15/08/2023
What a great story! A heartwarming helper for tiny lives in need.
Hello 👋🏽! Most of you who follow my page likely know my story and how I got here, but for those of you who are new here, allow me to introduce myself.
We’ll start with the basics: my name is Ashley, I am a veterinary technician here in the Lakes Region of NH, more often than not I have a kitten in tow and I am mom to a menagerie of shelter misfits.
Growing up I always knew I was meant to work with animals in some capacity, I was always finding some kind of critter and wanting to nurture it and help, from chipmunks and squirrels to ducks. Heck I even spent my prom night in high school nursing an injured wood duckling. Never in a million years would I have thought I would end up dedicating my life to cats - I grew up with dogs, never having been very comfortable around cats. I got my first cat, Meekah while living in a dorm room my sophomore year in college, oops! Shortly thereafter I found myself looking for a part time job during school breaks, and ended up at a humane society as an animal caretaker; it was all downhill from there - CATS.
My first bottle-baby, Nora came home with me one night as there was no one else able to take her home, I only had her for 24 hours until we found another more experienced foster (and taking a 3 week old kitten back to a dorm room was likely frowned upon). During those 24 hours I just stared at her, petrified that if I looked away something bad would happen to her. I scoured the internet looking for any kind of information that would help me help her.
By now I’ve fostered a few hundred kittens, both orphaned and some with their moms, some have only stayed a few days, others I’ve had for months. Each and every time I fall in love with watching them experience life for the first time - their first meow, first play, the first time they jump and pounce, learning to become the tiny little predators they are. Over the years I then geared myself towards the tiniest of them - the ones who were sick or who had special needs, the ones needing the most help, the ones most often euthanized. Kittens can be more resilient than people often give them credit for, and if they try to fight, I fight both with them and for them.
Over the past 12 years of fostering, it’s natural that some kittens stand out and made more of an impact on my life than others. Don’t get me wrong - each and every kitten I have fostered has brought me so much joy and usually a lot of stress, cause that’s just the nature of working with tiny creatures. But a few have brought something a little extra. One that automatically comes to mind when I think of why I made this venture is Lazarus Pancake. I know, big name and he sure as heck lived up to it in every way imaginable.
Pancake arrived via Animal Control es**rt, a seemingly deceased 3 week old tuxedo kitten. That is, until he gasped for air - GAME ON. Stabilization efforts were immediately put into place by my team at work, each of us circling around this teeny tiny kitten who weighed no more than 7oz (that’s like a roll of nickels). His body temperature was too low to read, blood glucose too low to read, he was blue and his heart rate was dangerously low. Now don’t get all sad just yet, Pancake put his rally cap on and makes the best comeback in all of kitten medicine. Oxygen, heat support, IV fluids and resuscitation medications, and slowly his heart rate rose, he was pink again, and breathing on his own and his body temp slowly began to rise. Covered in karo syrup, he quite literally came back from the dead, hence Lazarus Pancake.
Pancake slowly grew stronger over the coming days and weeks, and became one of my absolute favorite fosters of all time. He was such a special little dude that I had even considered keeping him as my first bottle baby foster failure. Sadly life, and the powers that be had other plans for Pancake and he departed this world at just 17 weeks old due to FIP (feline infectious peritonitis). We are month away from the 6 year anniversary of his death, and even writing this now I still shed tears over that little cat with so much personality. So I guess in a way you can say that BabyCats Etcetera may be in honor of a life that had so much living left to do, of a life that I simply couldn’t save.
I no longer work in a shelter full time, but it became my dream to one day start my own rescue, focusing on the most at risk felines.
BabyCats Etcetera was built on years of dedication to the animal welfare field. We will be a small rescue to start and hope to expand with time, and eventually obtain our 501c3 non-profit status. One day we hope to be involved in Trap-Neuter-Release Programs that this area so desperately needs, but that’s for another day. Today, we focus on Chad and the kittens of tomorrow, growing our audience and support, sharing our adventures along the way. So what’s the Etcetera stand for? While we may be a kitten focused rescue, we certainly wouldn’t turn away pediatric animals of other domesticated species. I hope you stay around and follow our journey to greatness. 🐱
Photo of baby Pancake for tax 🥞
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