Fall Feels

It is supposedly fall but Louisiana did not get the memo. The weather app says it is 82 and feels like 85 but I think that's a lie. It feels way hotter outside. The cats are mad at me because I refuse to open the window--they LOVE sitting in the windowsill--but it's just too hot. 

I thought it would be cute and fun to do a post where I share my photos that feel like fall. But... I only have like 5. Because it does not feel like fall. 

Still, I've had a soup on the menu every week for the past month. Tonight I'm making homemade chicken noodle soup. Next week is chili. Casey says that it's supposed to get down to 40 next week. We shall see.

Anyways, here's my fall photos. Maybe it will finally feel like fall in December. Except we'll be in Singapore in December and its summer year-round there. Guess I won't pack away my sandals.

We love to make a seasonal bucket list! We had a date night at a local coffee shop and made our fall list.

First day of fall tradition: build a scarecrow! We were sweating.

These things can be found at Walmart and I'm obsessed.

The reality of the scarecrow. The cats decapitate Christian Bale daily. 

Just finished some Pumpkin Spice Cookies today!

I started making this pinafore two years ago and was soooo excited about it. But I wasn't feeling it as I worked on it. Pulled it back out again this year, decided I like it, and hemmed it. 

Cats

 

My cats are really cute. That's all.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Being Kitten Foster Parents

I've mentioned a few times in passing that Casey and I are kitten foster parents, so I decided to make a post about it!

We started fostering for a local animal rescue about a year ago--it's the same rescue we adopted Sushi from. Over the past year we've fostered around 50 kittens. 

How did you get into fostering?
We accidentally fostered a kitten that Casey's brother found. I posted about her on instagram and she was adopted by a friend. We enjoyed it so much that we decided to reach out to the rescue we adopted Sushi from, since we knew they were foster based. Within a few weeks of reaching out, they messaged me that they had two kittens looking for a foster home. We've been fostering ever since!

How do you not keep all the kittens?
This is for sure the question we get the most. While kittens are adorable and we totally fall in love with them, we know we are able to help more cats in the long run by fostering than adopting. There's no way we could have adopted 50 cats in the last year, but we've helped 50 cats find loving homes. That's 50 cats that likely would have been put down in our local pound (which has an 80% kill rate). 

What do you have to do as a foster?
Take care of them, love them, get them to adoption events and vet appointments.

Do you have to pay for their food or vet care?
Nope! The rescue handles all vet care and gives us food and litter. We just have to get them to the vet and pick up supplies when we run low.

Are you responsible for finding them homes?
Nope, but we help! The rescue posts all animals on PetFinder and the Facebook and Instagram pages. They also host adoption events every few weekends. (We are responsible for bringing the kittens, and we stick around to help out when we can.) I make sure to take good quality photos and share a description of each cat so people searching online know a little about the cat's personality. I also share a lot of photos on Instagram and Facebook and we've had multiple cats adopted because their humans found them on my Insta.

Do you foster adult cats? Or just kittens?
We've fostered a few adult cats over the year, but our cats struggle more to adapt with adult cats than the kittens. Because of that, we personally choose to only foster kittens.

How do your cats get along with the foster kittens?
It took some adjusting, but now our three cats (Tigger, Sushi, and Cocoa Puff) understand how things go. We bring in new kittens every few weeks. Almost every time, it takes a few days for our cats to adjust to the kittens (and vice versa) but it's not long before we walk into the living room and see cats and kittens cuddling. 

How many kittens do you foster at a time?
We foster 3-6 kittens at a time. We started off with two and slowly started bringing in more. When you've got litter and food, it's not a big deal to bring in another kitten. 

What's the most kittens you've fostered at once?
10. It was terrible, but the rescue was overrun with kittens so we were trying to help out. One of them had special needs and struggled with the litter box, and one of them was a very cute brat who just liked to pee wherever he wanted. I was so tired of cleaning up poop and pee. We now limit fosters to 6, and will probably foster less kittens in the future if we are fostering another kitten with special needs. 

