Hey, Jonathan here!

Not really too much of an update, but I just wanted to make a post on the new site! If you’re reading this and the site is currently unfinished:

1. Good job finding it somehow.
2. I’m surprised that people are actually reading this.
3. We’ll gradually fill things out, so check back later. We don’t have too many specific plans, but we generally want to have fun with the site.

Hopefully by the time you’re reading this, there are a decent number of cats up for you to browse through, but we’ve got quite the backlog (70 at last count) to get through, so check back later!

Current Cats

We don’t actually have any kittens at the moment. This is mostly because cats breed when it’s warm outside, so the number of kittens needing foster is very seasonal. In winter and early spring there usually are few or none in Denver. Once May or so rolls around, suddenly there will be a backlog of dozens of kitties that need fostering.

There’s also a chance that we’ll get an adult cat, although there generally aren’t as many of those at the Denver Dumb Friends League (or DDFL for short), who we currently foster with. Why? I’ll tell you.

Who Goes Into Foster? Who Stays In The Shelter?

Philosophy around fostering varies depending on the specific shelter: when we worked with the Atlanta Humane Society, they were often pretty space-constrained, so they’d put adoptable animals up for foster, and we’d just hold onto them until they got adopted.

The DDFL is much larger and more well funded, so they don’t usually run into space constraints the same way (for cats, anyway). Since the adoption rate is higher when people can easily visit and interact with the animals in-person, they typically only put animals that aren’t eligible for adoption into foster. This means that our foster cats typically fall into one of a few categories:

Kittens

The kittens that we foster are typically too young or too small to be adopted (often both). The DDFL won’t put a cat up for adoption without spaying/neutering it first, and cats need to be a minimum of 2 pounds and 8 weeks old before they can be spayed or neutered. So we basically hold them until then and help them get used to socializing and living in a home. In practice, weight is almost always the limiting factor. We’ll also sometimes keep the whole litter until the smallest one is up to date. This means that we typically have kittens until they’re somewhere in the 10-12 week range, after which they go up for adoption.

Almost all of our fosters fall into this category. Arabica is an example of a kitten (duh).

Adult Cats

Since adult cats are almost always either already spayed/neutered or eligible for the surgery. This means that our adult fosters are either Medical or Pet Assist cases.

Medical Cats

These are cats that either need surgery, are recovering from surgery, or have some other issue going on. We typically have them until the issue resolves and they’re healthy and adoptable, although sadly some of them never make it there. This can also include cats that are generally healthy but don’t do well in the shelter environment.

Fatdog is an example of a medical cat.

Pet Assist Cats

The DDFL has a “Pet Assist” program for people who, for whatever reason, are temporarily unable to take care of their pets. We’ll foster these in thirty-day chunks, then they’ll go back to their owners.

Potato is an example of a Pet Assist cat.

Well, this post went on way longer than I thought it would. Hopefully that’s all the info you could ever want about how the cat foster system works!