Fostering a Shelter Animal Is Easier Than You Think

There hasn’t been a better time to adopt or foster a shelter animal than now. Not only is the process super easy, but you’d be sheltering an animal that otherwise would spend most of its day in a cage. We took a trip to Burlington Animal Shelter to look at some of the animals. Little did we know we’d come home with our new foster cat, Meatball! 

The process for adopting and fostering turned out to be not nearly as hard as we expected. We decided last week on a rainy day to go to the shelter to play with the animals since we were missing our pets at home. As we pulled up, we completely forgot that COVID was to keep us from actually being able to see the cats and dogs. With much persistence, we finally got let inside one at a time to see all the different cats. 

They had a small selection, which is a really good thing considering they are all abandoned or stray animals, but the dogs and cats there were so friendly and sweet. 

We were allowed inside to see the cats, but the dogs had to be brought outside. They allow you to walk them around and play with them as you would if we were allowed in the facility. Once we played with the different dogs and cats, we realized that although the dog we fell in love with was super cute, he was 102 pounds— which is a little too big for what our small college apartments can handle… So, we got a new cat!

Usually, Burlington Animal Shelter has all of their current animals posted on their website. The process begins with either adopting a pet straight away or fostering it until someone decides to officially adopt. This allows for returns if the fostering process doesn’t seem suitable for your lifestyle, and although we fell in love with Meatball, it made the most sense to at least try out parenting a cat for a while before we officially decided to adopt. 

Fostering was free and quick. We had to provide all our basic information and show a form of identification. Once the paperwork was all complete, we headed to PetSmart and picked out all new beds and toys! We highly recommended calling Burlington Animal Shelter ahead of time to schedule an appointment to look at their animals and hopefully also adopt one yourself!