What being a foster cat mom taught me about loving and letting go
This is a reflection on fostering rescue cats. But it’s also a reflection on loving and letting go of anything we come to hold dear.
Fostering rescue cats has been one of the funnest and most life-changing experiences I’ve had. Throughout the pandemic, my foster cats became my lifeline. They gave my days structure and meaning, and taught me so much about life. These are a few of the things they taught me about loving and letting go:
Our ability to commit is limited by our life circumstances
Most of us get into fostering because we really want a pet, but physical circumstances simply don’t allow us to commit to giving a pet a forever home. We understand that wanting something is not the same as being ready for it. Our capacity to commit might change in the future, but in the meantime, the best we can do is provide a pet with a temporary shelter.
We know this is temporary, but we fall in love anyway
We know that our foster babies might be with us for a few weeks or a few months, and we know this will not be forever — but we get attached anyway. Just when we think we’ve found our ‘favorite’, a new cat comes into our lives — and we fall in love all over again. Each one brings something completely different to the table, has such a unique personality, and is annoying and endearing in its own special way. Each one teaches us something new.
Our hearts expand as we go along
No matter how many new cats come into our lives, each one that came before continues to remain in our memory for the special dent they made on our hearts. We’ll always remember the first one we bottle fed. The first successfully integrated pair that became soulmates and got adopted out together. The one that always destroyed the toilet paper. The one that could sit for hours looking out the window chirping at birds. The more experiences we go through, the more we realize our ability to understand and catalog these experiences grows. We learn our hearts have the capacity to expand and make room for all these memories.
We occasionally harbor thoughts of forever
There are definitely many points in a foster parents’ journey where we think to ourselves, Maybe, just maybe, I can keep this one. Sometimes, we manage to make it work and the story ends happily for everyone when a “foster fail” happens on occasion. But most of the time, we know that while forever is a nice idea, it would not be fair to the rescued cat if we were not able to commit to keeping them healthy and happy for the rest of their lives.
Letting go is not loving them less, but wanting the best for them
Adoption days are bittersweet — on one hand, we’re saying goodbye to a cat that has become a part of our daily lives. We’ve become accustomed to their habits, quirks, and the way they make us feel when they rub their heads against us or look up at us with large, pearly, questioning eyes.
On the other hand, we understand that this is also one of the most important days of their lives — the day they found someone who wants to give them a forever home. Someone who will be able to give them a life that’s significantly more enhanced than what you can give them at this very moment in time. And so even in the sadness of saying goodbye, there’s a part of us that’s thrilled for their next chapter.
We continue to miss them, and they continue to miss us
Even though we know they’re in a better environment, we continue to miss them. And they miss us too. If they hear our voice on a video or a phone call, they will start to look for us. If we ever swing by for a visit, they will remember us. And every time we flick through photos on our phone and come across an old photo of them, all the memories of them will come rushing back in an instant.
We continue to love from afar
One of the highlights of being a foster parent is when our foster babies’ parents allow us to follow along on their journey through social media. Seeing the cats you once cared for growing bigger, chonkier, and happily playing on someone else’s social media feed is a different kind of love — it’s a love where you realize that you played an important role in socializing them, making them more adoptable — but where you also understand that to continue loving them, you have to let them graduate to the next chapter of their lives. So you make peace with loving them from a distance, knowing they’re well-loved and well-fed and happy.
In an ideal world, every stray animal will find a forever home from the time they are rescued. But that is very rarely the case. And although moving cats between foster homes and to their forever homes puts them through a lot of stress, giving them a temporary home can also be a very kind thing to do. It helps them unlearn some of their bad habits they picked up from the past traumas of living on the streets. A foster home is a kind of “halfway house” where rescue cats can learn how to settle into the comfortable stability of being an indoor cat — where they learn that they are safe, and they are loved, and their truest, quirkiest, weirdest personalities can come out.
This is a reflection about fostering rescue cats.
But it’s also a reflection about loving and letting go.
In an ideal world, the first person we fall in love with will be the person we spend forever with. But this is very rarely the case. And although relationship endings are always difficult, and new chapters are always bittersweet, some relationships shape and define us more than others. These are the ones in which we found a temporary home and shelter from the storms of life, where maybe for the first time in our lives, we learnt what it felt like to be able to be ourselves, and to be treated with care. Ones where we unlearn some of our bad habits, that prepare us to adjust better to something more lasting and long-term.
In these relationships, letting someone go is the kindest thing we can do, knowing that life holds things for them that we cannot give them. Letting them go doesn’t take away from the memories shared or the love exchanged. It will never erase the dents made on your heart. But with time and understanding, letting go teaches us that love can take many shapes and forms. We begin to form a richer, deeper understanding of love — a love that doesn’t force us to exhaust ourselves trying to hold on to it, but adapts, changes form, evolves — and continues to exist.
This is a kind of love we so rarely see being talked about — but it’s one we should be deeply grateful for. Every person who allowed us to make a temporary home in their hearts did something kind for us, and played an irreplaceable part in helping us become the people we are today.
