Olivia, a 16-year-old cat who was fostered by
Kathi Alexander.
Photo courtesy of Kathi Alexander.
It started with cocker spaniels. Specifically, it started with one 12-year-old cocker spaniel named Checkmate. The senior dog’s family was moving on—the son went to college and the parents wanted to travel—and a dog no longer fit into their lives. So Checkmate was adopted by Kathi Alexander, who cared for him throughout the final 9 months of his life. “I was appalled that he could be thrown away after a lifetime of love,” she said. The vet said that kidney failure took the dog’s life, but Alexander remains convinced it was a broken heart.
Alexander, currently the e-marketing manager and donations database administrator for the Montgomery County Humane Society (MCHS), went on to do more rescue and foster work, with a special emphasis on senior pets. She started fostering a decade ago, “one dog at a time,” then, in 2004, she stepped into the foster coordinator position at MCHS. “The best way to manage the department and learn about the needs of other species and the foster homes was to jump in feet first,” Alexander said, and soon she was fostering not just dogs but also cats, hamsters, gerbils and guinea pigs.
Today, Alexander’s house is full with four special dogs and two special cats—all aged 7 years or older—who came along and never left. She also continues to take in foster cats, usually seniors and usually one at a time. (Meet some of her past and current fosters in the slide show below.) The resident pets (except the female “Maine coon wanna-be,” who is more reserved) are generally patient with the temporary visitors. The adult and senior foster cats might stay for several weeks or several months, time that they would otherwise spend in a shelter cage. The older cats tend to be quieter and more loving than kittens, and “they don’t need to be trained; they aren’t going to trash your house,” Alexander said.
These cats mostly ended up in the shelter through no fault of their own. In some cases, their owner died or moved into a nursing home. Some, like a 16-year-old calico named Olivia (pictured above), were simply abandoned. Olivia had been left in a home along with another cat and two small dogs. The dogs were quickly adopted, but one of the cats died and the second cat, Olivia, was expected to die as well. Alexander brought Olivia home with her, just “to give her a soft place to die,” but it seemed Olivia had some more living to do. After a couple of weeks, the cat rebounded. She was eventually adopted by a lady in a retirement community who needed a feline companion to replace the elderly kitty she’d recently lost. Olivia’s story demonstrates why fostering senior cats is worthwhile: “After all,” Alexander said, “she wouldn’t have lived if MCHS didn’t have a system set up whereby she could have gone to a volunteer’s home to get TLC.”
This summer, Alexander is breaking her pattern of fostering older cats; she and her college-age daughter are caring for two kittens. Kittens and teenage girls are perfect for one another, she said, though she also described her decision to bring the rambunctious kittens into her home as a moment of “temporary insanity.”
Whatever their age, Alexander takes satisfaction in knowing she has given the foster cats another chance at a good life. And she does it all in memory of Checkmate, the broken-hearted cocker spaniel who was her first rescue.
For more info: Interested in fostering cats in need? Read about some reasons to become a cat foster for the Montgomery County Humane Society.
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