The Night We Almost Lost One
By Ashley Schausten
I want to tell you about a night I don't talk about much.
She came to us tiny — barely a handful, all eyes and bones and a will I couldn't quite believe. The shelter was full, and bottle babies don't do well there, so she came home with me. The first night she ate. The second night she ate less. By the third night she wouldn't eat at all.
If you've fostered, you know what "won't eat" means at that age. It's not picky. It's an alarm bell.
I sat on the bathroom floor with her in a towel, syringe-feeding her drop by drop, every twenty minutes, all night. I kept telling myself the same thing I tell every foster who texts me panicked at 3 a.m.:
They feel you. They feel that you're trying.
Somewhere around dawn, she latched. Weakly, barely. But she latched. And then she slept — actually slept, not the limp sleep of a fading kitten, the grumpy, annoyed sleep of a baby who is tired of being messed with. I cried. The ugly kind.
She made it. She's one of the calico girls you'll meet on our kittens page, and she's a tiny tyrant now who has never once let anyone forget she's the boss.
I tell this story not because it's unique — every foster has a version of it — but because it's the whole reason we do this. Rescue isn't the happy after-photos. It's the bathroom floor at 4 a.m. It's the syringe, the towel, the prayer, and the choice to keep going when the math says don't. Every kitten who makes it to a forever home got there because someone chose the hard night.
That's what your support buys. Not a photo. A fighting chance.
