sad about kittens

Hello!

I am feeling a lot of sadness over 2 of my kittens that I had to let go. I took in a stray cat back in the end of May who had 4 kittens on April 2nd. The plan was to get mostly all of them adopted out to friends of our family but they all sort of backed out of the commitment.

I live in a one bedroom apartment with my boyfriend, and we had 5 cats. Space wasn't an issue until they started getting bigger. I would clean the litter box twice a day, and we had a lot of food for them. They would run through the apartment and into every crack and crevice possible.

They were all seemingly totally happy. They would purr when you pet them, and loved each other. You could see that they liked playing with each other and would sleep cuddled together. It was just too many cats in the apartment. If we lived in a house, we would have kept all of them.

I had to find a home for them, and I am freaking out about it all. I posted up flyers for them for about 2weeks before I got anyone who was interested. I think I made it harder because I said that they had to be adopted together....my thoughts were if they had to go to a new home I wanted that bond of love and family to go with them too. Since I have witnessed how close they are together, it was important to me to have them go together.

The family that adopted them seems nice, but now I am just feeling so sad - definitly some grief going on and worried that I didn't make the right choice. The family seems nice enough - they have 3 kids and said that it was the right time for their family to have pets. When I got to the house everyone was so nice, and then one of the kids talked about how their grandfather let their cat out of the house and it ran away. I was a bit stressed with this comment because the girls are indoor kitties only....but the mom rushed in and said that the cats weren't going outside. I don't know though....with that many kids and relatives and stuff, I can just see the cats getting outside.

My heart is just so sad and heavy. I really didn't want to give them away, but what could I do? I could keep them but I just didn't have the room for 5 cats (and if our landlord found out we would have been kicked out).

We kept the two brothers and the mom, because they are the most affectionate and seemingly totally loving of us. The sisters were nice to us, but didn't really like to be held or petted as much. This last few weeks they were really more interested in being petted, but the brothers just melt into our hands and purr like a train and want to be held and seek us out for love. It was just a choice of the more obvious love on our parts, though I know the sisters did love us and did appreciate us loving them.

Did I do the right thing? I feel terrible. I just couldn't keep them, and no one was responding to the adoption flyers and postings online.

Well just keep in touch with the family. I hope you took their name and phone numebr and everything and kept it to call them in a couple weeks and see how things are going. Also you should tell them that if there are any problems they should call you to take them back first.

Did you spay and neuter them first before they went? That is recommended since you ahve no idea if the new owners will actually do it or not. If you didn't then you really need to get in touch with them in a few weeks and make sure it is done.

I don't think you did anything wrong. Just as long as you follow through with your responsibilities to the kittens. Check up on them and especially check on their spay/neuter status. Especiall is they were 1 male and 1 female, she can get prego at 4-5 months old by her own brother if she isn't spayed. And if they are 2 males then they could start spraying and fighting too.