BEING gifted a pet can be a dream come true, but sometimes it doesn’t work out so the volunteers from the region’s chapters of Cat Protection step in to help.
The charity takes in cats and kittens to foster with the hope that they will eventually find their forever homes.
At one of the charity’s five fostering pens in Dumfries, veteran fosterer Louise is car ing for five cats: Tyree, Isla and three identical black kittens Edgar, Raven and Osiris.
Cats come to the charity for all sorts of reasons with Louise’s fosterlings having their own back stories, as she explained: “Cats come to us for all kinds of reasons, but Tyree and Isla have had a particularly unsettled time before they’ve come in. The lady that signed them over to us said that the white one was very shy. The other is fairly confident and he purrs when you hold him and stroke him.
“The three little ones were born in a shed and the gentle- man couldn’t keep them but he kept the mum.”
Louise has been fostering for Cats Protection for 20 years, and in that time has lost count of the number of fe- lines she’s cared for – as some animals stay with her just a few weeks, while others are there for months, depending on their condition.
She added: “I’d always grown up with cats and then I met Fiona at a fundraising coffee morning 20 years ago and I became involved in the charity and then eventually became a fosterer.
“The longest a cat has stayed with me is probably for six months, and he came to us with a broken jaw.”
Branch president Fiona also recalled some of the most memorable cats she has fos- tered: “I’ve once had a cat stay with me for a year, but when he came to us he had prob- lems with his colon.
“Generally there are no hard and fast rules about how long a cat can be fostered for, it just depends on the cat.
“Every cat that’s re-homed through us has to be chipped, neutered and vaccinated, and checked for fleas before it can be adopted. In some cases, cats come to us with that al- ready done and that can cut down the time they spend in our care.
“The last cat I fostered came in and she was all skin and no fur and she stayed with me for six months because she was in a terrible state.
“There was another cat, named Elmo that came in with a broken leg and he stayed with me for nine months.”
In the past few years Fiona has noticed more and more people getting in touch with her about needing a cat fos- tered or reporting a stray, with 2024 seeming to be the year of kittens.
“This year has been particu- larly bad for farm cats and farm kittens coming to us, I’ve never known it to be this bad, we’ve had so many calls about kittens.,” she said.
“Until this year we would rarely get kittens because people would sell them online.
“We had a lot of feral kittens come to us this year, which the charity has paid to have neutered, and a lot of older kittens as well, more than I have seen for a long time.”
Although there are three branches of Cats Protection in the region, including Eskdale and district and Stranraer, the charity does have to pri- oritise which cats it takes in and relies on donations to pay for food, vet bills and main- tain its pens.
Fiona added: “It can be dif- ficult because we do have to prioritise, if someone calls us about a litter of kittens, they will take priority over an indi- vidual cat, but we do the best we can.
“I always say that they’re looked after as best as pos- sible but they don’t get the human company and that’s what they really need.”
- To enquire about adop- tion, call 01387 710083 or go to the Cats Protection -Dumfries central Facebook page.
