What the Kittens Taught Me About People
By Ashley Schausten
I've been thinking a lot lately about people.
When you do rescue, you meet a lot of them. You meet the people you rescue from — the ones surrendering a cat, or a litter, or a situation they can't manage anymore. Early on, it was easy to be angry at them. It's easy to picture an "evil plot" behind every surrender, to imagine someone careless or cruel.
But the longer I do this, the more I think most of the time it's not that at all.
Most of the time it's somebody who just got a little bit in over their head. A cat they didn't realize wasn't spayed. A litter they didn't plan for. A landlord, a new baby, a job loss, a health scare — life moved, and the math stopped working. And that's really easy to do with these animals. They're small, and then suddenly they're a lot. They reproduce faster than you can blink. One missed appointment and you're bottle-feeding four.
That realization has given me a whole new perspective on compassion — not only for the animals, but for the people on both sides of every rescue. For the people we rescue from, who are usually just people in over their heads doing the hard, brave thing of asking for help instead of walking away. And for the people we rescue for — the adopters, the fosters, the donors, the ones who show up.
I'm less quick to judge now. I'm a lot quicker to hand someone a carrier and say "thank you for bringing her to me" instead of a lecture. That cat still gets saved either way. The kindness costs me nothing, and it might be the first anyone's shown them in a while.
And honestly? These animals are fascinating. Every single one is a whole little personality with opinions and grudges and a preferred napping spot and a specific way they like to be held. The bonds I've formed with each of them — even the ones who are only with me a few weeks, even the ones who started by trying to remove my fingers — are something genuinely special. You let a feral kitten learn to trust you, and something in you gets reshaped too.
The joy they've brought to my life is more than I know how to put into words. The compassion it's taught me is the part I didn't see coming.
