| About Us |
About FutureBestFriend.com
We created this website for two reasons: to make a place where people can easily set up their own customized webpage to show
their homeless/foster animals to their friends, family and potential future owners and to help foster parents financially to save the
lives of their sick or injured foster animals. We have created pages for the Philadelphia and NYC metro areas so far. But if
someone stumbles on our page from anywhere else, we will certainly create a page for them too and make a note of their location.
When we were trying to adopt out our foster kittens, we found the webpage that we made for them instrumental in spreading the
word and finding their future human best friend. With the prevalence of email today, it's so simple to forward the link to your
friends, who send it to their friends, and so on. We know that there are sites out there like Craig's List and PetFinder that
essentially do the same thing, but this site is intended to be used in addition to those sites. We posted an ad on Craig's List with
the link to our site and received hundreds of hits a day of people looking at our kittens. But on this site, you can put up more
pictures, bigger pictures and have a real webpage with your own link, just for your wonderful little animal. Plus, you'll get the added
benefit of exposing your ad to all of the people that are linked to this site from their friends, their networking and their ads on
various pet sites, bulletin boards, etc. And it's all free of charge, with no catch! Just click on "Post a Friend" at the top of the
page, copy the form into an email, answer the questions, attach pictures and we'll do the rest!
The most important function of this website, though, is to help out those homeless animals out there that need costly vet care, so
that they can realize their potential to become someone's future best friend. You can see that each page on the site has an ad for
various pet supply vendors. Each time someone clicks on the ad from our site, a portion of your purchase will go toward our goal of
helping those foster parents out there who cannot afford the medical care that their animals need to survive. We just created this
site, but once people start clicking on our links and making purchases, we will start a donation application process where people can
tell us their story and we will try the best we can financially to help them save someone's future best friend. We all know that
animal lovers are constantly purchasing supplies, toys and various things for their pets, so if you're going to make those purchases
anyway, you might as well click on our links so that a portion of your purchase goes to an animal in need. The marketing for this site
will be largely word of mouth, so please tell your friends! And we will keep everyone updated on all the great things we can hopefully
accomplish!!
their homeless/foster animals to their friends, family and potential future owners and to help foster parents financially to save the
lives of their sick or injured foster animals. We have created pages for the Philadelphia and NYC metro areas so far. But if
someone stumbles on our page from anywhere else, we will certainly create a page for them too and make a note of their location.
When we were trying to adopt out our foster kittens, we found the webpage that we made for them instrumental in spreading the
word and finding their future human best friend. With the prevalence of email today, it's so simple to forward the link to your
friends, who send it to their friends, and so on. We know that there are sites out there like Craig's List and PetFinder that
essentially do the same thing, but this site is intended to be used in addition to those sites. We posted an ad on Craig's List with
the link to our site and received hundreds of hits a day of people looking at our kittens. But on this site, you can put up more
pictures, bigger pictures and have a real webpage with your own link, just for your wonderful little animal. Plus, you'll get the added
benefit of exposing your ad to all of the people that are linked to this site from their friends, their networking and their ads on
various pet sites, bulletin boards, etc. And it's all free of charge, with no catch! Just click on "Post a Friend" at the top of the
page, copy the form into an email, answer the questions, attach pictures and we'll do the rest!
The most important function of this website, though, is to help out those homeless animals out there that need costly vet care, so
that they can realize their potential to become someone's future best friend. You can see that each page on the site has an ad for
various pet supply vendors. Each time someone clicks on the ad from our site, a portion of your purchase will go toward our goal of
helping those foster parents out there who cannot afford the medical care that their animals need to survive. We just created this
site, but once people start clicking on our links and making purchases, we will start a donation application process where people can
tell us their story and we will try the best we can financially to help them save someone's future best friend. We all know that
animal lovers are constantly purchasing supplies, toys and various things for their pets, so if you're going to make those purchases
anyway, you might as well click on our links so that a portion of your purchase goes to an animal in need. The marketing for this site
will be largely word of mouth, so please tell your friends! And we will keep everyone updated on all the great things we can hopefully
accomplish!!
