by Lupe Gore,
Feral Paws Adopter/Board Member

This month we’re featuring a beautiful young lady cat pulled from the CCSPCA (Fresno) by Feral Paws Rescue.

I will introduce you to Pepper. She is four years old, with a beautiful black and brown swirl tabby coat and little white mittens on her feet. She was an owner surrender to the shelter after being with her previous humans since she was five weeks old, apparently after being advertised as a free kitten on a web site. Pepper wasn’t doing well in the shelter environment probably because she didn’t understand why she was there after being at her previous home since she was so small. She was hiding in the back of the shelter kennel, so Feral Paws Rescue was contacted.

Pepper

The sad part of all this for Pepper was, when we went to pick her up at the shelter, she has nursing three kittens. We didn’t know anything about her being a mom prior to going to the shelter. We also found out that the babies weren’t going with her. The shelter was going to keep them and put them into foster care. Our rescue doesn’t leave family behind when we are pulling a family, but the shelter has that call. We can’t make them send the complete family. I know it’s sad and happens so often in cases like this that the shelter finds a foster for babies and no longer needs the mom. They will either send the mom out to foster or euthanize her because the time to wait to spay a nursing mom is too long for a shelter to wait. It’s very hard on the moms they grieve themselves, not understand why they don’t have there babies, especially if they are good moms that took good care of their babies and loved them. I disagree with this policy, but thankful we could save the mom.

She was pulled on September 1, and after being spayed, she went into foster care to recover in a home setting. She loves peace and quiet and gets along with other cats, but she likes to have a separate food dish and prefers her own space. Pepper is a very friendly, sweet girl, who just wants to be loved all the time! When she isn’t eating (she loves Temptations treats!) or napping, she’s playing with cat toys, especially the ones with catnip in them, and coming up to her foster human asking for head bonks, chin scratches, and love. Pepper seems to be enjoying her life now and actually, Pepper’s foster human has fallen in love with her and this could be a huge “foster failure”! One thing’s for sure, Pepper won’t be going back to any shelter at any time and no matter what the circumstance of a cat being at the shelter, Feral Paws Rescue is always there to help save their lives.

EMAIL: fprg.org@gmail[dot]com
Phone: 559-412-7226

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.