Due to the sheer amount of cats that live in shelters, many shelters make use of foster programs. Fostering a cat is the act of taking care of a cat with the ultimate goal of adopting it out to someone else.
Foster cats are often critical cases. These include young, even newborn kittens who require special care that a shelter cannot provide. Foster cats may also be handicapped or paralyzed. Unfortunately, many shelters will euthanize cats who are handicapped due to the unlikeliness of them being adopted and the great expense of keeping them healthy. Foster homes are often the only option for survival for cats like these.
Foster parents are responsible for the medical care and expenses involved in nursing and raising foster cats. Because of this, it is often difficult for shelters to find foster families for critical cases.
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