How often do you clean the litter box? What kind of litter do you use?
We clean the litter box every day and sometimes twice a day. We only use two litter boxes. At one point we used four boxes and it was a pain to clean ALL of them. I'd rather clean two twice a day. We use a clay litter. I don't like paper litter because of the smell, and our cats don't like the pine litter.

What food do you use?
The rescue provides Science Diet kitten food for the fosters and we do Meow Mix for ours. We don't separate the cats to eat so big cats often eat kitten food and kittens eat Meow Mix. Our cats are particular about their food and if we buy a different brand, they absolutely refuse to eat it. They are spoiled.

Is it hard to let go of the fosters?
Honestly, no. We are happy for them when they get adopted and go to their forever family! Plus, it just means we get new foster kittens!

Can I adopt one of your foster kittens?
Yes! Reach out and I can hook you up.

Can you pretty please share kitty pictures?
You know I've got you.

A Zoo in the Sewing Room

As promised, here are photos of our pets hanging out in the sewing room over the last few weeks. The orange cat is Tigger, the gray cat is Sushi, and the dog is Oxford.

They all love to find a pile of fabric to sleep on. Oxford has his bed in there, but sometimes Sushi steals it. Tigger usually prefers to sleep on the sewing table, but can also be found in the corner on top of some papers I need to go through.

The cats often find fabric to play with (half the time it is attached to my current work in progress) and somewhere in there they have hidden a ball that makes bird noises. We hear it squeak on occasion.

The cats bring so much fun into the room! And Oxford mostly just enjoys napping. :) It's kind of a perfect life.

Meet Sushi

Sushi, meet everyone. Everyone, meet Sushi!

We've had Sushi since October, but I've never shared about him here!

So, meet Sushi. He is about the same age as Tigger, which puts him around a year and a few months. 

Before we got Sushi, we had been talking about getting another cat. Tigger would look outside the window and see the neighborhood cats and would meow and meow. We thought a friend might be a good thing for him, and we knew that we would want to adopt if we got another cat.

One day, we were at the farmer's market when we ran into Kat Vet. She had some cats with her available for adoption and there was one that looked just like Tigger, but he was blind. We thought he was so cute and we were interested, but I had to get to work so we told her we'd come to her house the next day to foster and potentially adopt him. 

When we got to her house the next morning, the kitten was being adopted! She said we could fight for him, but we didn't want to. It was obvious that the girl adopting him was head over heels for him, and we were thrilled he was being adopted! 

Since we were there, we figured we would choose another cat to foster and see how it worked with our family. There were at least 15 cats and several kittens. Kat put a kitten in my hand and said, "What about this one?" A minute later, it bit me. "Not this one," I said as I handed it back to her. We really wanted one that was already grown, because full-grown cats are often harder to adopt out than kittens. Also, we would have a better idea of its personality.

Sushi (who was previously known as "Brother 2") was a little sweetheart and wanted to be pet. Then I caught him playing with a pen, so I knew he had a playful side. I thought he would be the perfect addition to our home.

Tigger wasn't super thrilled at first, but warmed up to him after a few days. I wouldn't say they're inseparable, but they do enjoy playing together. Mostly they kind of do their own things, but they definitely enjoy each other's company. 

Sushi Roll (yes we give our animals middle names) is a little fatty. Okay, not a little. He's a fat cat. He loves his food. I recently caught him on top of the fridge knocking the treats off the top so he could dig in. (The treats are now in a container that--hopefully--he can't knock over.) 

He LOVES to be pet, especially when you are working on your computer or trying to do embroidery or something. He only cuddles when there are pets involved, until he falls asleep. (Tigger, on the other hand LOVES to cuddle and is currently asleep in my lap.)

People ask how Oxford handles the cats and he mostly ignores them. He's glad that Tigger has someone else to play with, because Tigger used to try to play with him. (Oxford does NOT play. He's much too sophisticated for that.) Oxford does get annoyed when the cats step on him. He seems to like (using that term loosely) Tigger more than Sushi. 

We love having Sushi in our home and everyone who meets him loves him. Here are some photos!