My wife and I have always been cat people (we're dog people too). Early on in our marriage, my wife expressed an interest in one day fostering cats.
At the time, with a full load (full-time job, kids, and all that comes with it), I didn't have much free time and my once budding Content Creator lifestyle had calm shuddering to a halt. So I told her, fostering would be fine... if I could livestream it.
Jump ahead to four and a half years ago, after Amanda's cat Avocado had been taken from us before his time and a weird twist of fate landed her on a Facebook post of kittens in need we ended up fostering two kittens; Cloudy & Stormy.
And then we were off to the races and never looked back. We fostered almost non-stop, with only a few days here in between litters or a week there for the holidays.
for 4.5 years we've fostered (and
live-streamed it), fostering over 100+ cats and specializing in the youngest of kittens, including newborns. We've bottle-fed, weened, had vet emergencies. We've fed, cared for, treated, and raised. We've put in time and effort, love, and money and it's been an amazing experience.
And yes, we've streamed it. Starting on an old iPhone streaming directly to Facebook and advancing to a laptop and then Mini PC streaming to over a dozen platforms at once to now--
At our height, we found a home on the now-defunct Mixer website. We'd hit 10K followers and often had dozens to hundreds of people viewing at any given time. Part of this was timing and part novelty. On Mixer we were the only 24/7 animal cam, we had a viewer-controlled camera switcher and we had a pregnant mom ready to give birth. It was an event people were waiting for enthusiastically.
When Mixer closed, it took a while to find our footing, our new home, our base of operations but it soon became clear Twitch was where everyone was watching from and most of the 12 other platforms no longer had much to compare. So when the time came to become Twitch affiliates we took it. So this is our home base now
https://www.twitch.tv/cuteavalanche We do still have a viewer-controlled camera switcher and some other fun interactives (mainly graphic overlays and season games).
This has been my primary creative outlet for the last few years and I've started to focus on what comes next.
Mainly, two major steps that are both very daunting
- Become our own Animal Rescue nonprofit
- Open a Cat Cafe
I'll talk more on these in the future, as they're both probably several blogs worth of ideas.
As fosters, we currently volunteer through Kitten Rescue, and if we do either of those next steps we would want it to be in line with KR and not as a replacement. I want our nonprofit to focus on helping Animal Rescue and Animal Rescuers.
If we open a cat cafe, it would showcase exclusively KR cats.
So this is where we are at. The holidays are upon us, and we've had a strange year for fostering. This again will require its own blog post, as year 2 of a pandemic saw an exploding community, stray and feral populations, and declining potential adopters.
We've had a mother and daughter bonded pair available for adoption for several months.
Meet Bonita & Cutie
Click to view
Their Adoption listings are:
Bonita • Kitten Rescue
Bonita is a super sweet and playful young cat looking for a loving forever home. Rescued as a pregnant teen, upon first arriving
kittenrescue.org
Cutie Patootie • Kitten Rescue
Cutie Patootie is a friendly, fun and playful kitten! The leader of her litter, Cutie was the bravest, most confident, curious and the first
kittenrescue.org
More to come
Peace Meowt