Published Mar 13, 2025
When Cindy Moon’s coworkers rescued a malnourished kitten, she decided to foster him until he could be adopted. But after seeing the kitten’s journey from completely shut down to a normal, happy cat, she wasn’t sure if she could give him up!
This is Amaru’s adoption story.
Slowly improving
Cindy says that the kitten, initially named Amala, was tired and weak but slowly improved under her care. They initially thought the kitten was a girl, only to find that he was a boy!
During his first bath, he sat completely still without the typical struggling or curiosity you would expect from a cat under running water. He was so weak and so fearful that he wasn’t reacting to anything at all.
He stood with his legs bowed out to either side and couldn’t walk normally. For the first four days, he only slept and ate.
After this, she began to see improvements in his movements and attitude. He looked at Cindy with such love in his eyes, clearly grateful for her help and dedication.
Cindy soon learned that Amala was a cuddle bug! She also learned that he was a boy, and renamed him Amaro.
Foster fail?
A foster fail is when someone initially means to foster an animal before finding them a home, but falls in love and keeps them instead. Many cat fosters online are inundated with people pressuring them to keep the cat, and Cindy’s online audience was no different.
This can be a difficult decision for foster pet parents because keeping too many of their fosters can mean closing their doors to other animals. After all, there are only so many cats that one person can care for!
Cindy was hesitant for other reasons. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to keep Amaro–in fact, she said that the decision would have been an easy “yes” if not for a few factors.
Firstly, Cindy already had a full house, with four cats and a dog. After adopting the second cat, she’d promised her husband that she wouldn’t take in any more permanently, but the promise had been too hard to keep. Cindy fell in love with her cats and had a difficult time saying no. However, she really wanted to stick to her word this time around.
“I’m just really putting time and thought into this,” she told her followers. She wanted to say yes badly, and her husband was actually okay with the new addition–but she wasn’t sure keeping Amaro was the best idea.
Finally, to everyone’s delight, Cindy updated her followers in a video announcing Amaro’s adoption. In the video, her husband was cuddling Amaro, and she said that they both fell in love with him. They’d be keeping him after all!
How to foster cats
If you’ve been inspired by Cindy and Amaro’s story and want to foster cats yourself, consider reaching out to your local shelter or cat rescue. Every foster situation looks different. Some people foster cats short-term, taking them in for a month or even less time, and this allows them to help save dozens or even hundreds of lives!
Others don’t know if another cat would be a good fit for their home, and use fostering as a trial period. Even if it doesn’t work out, they’ve given a cat a safe home when they needed it most, and can help them find the perfect family.
There’s no shortage of cats in need of temporary placement, and no wrong way to help–whether you foster seniors or kittens, and whether you save one life or twenty, it’s still a fantastic thing to do!
