The story

I'm a 23 year old girl living in downtown Toronto with my lovely boyfriend, Matt.  Just over two weeks ago, I was absent-mindedly indulging my recurring fixation of getting a puppy by looking for puppy ads online. All of my friends, family and indeed myself know that I cannot possibly get a dog with my condo-dwelling, full time working lifestyle, but it was still mildly enjoyable looking at pictures of cute puppies when there were no new home renovation programs to be watched. I found myself on Craigslist, specifically on the Toronto pets section when an ad claiming to be "URGENT" caught my eye. There was a picture of a beautiful black cat nursing tiny grey kittens in a small steel cage. This little family was at a high kill shelter in Hamilton, where they were shortly due for euthanasia because of overcrowding.

The infamous picture from Craigslist:

Just over 24 hours later, the cat family was in my tiny condo on the 28th floor. Matt was displeased, my mum fuming and my mouth dry from disbelief that I'd actually done this. I am only fostering the cats, not giving them a permanent home, you understand, but for some reason it didn't quite seem real at the time: I didn't really believe that anybody would get back to me about saving these cats, or perhaps I thought that plenty of other people would have stepped up to the challenge before me. But no, one day I was young and carefree and literally the next I was, well, still young but carrying a whole load more responsibility.

You may wonder what the big deal is. After all, a cat is little hassle and a mum cat especially is very good at looking after her babies. This is exactly what I thought, yet the all-encapsulating masseuse-like fingers of dread still kneaded at my skin, and still little was I to know exactly how hard this venture was to turn out.