How to Be a Foster Failure

Molly explains it all.

Maybe you'll come into a house as a mama cat with kittens. You'll be scared and too shy to interact with people.

Your strategy should be to hide, whenever possible. Be camera shy. When people come to pet the kittens, flee. Almost no one will know the kittens even HAVE a mother.

Where's Molly?

 People will try to pet you. Don't allow this behavior. Run away. Hide. At some point they will take you to the vet. This is horrible. When you get back, burrow deep into the walls, behind the insulation, where no one can find you. The humans will be worried. Let them worry. They deserve it.

Eventually, come out from behind the walls. There is food here. There is a big, handsome orange cat here. Maybe you can find a place here. Sometimes there is butter. Maybe being a house cat is not so bad. Eventually, the humans will realize that you are here to stay.

Molly + Ian, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.

Or maybe you'll be an outdoor cat, roaming the neighborhood, getting belly rubs and food wherever you can. A "six-dinner Sid."

Those indoor cats will look at you from behind the door and hiss. Those pampered indoor cats. Who needs them?

Keep coming around. Soon you'll be a fixture at dinnertime. Then it will start getting cold. Sometimes the humans will leave the garage door open for you. Then there will be a box with a bed in it. Not bad, you think. Not bad at all.

I own this chair.

Then it will get colder. There will be a room inside with an open window, and a soft chair, and a warm blanket. A safe place to sleep. And that's where you'll stay.

Just for a while, the humans say. Until you find a forever home.

But you know better. You know that eventually the other cats will stop hissing at you. That they'll start to realize you're part of the family. And you will notice that the humans have stopped calling you a "foster cat." Now they call you a "foster failure."

But you know there's no success like failure. You know you are a most successful cat.

I am Clark Gable, and yes, I AM fabulous.