We’ve been going through the process of screening applicants for Frosty Dragon.

The we thought we had the perfect applicant for him a month ago. The applicant was a quiet, single person living with roommates that had well behaved dogs. There was already another cat in the house, a feral he’d rescued (anyone sympathetic to ferals always gets brownie points with me!)

However, on the home visit, I found that the house had an open dog door. It was just a thick piece of plastic between indoors and outdoors. The applicant’s roommates used it for their dogs.

The home was on acres of farm land, and to be honest, I’m surprised unwanted critters haven’t tried to come into the home. I once cat sat for a family who once had the neighbor’s cat enter their home through a similar means, and their own cat wasn’t happy about the intruder.

Frosty isn’t the type that would care about the outdoors or would try to go through the flap, but nonetheless it did fail home inspections according to rescue guidelines. The rescue let the applicant discuss with his roommates whether they wanted to close the dog door, but ultimately they decided to withdraw from consideration.

In the past 2-3 weeks, I’d been in contact with 2 more applicants. One was a household with 5 kids and a 1.5 year old cat. The other was a single person with 2 cats, ages 8-9.

Frosty hasn’t been around kids. Sometimes my nieces visit and play with my fosters, and it’s usually good so that I can evaluate something like this, but they haven’t met him.

A quiet apartment with other adult cats more closely resembled my own home where he’d been living, but I didn’t want to completely discount the other home. So, I did a home visit for both families.

Both families are great potential pet owners. Neither party had issies with Frosty’s entropion or head tilt. In fact, the larger family replied that his head tilt was one of the reasons they found him adorable.

The kids answered the door when I arrived and exclaimed “are you the cat lady!?” Haha, yes I am, in so many ways. Their current young cat, Stumpy, was perfect for them. 5 kids, the young ones very energetic, could carry the cat around, smother him with kisses, put blankets on him while he napped. They put Stumpy in my arms and led me around the house to show me where bowls and litter boxes were.

For the other home visit, I was not only greeted by the applicant, but his incredibly social black Maine Coon mix, Rufus. While we chatted, Rufus would interject with a meow had we stopped petting him. Somewhat of a bachelor pad, there were definitely trinkets and things on counters that perhaps a young cat might get into. I know my own Scrabble would have a field day (oh, you like this thing Mommy? That’s funny, i haven’t had breakfast yet ::knocks item onto the floor::). The house was obvious homage to the cats: toys, trees, and scratchers in every room.

In the end, I did choose the single person with two older cats. I know Frosty will thrive there and receive the attention he deserves. I think he would’ve been spoiled at either home, but I just didn’t know if he’d get overwhelmed or stressed in such a high energy household with kids. I hope that family still decides to adopt a different cat with us. They would do great with a younger cat that loved kids, like Manny for instance, except of course he’s  mine.

I won’t lie; I will really miss him. He has a great personality, and watching him become more social and affectionate, especially after his experiences prior to coming to the rescue, have been absolutely rewarding and a reminder why foster families do what they do.