by Jenn Hutchman

Many times with fostering you only see cute kitten pics, hear all the success stories, and how wonderful it is to be a foster “mom.” You don’t always hear about the late nights, the worry, the fears, the having to isolate this kitten, or give this kitten this medicine, or bottle feed 9 kittens every 2 hours 24 hours a day, or what does this puke mean today? You don’t hear the heartbreak when we can’t save one or the brainstorming to try to determine what’s wrong or what course of action to take. You don’t hear about the all day and nights at the emergency veterinarian’s office or the last min appointments or the emotional toll it takes to get these babies a great start at life. It’s not all rainbows and kitten kisses all of the time, although it’s worth it to save and love the ones we can.

 

This is Ren (we called him Sadness because he always looked sad). Today (August 4) we had to be there for him while he crossed the Rainbow Bridge. He was my bottle baby and has been with me since he was a tiny baby. After many tests it was concluded that he had Intussusception which is where a part of his intestines slid into another part. This caused him to go into sepsis and his best option was to be humanely euthanized. He would not have survived the surgery he would have needed to repair it. Jesse was with him holding him. It’s heart breaking to lose him but at least he was loved while he was here. He was such a funny, sweet little boy. Rest in peace little sadness

 

Furry Friends still has a bill of almost $2200 to cover for him for all his tests and everything. So if you want to donate you can do so at our website https://furryfriendswa.org/donate/

Unfortunately this isn’t the only sad story that we have to share. Rescuing cats is truly a labor of love and takes its toll emotionally on many of us. We put our time, money and hearts into doing the best we can for these kitties. We spend the money on cat if we can help them. And these sad stories do come along. Thankfully we are able to save most of the kitties with medical problems, but there is the occasional one like Ren that we are not able to save.

 

Thank you all for helping the kitties of Furry Friends to have a better life.

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We would like to thank Jenn Hutchman for writing this story. She has been volunteering with Furry Friends for a couple years and has been an amazing contribution to our team. She has fostered over 50 cats and kittens so far for Furry Friends, and not just the easy ones. She has fostered several bottle baby kittens that require feeding every two hours and has taken on some of the difficult medical cases like Ren. She also is the lead person for our email/voice mail team, plays a significant role on our medical team and has done a number of other tasks including fundraising. For 2020 she put in about 570 volunteer hours for Furry Friends. We are so grateful for all she does.