I’ve been so excited about blogging this session for quite a while now! Finally, it is ready.
This is Amanda and Cassie (and Morgan the cat!). Enjoy!
An old medium format film scan of Dexter cat. Lookin’ rather cute, actually.
An update on little Britta is long overdue!
You may recall my last post about my foster cat Britta. She was put in to the RSPCA’s behaviour intervention program because she’d had a really hard start to life and had become very shy.
Well, look at her now! She’s loving life at our place. She spends her mornings playing tag with our cat Dexter, running all around the apartment. She absolutely LOVES playing with the many toys that Dex has long grown bored of (her favourite are the little balls with bells in them!). She’s a very polite and well mannered little girl; she scratches her claws only on the scratching post and every night when I put her to bed in the bathroom, she climbs right in to her bed and looks up at me obediently, as if to say ‘goodnight!’. She still very much values her personal space, and doesn’t like being picked up too much, but I’m working on getting her used to that – she still loves a cuddle and a chat. She’ll definitely make someone a beautiful companion (hopefully soon!).
If you or anyone you know might be interested in adopting Britta, please check out her RSPCA adoption page. She needs to go to a home with no small children and no dogs (another cat is fine – she loves Dex!). You can also contact me directly for more information. :)
Oh, BTW, I’m absolutely IN LOVE with her little nose. Look at that gorgeous, pale, non-pigmented little nose!! It’s so adorable. Love love love.
Some of you might already know that I am a foster carer with the RSPCA. I specifically foster cats and kittens, because at the moment I live in an apartment and we don’t have the space or the yard to foster dogs (but that will come later!).
Usually I’m given kittens to foster, because every year there is what’s known as ‘kitten season’, around spring, when all of the un-desexed cats (is that a term? is the opposite of desexed ‘sexed’? all of the sexed cats? mmmm) have their litters and for whatever reason – the owners not responsible enough to get them desexed in the first place, usually – these kittens are surrendered to the RSPCA because people can’t/won’t look after them. Kittens go out to foster carers for the period of time between being weened from their mothers to when they are old enough and big enough to be desexed themselves – then they go up for adoption at the RSPCA. I usually have them for around 4-5 weeks. Kittens are great to foster. They’re gorgeous, playful, they always love Dexter (our cat, who most of the time just tolerates them and gives them a lick on the head when he’s feeling generous) and they always find a home. After all, who can resist a little kitten?!
Sometimes I foster adult cats. Last week I received an email from the RSPCA’s foster department, putting out a call to all foster carers asking if anyone could take a cat in to foster. They had been inundated at their headquarters at Wacol and couldn’t cope with the load of cats coming in. They were desperate. So I responded to the email immediately and said – send one my way!
The cat that I have been paired with is a little black and white girl, only about a year old. I’m not fully aware of her background, but I believe that she’s come from an environment where she was living with a lot of other cats, none of which were being looked after particularly well. I think that maybe she hadn’t had much human interaction and she probably had to fight with other cats for food, etc. The RSPCA told me that they’d placed this little girl in their ‘behaviour intervention program’, meaning that she needed rehabilitation. She was already a year old but was very, very shy around humans and didn’t know what it was like to live in a loving, warm, safe environment. When I saw her, I decided to name her Britta after one of my favourite TV characters (from NBC’s Community) – a strong, opinionated and sometimes stubborn woman with a heart of gold. This is what I wanted for her. I wanted her to build confidence, come out of her shell and develop her own personality, to be a strong, opinionated little cat!
So Britta came home with me last Friday, staring at me with big, round yellow eyes full of fear and uncertainty. She spent the first few days in her carry cage, refusing the leave it. She would only come out of it in the dead of night to eat some food or use her litter. I would spend time sitting in the bathroom with her (that was her designated space), just talking, or sometimes just reading a book quietly. Slowly but surely, she began to trust me. She started by just popped her head of her cage when I came in for a visit, and very, very slowly she would come out a little more. I noticed that she was a scrawny thing, very skinny. I was going to have to fatten her up! We introduced our cat Dexter to her, and while he seemed indifferent, she seemed to like him a bit. That was a good sign. Hopefully Dex could show her what it’s like to live in a nice, loving environment!
I quickly discovered that she LOVES a smooch! She absolutely loves a cuddle and a scratch. She also likes to have a bit of a chat. Every day her personality is developing, bit by bit. So I'm going to keep you updated with her progress and share photos and video with you, and maybe you or someone you know might fall in love with little Britta and decide to give her the loving home she deserves. :)
Week 1 Progress
In just one week, Britta is doing fabulously! Yesterday morning, she actually jumped up on to our bed for a cuddle. This is huge! She still gets spooked by noises outside the window a bit, but this one act showed fabulous progress!
Keep a look out for more progress reports over the next few weeks! I’ll fill you in on all of Britta’s adventures, hopefully up to the point where she finds a new loving home. :)
Two bubby kittens. :)
Introducing Rob and Sansa, my two current RSPCA foster darlings. Rob Stark, (Lord of Winterfell) the little chocolate brown boy, and his sister Sansa have been settling in quite nicely at our place over the last couple of weeks. Sansa is such a little lady, though she can be cunning and quick at play! Rob is so friendly and brave, trotting around to explore everything, and was the first to say hello to our own cat, Dexter.
If you or anyone you know would be interested in adopting either of these gorgeous things, please contact me!
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