Who are you and why do you have so many cats?

    This is another commonly asked question I get, except it usually comes after all the other ones I posted on this site. I started volunteering with animals when I was about 11 years old, which was in 1990. I started volunteering with Tri-Valley Animal Rescue (TVAR, an organisation linked through the East County Shelter and Tri-Valley SPCA in Pleasanton, when I was about 15. What they do is vaccinate cats and dogs and take inventory of those that need to be pulled (put into foster care) because they're too young, sick, or feral. I worked in the foster programme, which means I had anywhere from 1 to 30 cats at any given time. A good way to get experience! The number varied according to time of year and how many cats I could take on at that time (i.e., how much space I had). When they were old enough, or well enough, or in some cases, tame enough, I'd get them fixed using funds TVAR has gathered through donations. Then I'd adopt out the kitties to loving homes for a donation fee which goes back into the programme to help defer the cost of spay/neuter, vaccinations, worming medicine, and antibiotics or other medications. Our policy is to keep the animals up-to-date with their shots as well as we can, and to get the animals fixed before we adopt them out. In doing this work for over 11 years, I've come across many, many people that didn't have any idea what to do with an animal, how to care for it, or the responsibility that comes with caring for one. I've seen the atrocities that come from people who don't respect animals and see them as only a plaything or possession with no feelings of its own...so I wrote a website to help those idiots think twice about seeing non-humans as just objects; I want them to see animals as living things that should be respected as living things.
Since writing this site in 1999, I've moved to Belfast, in Northern Ireland, and have continued to help out in various vet offices and shelters throughout the country. I'm specifically interested in helping pet owners understand the responsibility they have towards the animals they adopt, and helping educate the public on the plight of stray and homeless animals (especially the ferals).
    On that note, I'll introduce you to a few of the cats I've known over the years:

  

	This is Murdock. He was 6 weeks old when I brought him home from my high school; a classmate threatened to drown him. He was our third cat, and the others were strays as well. Not long after he came to our house, I became a foster for TVAR.
This is Ki. She was my very first foster cat. We brought her home from the shelter and three days later, while we were eating dinner, she had kittens in the living room. It was my first litter of kittens. It was difficult to give them up when it was time to find homes for them, but it got easier to an extent. Luckily, my uncle adopted two brothers, so I get to see them every once in awhile.
	This is Inga. She and her brother Rupert were brought to my house by animal control on the 4th of July. They were about five days old, and my mom and I took turns bottle-feeding them until they were big enough to eat on their own.  Here's some info on bottle-feeding kittens.
This is Syd. He was actually another foster's kitten, and he was adopted by her daughter's math teacher. He was very spoiled because he was an only-kitten.
	This is Gwendolen, Winnie for short. She was an amzing cat that for one reason or another, would go sit on a watermelon rug I had whenever she wanted to be fed. Apparently she assumed that was the magic spot. She had four kittens, pictured here. Among them are Sali and Owen, which you can see on the  Paws for Thought  page. The other two are Glyndwr and Bethan.
These are not cats I fostered, but I feel something should be said for them. The mother was a domesticated wild cat that was very affectionate, but because her kitten was raised in the wild, the kitten didn't tolerate people at all. She looks about 8 or 9 weeks old in the picture, but believe or not, she was actually about 3 months. She was so sick and weak when we got her there wasn't much we could do. This picture was taken about 3 weeks before the kitten died; the mother was adopted into a home shortly after. For one reason or another, those pair of cats I think about all the time, and not just because I snapped their picture, but because their story was so tragic (except for the mother getting a good home!). It epitomises what we see every day: our treasures, other people's trash.