The little Rascal - my most difficult foster cat

Looking at Muffin Terror kind of reminded me of an ex-foster cat.

Last December, my neighbour, A from next block asked me to foster a kitten which she'd rescued. A was going on her vacation and could not find a foster. Out of desperation perhaps, she asked me (a stranger who seemed friendly to the stray cats), to do the fostering. At that time, I didn't know A, although I'd seen her feeding the stray cats. I didn't know what to say then, and I didn't exactly say yes, but somehow a week later, ended up saying yes to her request. A passed me some canned food, cat litter, and a tiny carton box to be used as the cat's litter box. :b

The cat was Rascal, a seemingly-friendly kitten at around 7 months old. At first, we just called him Ah Boy, or sometimes, Pink Panther as his face looked like that cartoon character. The name Rascal came later (not very much later), because we discovered his true colours very soon after.

The good thing about Rascal was that he wasn't fussy about food, and took whatever dry food that we had available at home (to supplement his canned food diet). He also had good litter box habits, except that the tiny carton box did not worked for him (it toppled into a mess) and he kicked up quite a bit of sand.

Within 24 hours of taking him home, I started fretting and regretting. A sweet little kitten this cat was not! Although just a small-sized kitten, Racal was hyper, alert, very energetic and worst of all, aggressive towards anything that moves, us included. Anything that moves was viewed as prey, and he would charge at us, bite our ankles, our hands, fingers, or whatever contact points he could get at. This happened every time we enter or leave the "cat room". It was like we had a loony cat on our hands. The only time he didn't chew me up was when I entered the spare bedroom with a bowl of food (may be that's what they call periods of lucidity?). During the time we fostered him, no one at home had ever seen him sleep, even though we did check on him quite often during the daytime - that's how hyper and alert he was.

At that time, A hadn't yet flown off for her vacation, but I didn't think of surrendering the difficult-to-handle Rascal, because it wasn't a nice thing to do since I had agreed to foster him. So I hung on, and as the days went by, the number of scratches and bite marks on our hands, fingers, arms and legs grew in tandem.

I had to start consulting cat books on disciplinary issues - how to stop a cat from biting us. One of the suggested methods was hitting the surrounding furniture with a stick of rolled-up newspapers, but that didn't work for long, as Rascal would shift his attention and view the roll-up newspapers as prey. To help burn up his energy, we also hung up a springing 'fishing' toy which Rascal would chase until he got tired. At times, out of anger and an auto reflex action (from being bitten), I lashed out at him and gave him a smack (which I would feel guilty about afterwards). Still, he remain fearless and continued his biting. I also resorted to wearing rubber gloves too, but again, that didn't scare him for long.


The fostering went on for 2.5 weeks. Whatever those animal studies had said about pets helping to relieve stress and lower one's blood pressure did not apply in this case. Rascal's presence happened to do the opposite to my stress level and BP! Also for the first time, I had a cat at home that I didn't particularly like, much less enjoyed. When A came back from her vacation, I was relieved and could not wait to send Rascal back!

Life is full of ironies sometimes. Despite his bad behaviour, such a Rascal can still manage to get adopted. Although the young man was initially reluctant to adopt Rascal (who by then wasn't a cute kitten at almost 9 months), he managed to accept and come to love the naughty Rascal, who up till today, continued to bite his owner, although I hear that the sight of the bamboo cane does help in his discipline sometimes.

I guess the young man must be a most willing slave to Rascal and his naughty cat antics. Afterall, he did renamed this rascal of a cat, Emperor.

:)