As soon as we met
Foster care
RSPCA
As soon as we met, he’d decided he was moving in. The attending RSPCA vet noted so, as did the foster care team. At every appointment at the clinic, a ‘foster fail’ was the consensus, but we remained, for the longest while, unconvinced.
As with our previous foster cats, we extended our feelers to find him a home. But he’d already moved in with us; we just couldn’t see it yet.
He’d moved in from the moment he climbed up on my shoulder in the consulting room. From the moment he refused to stay in his ‘safe house’ (our bathroom), preferring instead to met Lottie, Leonard, and Olive with a polite trill. From the moment he harmoniously slid into the family groove, licking Lenni’s head as he slept. Arthur’s happy-go-lucky sweetness won us all over.
He arrived, officially, as our sixth RSPCA foster cat, under the name of Lee, just before Easter. He arrived, as Arthur, more like, and settled in to his new forever home just before Easter.
Together, we’ve all nursed him through a tail amputation; Louise, bathing the wound, applying cream, and administering medication, and Lottie as ‘tail monitor’, sniffing its progress. As we noted the increased waggle of Arthur’s tail in accordance with his steps, now that spring is here, we wait to see how his tail fluffs out like the twin clouds he sports on the back of his hind legs.
We’ll keep fostering for the RSPCA. It remains one of the most rewarding things either of us has ever done.
Thank-you for following his journey, and hopefully this might encourage you to consider foster care.
To Gizmo, Misty, Tiger-Lily, Frida, and Pretzel, in their own forever homes.
Image credit: Dame Elizabeth Violet Blackadder, R.S.A., R.S.W., R.A. Sleeping Cat (detail), 1984, pencil, wash and pastel