a stepping-stone to adoption for abandoned furballs

entries

kittens

hijinx

reference

about 50K

Exodus

Monday
10/11/2010

Last Thursday morning, we had four Campers in the villa, two Divers in the nursery, and fraidy-cat Brett upstairs in the bunkhouse. Today we're down to Oggi and Gigi, and they're starting to look like big kittens. Here's the play-by-play:

On Thursday night, a newly-married couple who'd been approved by HT to adopt two kittens came to meet the Campers. After e-mail exchanges with us, they came prepared to take home either Chief and Savannah or Scottie and Scout. We steered them to the villa futon, where the Campers did their peep-climbing, button-chewing, face-nuzzling thing while we talked for a little while. Then we left them alone with the Campers to figure out who they wanted.

Fifteen minutes later they emerged with an answer that surprised us – Chief and Scout. Since that meant we'd be left with Savannah and Scottie, we agreed right away. All four Campers are healthy and social, so we knew any pairing would work well for this couple. But we were concerned that if we were left with either two females or two brown tabbies, we might have a harder time finding a home for that last pair. But we knew that adopting out a gorgeous female gray tabby and a great-looking male orange tabby would be a slam-dunk.

Since most of our foster kittens are outgoing and playful, many adopters choose kittens based on appearance. The couple who chose Chief and Scout did it on the basis of personality alone. No argument from us on that front, since Chief and Scout are awesome kittens. Our only caution to them was that it might be difficult to tell which kitten they were looking at from a distance, but that didn't faze them.

And it set us up for the Savannah+Scottie slam-dunk, which played out on Saturday. I took our two remaining Campers to their first adoption event, and within an hour they'd attracted interest from a few potential adopters. One was a twenty-something guy who'd relocated to DC recently with his girlfriend, who (like Martha) was working that day. They'd already filled out an HT adoption application for two cats or kittens, and they were just starting to meet candidates. I encouraged the two of them to stop by 50K Saturday evening. That was all it took.

Sunday morning, we ferried Brett over to DC, where he'll be attending "finishing school" with one of HT's most experienced fosterers of feral cats. He'll share an upstairs apartment in her home with one peep and a few well-socialized long-term foster cats. His new foster mom has seen several shy kittens blossom in this environment, so we hope Brett will follow that path. He spent almost four weeks with us and made steady progress toward being comfortable with people. Just as important, he grew from under four pounds to almost five, so he no longer feels scrawny and underfed. We're hoping his new apartment-mates keep him moving in the right direction. With his movie-star looks and ready purr-motor, he has unlimited potential.

On Sunday afternoon, we performed the home visit and landlord-permission check for the couple adopting Savannah and Scottie. Thumbs up.

They went shopping at Petco, then came back to 50K Sunday night to pick up their furballs.

So now it's just us, the 50K staff cats and canines, and Oggi and Gigi who will probably be upgrading to villa life within the next day or two (i.e. after we have a chance to clean the villa and replace its claw-shredded foam flooring.)

In the meantime we're letting them greet a few visitors and wander around the first floor (which has natural light!) for an hour or two every day. And the drumbeats from the HT network tell us more kittens are heading our way soon.

filed by: TS

7 comments

previous

entry 396 of 870

next

go to entry:

 

50K – the year in furballs:

2015

 

2014

 

2013

 

2012

 

2011

 

2010

 

2009