Things I Never Thought I'd Say (Until I Had Kittens)
By Ashley Schausten
Nobody warns you about the talking.
Before I started fostering, I had a perfectly normal relationship with language. I said things like "pass the salt" and "I'll be there in ten minutes." Now? Now I say things that would make my former self side-eye me hard.
Here's a running list, updated nightly:
- "Sir, that is the dog's bed, and you are a kitten."
- "Please stop grooming my eyeballs."
- "I will trade you one wet food for the shoelace. Final offer."
- "We do not negotiate with terrorists who scream at 4 a.m. for a meal they already had."
- "You had ONE job, and it was not to hide inside the sofa."
- "No, you may not supervise the dishwasher."
- "Who taught you to hiss? We're working on that."
And my personal favorite, said with complete sincerity at 2:47 a.m. last Tuesday:
"Thank you for purring. I know that was hard for you."
If you've fostered, you know. The talking becomes the whole thing. You narrate their little lives like a nature documentary. You develop strong opinions on which kitten has the best toe beans. You start to understand that a slow blink is, in fact, a love language — and you'd better blink back, or there will be consequences.
Anyway. The kittens are thriving. I am, by every objective measure, unhinged. We're accepting both outcomes as wins.
