After fostering Gilbert and Esther, I took a bit of a break from fostering as there wasn’t any to take in for a while, and I was doing some travelling. However, a week before my birthday I got the best present- cats to look after! Enter these two who were a painfully shy mother and daughter duo that needed socialisation while we found the perfect home for them.
Initially, I called them Selina and Helena after Catwoman and The Huntress because I thought their markings looked like the masks that comic book heroes wear! But eventually that turned into Slug and Hedgehog because Slug looked like a slug with her sleek dark fur when she settled on your lap, and Hedgehog was always a little prickly.
Being younger, Slug was much easier to socialise and would eventually lay on my lap for hours. But Hedgehog didn’t have such a drastic improvement. They weren’t feral, they didn’t attack and hadn’t been brought in from an outside colony. They had just hadn’t had the most interactive experience with humans which can be tough to ‘fix’ after they hit that 6 month mark. She had a habit of pulling the blanket that I keep on my desk chair, onto the ground in a heap and burrowing into it.
In the end, they were adopted together, a little over a month after I first got them. I got to drop them off at their new home, with their new human who was in love with them the minute they arrived and was prepared to be patient when it came to interaction. After Gilbert and Esther ending up in an adoption centre for weeks, which gave me a lot of anxiety even though Cats Protection adoption centres are wonderful, it was a great experience to take these two to their new home and say goodbye!
And five days later I had my next three fosters! But I’ll leave that for another post.
Imogen's Typewriter. 