NOW You Tell Me!?

I PROMISE that this blog is not going to be all foster cats, all the time, but first ....... I need to get this off my chest.

A little background: When I first starting looking into the whole foster care process, I went to the local shelter and filled out a several-page application. Then, one of the workers explained the process to me. She said that there were four main situations when they needed foster care-ers:

1. Orphaned kittens who needed to be bottle-fed.
2. Non-orphaned kittens who needed to stay with their mothers until they were weaned and old enough to be adopted.
3. Cats who were recovering from illness or surgery and needed a quiet place to stay.
4. Cats who were at the end of their lives and needed a place to, well, pass away, in a non-shelter setting.

And she asked which I would be interested in. And I said, well, everything but the last situation. I explained that Rocky, my beloved cat companion of fifteen years, had passed away just a few months before, and I did not feel ready to go through that again. And she said, fine, we'll start you with kittens!

SO! Flash-forward to this morning, when I returned Momma and Baby to the shelter after their two month stay with me. I took them in and put them in their carrier on the counter. This is the conversation that followed:

Shelter worker: "Wow! I can't believe how good they look! They're so big! We didn't think they'd make it, you know."

Me: "Whaaaaa?"

Shelter worker: "Yeah, the night they came in (note: this would be the night before the day they called me and asked me to come pick them up THAT DAY), the kitten was so tiny, and the mother was so malnourished, we really didn't think they had much of a chance."

Me: ---------

Seriously? After I had specifically explained that I was not ready to face any "end-of-life issues", they sent me home with two cats whom they thought were about to drop dead.

Now granted, all's well that ends well, but still.