Tracy Toll wasn’t concerned about introducing four foster kittens to her two dogs, Flash and Tasha, or even her cat, Morgan, when she brought them home a few weeks ago.
She was concerned, though, that they might meet Apollo, her freshly adopted male cat.
“He [Apollo] is 5 years old, and he’d just been fixed,” Toll, a volunteer with the Ontario SPCA (OSPCA), told The Dodo. “Being a male cat, I thought he might try and hurt them.”
Toll’s fears weren’t unfounded — unneutered male cats can exhibit aggressive behaviors, although neutering tends to eliminate these behaviors. But in Apollo’s case, Toll worried it was too soon after his operation for these changes to take effect.
According to Toll, Apollo’s former owner had surrendered him to the OSPCA, and it was evident that he had been horribly neglected.
Toll said, “His hair nearly looked like a turtle shell since it was so matted.” “He needed to be shaved.”
Toll fell in love with Apollo’s lovely demeanor while helping at the shelter and decided to adopt him. He got along swimmingly with her other cat and two dogs. Toll, on the other hand, was unsure how he’d react in the presence of small, playful kittens.
So when Toll took the kittens home to temporarily care for them, she decided to play it safe and keep them inside her daughter’s room for the entire time they stayed with her.
But Toll couldn’t have been any more wrong about Apollo.
“One day my daughter opened her door, and the kittens burst out, and I’m like, ‘Grab Apollo,’” Toll said. “But it was too late. The kittens ran up to him, and he didn’t hiss and he didn’t growl. He just looked at them and was smelling them.”
According to Toll, Apollo immediately became “Mr. Mom” after that.
“At feeding time, he’d walk into [their room], and then I observed he’d start laying up on the bed, enabling the kittens to snuggle near to him,” Toll said.
Teddy, Axel, Kai, and Levi, Apollo’s kittens, then began to lie on top of him.
“He’d clean them from head to tail,” Toll added, “and then my son… showed me a video of Apollo letting one of the kittens nurse off of him.”
Apollo enjoyed playing with the kittens when he wasn’t grooming or snuggling with them.
She said, “They’d play together on the cat tree.” “Apollo would lie there and watch, and the kittens would be racing around all over the cat tree and on him.”
And like a protective mom, Apollo would step in when things got out of hand.
“If two of the kittens ran into the room, and they were playing too roughly with each other, and he’d hear them cry, he’d go and check to see if they were OK,” Toll said.
According to Toll, Levi and Kai have already been adopted, and the OSPCA staff expects the other two to find homes soon.
While Apollo may miss the kittens, Toll intends to foster kittens again and again. And she’s confident that Apollo will enjoy every moment of it.
