Fostering animals a fulfilling experience

By Claire Alongi,
BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

For around an hour, it’s like someone has shot the kittens full of pure adrenaline. They are scampering around the carpeted floor, gnawing on Birkenstocks, scrambling over bags and tumbling over each other and up the bed. Their escapades continue until one ball of fur finds himself wedged underneath the window glass and halfway up the screen. Shrieking, DaVinci junior Sylvia Baganz races to bring him back to Earth.

Then, shortly after, they’re out. While they are sleeping it’s hard to remember that just a few minutes ago they were wreaking havoc on Baganz’s room.

“They’re a mess,” Baganz said, but with a hint of fondness. However, Baganz won’t have to put up with this mayhem forever because she doesn’t own these kittens. They are fosters.

Baganz is one of a few DaVinci and Davis High students who has participated in animal fostering programs. In her case, she began fostering after volunteering for a veterinary organization. Now, for the past couple of years, Baganz and her family have been fostering kittens out of the Sacramento organization, Cats About Town.

This time around the Baganz household has three roughly month-old kittens which they have named Kendrick Lamar, Sky and Frederick. Baganz said that the organization referred to these kittens as “the first installment”, which means that they could be expecting more feisty felines any day. Nevertheless, Baganz isn’t put off by the possibility of more small mouths to feed.

“It is a lot of work mainly due to the fact that they’re so full of life and energy. But it’s definitely worth it. They’re very adorable,” Baganz said.

DHS junior Rebeccah Kang can tell, even though it’s only her first time fostering, that the experience has had a favorable impact on her life.

“The kittens- Lilac, Moose, and Twitch- have definitely positively affected me. I’ve had a handful of people come over and interact with them, and seeing how happy the kittens make them makes me feel really happy,” Kang said.

Kang recieved her kittens through the Yolo County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), an organization that DHS senior Elizabeth Solomon, a veteran animal fosterer, has worked with on several occasions in addition to the Yolo County Animal Shelter in Woodland.

Solomon’s big heart is what lead her into the world of fostering.

“A couple times [my family has] gotten animals at the shelter [or] SPCA with health issues, [or they] were too young, or I found an animal and they didn’t have anywhere else to go so I just brought them home with me,” Solomon said.

But not every animal Solomon has taken care of (including one litter of bottle-baby kittens, a rabbit and four dogs) has been with explicit parent permission.

“I snuck a litter of two-week-old kittens home without my parents permission. I hid the four of them in my room so my parents didn’t notice. They were too young to eat on their own, and so I had to bottle feed them. They needed to eat every three to four hours, so I didn’t sleep at all for a few days,” Solomon said.

But there is no need to sneak in kittens under parents’ noses and hide the animals for days. Solomon notes that in addition to the traditionally thought of “long-term” fostering, where one takes care of an animal until it gets adopted, there are other ways to foster in the short term. These include taking care of unhealthy or shy animals for short stretches until they can go back to the shelter, bottle feeding kittens or taking animals on day trips away from the shelter to adjust them to outside life.

She stresses that “[a]ny amount of time helps,” especially in an age of pet overpopulation.

According to the The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), 7.6 million animals enter shelters every year, and there are an estimated 70 million cats living on the streets.

With staggering numbers such as these, fostering helps ease the burden on overcrowded shelters and organizations that don’t have shelters like the Yolo County SPCA, which is “a foster-home based rescue organization that relies heavily on [their] foster homes in order to save as many animals as [they] do” according to their website.

The Yolo County SPCA and other similar organizations often help their foster volunteers by paying for supplies and even veterinary care that their animals might need. However, Petfinder.com encourages potential pet foster parents to think seriously about their decision before fostering, and address issues like having the foster animal get along with pre-existing pets, potential damage the animal could enflict on the house and, perhaps most difficult of all, if they can handle parting with the pet in the end.

Solomon has almost nine years of fostering under her belt and has learned not to get too attached to furry friends that might come and go. However, she couldn’t help forming a bond with terrier Toto that, in her couple week stay, followed Solomon around and slept in her bed.

Even though Solomon didn’t adopt Toto in the end, the canine did settle with someone connected to the shelter, so Solomon still sees pictures of Toto.

Not all foster parents are so lucky to continue a relationship with their animals after they part.

“Thinking of letting them go is bittersweet,” Kang said when she thought of saying goodbye to her kittens.

Baganz chooses to see the good and the bad of parting ways.

“It’s sometimes hard to let them go. But most of the time I’m kind of thrilled because it’s nice to have my life back because it’s been controlled by these furry little beasts. But yeah, sometimes it’s sad. Usually I’m just glad that they found good homes,” Baganz said.

For information on fostering animals and adoption see the websites for the Yolo County SPCA, Yolo County Animal Shelter and Cats About Town.