by Lupe Gore

Feral Paws Rescue Group in Fresno shares with us some of their animal rescue adventures every month. Check out KRL’s article about Feral Paws to learn more about them. Lupe Gore is a FPRG volunteer.

It was late summer in 2017 when Feral Paws Rescue was asked to pull some cats and kittens from the CCSPCA in Fresno. They brought a mother and her two kittens back to the Rescue, along with others whose lives needed to be saved. The kittens were still nursing so they were put in a kennel with their mother. The mother is a beautiful Tortie and her kittens were two little girls, all black. The Rescue has no idea if these were her only babies or where this dear family came from before arriving at the CCSPCA.

I fell in love with this family as soon as I saw them during one of my volunteer visits to the Rescue to help take care of the cats who are there. It was fun to watch them grow a little each time between my visits there and to see what good care they were being given by their mother. Finally, in early October, the two little girls were old enough to be taken from their mother, who by this time was starting to become weary of them climbing up the sides of the kennel; they all needed more space. I brought the two kittens home to foster them with my other black cats and named them Sabrina and Samantha. Tortie Mom (as we call her) was then spayed and moved to another part of the Rescue in a large area where she could roam freely with the other cats, get on cat trees, use scratching posts, and watch everything going on outside, which includes the families of chickens and the Rescue’s guard dog passing by on a regular basis.

All the cats in my house warmly accepted the two little girls, but surprisingly it was my big orange tabby male, Donald, who gave them the most attention when they arrived. He would bathe them and sleep with them on the bed. One of my black females also accepted them and played mom to them. Most of all they just wanted to snuggle with the other cats and sleep on the soft blankets on my bed. Meanwhile back at the Rescue, there were more kittens who had been saved from the shelter, and Tortie Mom was there for them, although she became impatient with them after too much time spent playing. Sometimes, she’d rather just lounge around and enjoy her own space.

Sabrina and Samantha became a “foster failure” for me as they were just so happy in my home. They continued to grow over the months, although it seems they are going to remain small; they are now almost a year old and still look like kittens. Samantha, especially, still loves to sleep on my bed at night, although during the summer she prefers the cool sheets to the warm blankets. Their mother is still over at the Rescue awaiting adoption, and now she’s enjoying a brand new enclosure that was donated to the Rescue. She thinks she’s the queen of that little building and keeps all the others who are inside it in line. Just this week we were moving some more kittens who had just been pulled from the shelter into that building and Tortie Mom took to them as if they were her own. Of course she’s still the same lovable, beautiful lady she’s always been since I first met her and her babies last summer. Next month Sabrina and Samantha will be celebrating their first birthday.

Check out more animal rescue stories in our Pet Perspective section & watch for more stories from Feral Paws every other month, and we would love to have you join our KRL Pets Facebook group. Advertise in KRL and 10% of your advertising fees can go to Feral Paws.