Kittens!

It’s a very Californian thing to do once in your life, fostering kittens. Whether they have property or live in an apartment or in a suburban neighborhood, one in every six women you speak to at a year-round Farmer’s Market has fostered kittens at one time or another. It’s a lot of fun, it’s hard work, what’s one more when you already have three or four? These are the things that are said.

They are cute, so cute that you can mostly ignore the zoo smell that begins to develop no matter how cleanly you try to be. Foster kittens are like a card game; they must form and be adopted out in bonded pairs. If you have three, you need one more; if you have five, that’s too many unless you can get another one to make six. If you already have one adult cat of your own and you want to adopt one kitten from an even litter, you will have to adopt two instead or find another kitten to mend the split pair.

If you foster kittens, you may find yourself in a kitchen filled with cats while a volunteer from a community-based organization administers deworming medication to your tiny wards. You might have to hold a very friendly orange cat while a tortie with a neurological disease wobbles drunkenly around your ankles and a tuxedo cat urinates in a sink behind you. There will be cages on the dining room table and cats perched on either end of the breakfast bar like statues. This is when you’ll realize fostering kittens is something to do just once in your life. You should not make it a habit.