Foster Profile: Henri and Pineapple

For this next entry in the Foster Profile series, I would like to focus on a pair of siblings that got adopted together! Adopted by my family, actually. These guys are Henri (left) and Pineapple (right)! Formally, they were known as Harriet and Heath-bar respectively. My family adopted them from an organization based in Northern New Jersey called FOWA Rescue. FOWA is an all volunteer 501(c)(3) (nonprofit) rescue organization based in Wayne, NJ serving the North Jersey area, dedicated to the welfare, sheltering and placement of homeless animals. They support the fight to end the euthanasia of all adoptable animals.

My mother, after researching this rescue group, contacted one of their foster parents in November of 2017 about seeing a litter of eight week old kittens. We knew that we wanted to adopt a pair together. Henri and Pineapple's litter was found in a dumpster where it appeared that someone had dumped them. My two younger sisters were drawn to these two and the next day we were back to pick them up and bring them home!

They were, of course, timid at first, but day by day they conquered room after room in our house. After about a week and a half, they had full run of the house. They used their litter box beautifully and were getting along perfectly, as you can see from the picture below.

Unfortunately, a few days before Thanksgiving, Henri started to act a bit weird. She wasn't eating nearly anything and she was very lethargic. We took her in the next morning to the vet to get her checked out. She had lost some weight and was dehydrated so she was to stay the night at the vet so they could monitor her. There was nothing that she ate that could have poisoned her or anything of that nature, so her sudden turn for the worse was very concerning. There's something called Fading Kitten Syndrome. FKS is a set of symptoms that cause a kitten to fail to "thrive." Symptoms include: lethargy, decreased appetite, rapid weight loss, dehydration, pale gums and agonal breathing. Henri ticked a few of those markers so the vet chalked it up to possibly being the cause. 

Over the course of the two days Henri was at the vet, she was administered steroid shots to try to get her going again. Thankfully, she made it over the hill and started eating on her own again and walking around and grooming herself. She came home the next morning and has been happily living with her brother and our other cat, Jolie. Henri and Pineapple will be celebrating their third birthday this August 10th.