the missing kitten had scurried into a vent somehow and was lurking inside our walls. We pulled appliances out from their corners, we left treats out hoping to entice her back. It seemed hopeless, and I dreaded fessing up to the SPCA that we’d lost one of their charges.
Around dinner time I went to check on the remaining kittens, and what did I see out of the corner of my eye? The missing kitten! I only caught a glimpse of the little fiend, but I definitely saw her. She’d been in the bathroom with her brothers all day. She disappeared as fast as she appeared, but I noticed that she had run behind our pedestal sink. I checked behind the sink and discovered there was a small cut-out in the porcelain where the pipes go in. I reached inside and felt something soft and fuzzy. The hideout was so small that only Laura could fit in there, and I was barely able to get my hand inside to pull her out. Luckily, I was able to get her by the scruff of her neck and pull her out. I duct taped the entrance to her hideout and returned her to her brothers. Hopefully that was the last of her disappearing tricks, but whoever adopts this kitten is definitely in for some trouble.
Anyway, trouble or not, the kittens are too adorable for words, so here are some pix and videos. Enjoy!
We had a nice weekend here in the mid-Atlantic. The rain let up a bit so we could take our foster puppy for a long walk and check out all the pretty cherry blossoms. We returned the foster puppy to the SPCA Saturday and she’s already been adopted! We had no doubt, since she was as cute as she was mischievous.
After we returned the pup, my girl said “We are going to clean this house like a murder scene.” It took the rest of the day, but the house is now immaculate, and our cat is delighted to have the place to himself again.
My girl and I have started volunteering as foster parents for the SPCA, a local animal rescue that we volunteer for and support. Our first foster critter arrived today. Her name is Olita and she’s a cutie. Here’s a pic:
