by Grace King / Published May 8, 2019
My name is Grace (that’s me in the middle of the pic) and I’m in eighth grade and my family has been fostering for OFOSA for three years. My family fosters both cats and dogs. My family’s first foster was a pregnant cat who gave birth in my older sister’s closet. Her name is Julia and she had four kittens and we named them Jo, June, Jude and Jamie. We fostered the mom and the kittens for about three months. It was fun to see the kittens grow up and get adopted. My family decided to adopt one so we adopted Jo. Our neighbors adopted Jude and we are always happy to see him.
My family fostered more cats, three group of kittens, a Sphynx, and two mom cats that had already given birth. We also fostered cats that were sick and needed to be healthier before going to PetSmart. Our most recent fosters were eight cats that we kept in the same room and I decided to sleep in that room to get away from my twin sister :-). All the cats were very cuddly and kept waking me up and sneezing all over me, but it was fine because I didn’t have school that day. Also, one of the cats craved attention all the time so it kept meowing and woke me up several times.
We have fostered four dogs also. My family fostered a dog for a day and then we fostered a PomChi puppy we named Peter and decided to keep him. My family has also fostered two other dogs, Ally and Stripe. I believe that fostering dogs is much harder than cats because cats are independent and don’t need as much human interaction. But, dogs are very fun to foster, too.
Our house has both a cat and a dog so we get to know if our fosters like them. If a person knows that a dog likes a cat or a cat likes other cats it is a big deal and the animal will get adopted more quickly. Also, when fostering an abused animal, if we can teach it not to be scared anymore, that’s also a big deal. One of our foster dogs, Ally, was scared of men. So, we had to work on that to make her feel better and not to be scared.
Fostering is very fun because you get to be with animals all day and you get to know different personalities of dogs and cats.
If you’re interested in saving lives and having fun like Grace and her family, please consider fostering! Go to: https://ofosa.org/become-an-ofosa-foster/ for more information and an online application!