Birthdays be gone
Our friend (and the one who literately saved Luna's life as a kitten) asked me last month when it was Luna's litter's birthday again as she stopped working with that organisation and couldn't see the group messages anymore. I forgot to check and so it turned out that not one, but two birthdays passed. Today, I will talk about my dear and oh so sweet "little" Luna as it was her birthday yesterday. Maesi's birthday was a few weeks ago, oops. I will dedicate another post to her first year in the next week or so.
The beginning
We were asked if we wanted to start fostering our first litter as newly foster parents in the organisation. This was the litter that was currently under our friend's (who was a stranger at the time) care and another litter was found in the garbage (like the litter she was taking care of at the time, it's horrible!) and were in need of someone with experience of such tiny kittens to make sure that the chance of survival was bigger. She was the only one that has tons of experience and truly knows what she's doing and devotes all her time and energy to them, she's an angel for these kittens!
This is how the poor babies arrived at my friend's house, soaked in pee and dirt, starving and freezing.. People that do this to animals should be getting the same treatment imo.
This means that they were looking for some sort of half-way house for the 5 babies that were a bit older now and all doing well. And with that my bundle of beans diaries were born. If you have not read it at the time and love kitten stories, you may want to go back and read them.
I just noticed that it's easiest to share with you the post where we decided to adopt Luna last year, as all the bundle of beans diary parts are linked below in that post, as well as the posts about fostering Aki (later adopted by us and called Maesi) and Percy (the very afraid kitten who turned into a wonderful young cat upon departure. Click here to go back to Luna's adoption story and all the foster stories at the same time.
She was fed every two hours and everything came straight out for a whole week, yet this little strong baby survived thanks to an angel caring for her, I'm forever grateful <3 as thanks to her, we have our Luna!
Luna almost didn't make it
I remember caring for the bundle of beans litter, doing very well, being strong and very playful, making tons and tons of pictures and videos while they brought us SO MUCH love and a wonderful experience for us as a family and reading our friend share things about the litter with Luna, who was doing very bad and she was afraid she'd not make it.
At the time I had no time to fall in love with a kitten as these 5 were under our care and my priority, they were all adopted and I assumed in one of our next adoption stories there would be that connection and option to adopt. Until we were considering to adopt either Maesi or Percy, but we still had our bigger cat Mochi, who really couldn't stand Maesi as she was not his type of cat, he was chill, she was too loud and demanding, lol. We wanted to adopt one for him to be friends with and then our friend told us about Luna.
She said "how did I not see this sooner, I've been spending so much time with her and never made the connection with you guys to meet her". A few days later we went there and she crawled into my neck, it was instant love. I knew she belonged with us.
Luna days before we took her home.. what a tiny little kitten! That cute little face made me fall in love right away!
Three kitten's a crowd
I didn't count our cat Mochi because he sadly passed away not long after we adopted Luna. He got hit by a car and we had to say goodbye to my beloved beautiful tiger cat who was finally enjoying it when I pet him and started to finally come closer to us after 9 long months of persistence. That brought tons of tears and it was the first time that our daughter had to deal with the loss of a pet, it was heartbreaking...
I feel lucky that these three kittens were in our home when it happened though, because they brought so much happy moments and joy, they could not fully take away the pain and sadness but they surely made us cope with it easier. I feel some comfort knowing that he was out playing with his cat friend who came to our window every single day to chill with him and trying to get him out to play. This cat also grieved for weeks in front of our window when he passed, btw.. This was heartbreaking, we kept feeding him until we moved as if he was our "extra" cat.
Luna was tiny and fragile, look at her now!
Especially compared to Maesi, who was a character from day 1, and a bit of a bully to Percy when he arrived (a scared little kitten who wanted to make friends so badly). Luna was part of the family instantly, you can't not love her as she's so lovable.
She quickly learned how to stand her ground against the much wilder (at the time, this totally changed lol) Maesi very fast because they had to decide who was the boss out of the two, lol. Luna has always remained the silent cat while Maesi is the loud talkative one. Although I notice that Luna starts purring louder and makes some more sounds lately as well, which sounds adorable (as if she's a kitten still). How different cats can be is so clear with these two!
This is her nowadays, super soft and she leaves a lot of her fur everywhere where she can because she looooovess every person, door, chair, table, glass, cabinet, you name it, she's the sweetest thing but man, she and her siblings are all huge!
They eat the same food, yet Luna outgrew Maesi soon after the sterilisation last year.. oh well, it's not as if she's not running around enough because she can go mental for a few hours a day!
Big cats
It was funny to see in the group chat that all her siblings are big and a bit fat, but they all turned out wonderfully sweet and I'm 100% sure that the care of our friend in the very first weeks has made this possible, the love and devotion she has for these kittens, no matter what she's going through herself, she deserves a medal if you ask me.
No foster home this year
We decided to focus on our two ladies for now as the move to this new home took a bit of time to let them settle properly and we don't want to change their current routine although it's tempting to start fostering again because there are so many that need foster families. Sadly, we can't do it right now, there's too much other things going on that need my full attention first. With these kittens, I know they will be my priority and I can't afford that right now, sadly.
I'm sure we will do so again in the future, but probably not in this flat but when we move to an actual house of our own. I'm grateful for the experiences we had though because without that experience last year, we wouldn't have had Luna or Maesi and tons of memories with the other foster kittens. It's such a thankful job, and yes, dirty at times. But worth it!
And what's not better than to end this post with a picture of my daughter so cuddly with Luna when she was just adopted last year:
vs them last week:
What a cute couple <3 Love you both!! Happy birthday Luna, cheers to many more years in our family!
Next time, we look back at Maesi's adoption story and her first year in our family. We are lucky to have them both, the universe had a weird way of throwing them into our direction but in the end, it was meant to be!
Have a great week ahead!
Pictures above are mine...