Our Story
Hello, we're Amber and Kate, two average people with a love for animals, a sad story and strong desire to help others.
In April of 2008, we went to a local animal shelter to foster some kittens for the first time. We looked at the mothers with
kittens, which was our intent to foster, but then they showed us two litters of five bottle fed kittens each. They said they would
be put to sleep that night if no one took them home because they could not feed them every three hours all night long. Well they
were closing in half an hour, so that's all they needed to say,
So there we were with ten helpless two and three week old kittens and no clue what we were doing. But we figured it out and got
into a rhythm, feeding them and stimulating them to pee every three hours around the clock for a month. Three weeks after we
took them home, the shelter told us to bring them back in for shots. They were less than five and six weeks old at that point. We
have since learned that most vets consider that too young to receive shots, especially their second set of them, but at the time we
didn't know any better and followed the direction we were given. One week later, every single kitten came down with what we
would soon learn was fatal diarrhea. We took them back to the shelter for a vet visit, where we were told that they were fine, not
dehydrated and were probably just sick to their stomachs from the food changes during our weaning attempts. Satisfied that
everything was ok, we took them home. The next morning we woke up to little Miller looking incredibly emaciated, lying on the
bottom of the kitten pile, barely able to move. The shelter vet was not open and we obviously had to do something, so we took him
and Athena, another especially sick one, to our local vet.
This started a week and a half of insanity. Miller and Athena were admitted into intensive care with IV's, heat pads and constant
monitoring at the vet because their temperatures were 92 degrees and they were deathly dehydrated. They tested them for
Giardia, parasites, FIV. They did blood and fecal tests. All negative. The vet told us that they most likely had Panleukopenia, an
incurable virus, but by the time the specialized test would come back to confirm, they would most likely all be dead. So by the end
of that day, we had spent $600 for the tests and hospitalization and medication, had two near dead kittens and eight more that
could crash any second.
We were lost. We had no idea what to do, how to save them from this deadly virus or how far we would go emotionally and financially
to do so. And the entire time, various vets kept telling us that there was an extremely large chance that none of them would make
it and no one would fault us for putting them all to sleep. With a 90% mortality rate in kittens and even higher in kittens so young,
it might have even been the humane thing to do.
But if either of us became ill, we would never give up and we weren't going to give up on those tiny, helpless kittens that we had
come to love so much. So a week and a half later, we had spent $1.500, given five different medications to each kitten multiple
times per day, given subcutaneous fluids through a huge needle and syringe at least twice a day, gotten less than three hours of
sleep per night, called out of work, worked around the clock feeding, cleaning and trying to keep their spirits up, and Amber ended
up losing twelve pounds just in that week and a half. It was a nightmare that we just had to figure out as we went along. But in the
end, it was worth it because we saved six little angels and future best friends.
Now that the clouds have cleared, we want to give something back to all of the generous people out there who are trying their
hardest to save other innocent animals like our ten little kittens. Before everyone got sick, we had created a website with pictures
and descriptions of everyone that we sent to everone we knew to try to find them homes. Everyone loved the site, sent it to their
friends and checked it daily for updates on the little guys both when they were healthy and ill. We thought it would be a great idea
to create a site where we could create an individual page for other people and their animals in need of a home which will be the main
function of this site.
But more importantly, we want to help people like us, to save the critical animals who are sick or injured, so that they can have a
chance at life and not be hindered by their foster parents' financial situation.
In April of 2008, we went to a local animal shelter to foster some kittens for the first time. We looked at the mothers with
kittens, which was our intent to foster, but then they showed us two litters of five bottle fed kittens each. They said they would
be put to sleep that night if no one took them home because they could not feed them every three hours all night long. Well they
were closing in half an hour, so that's all they needed to say,
So there we were with ten helpless two and three week old kittens and no clue what we were doing. But we figured it out and got
into a rhythm, feeding them and stimulating them to pee every three hours around the clock for a month. Three weeks after we
took them home, the shelter told us to bring them back in for shots. They were less than five and six weeks old at that point. We
have since learned that most vets consider that too young to receive shots, especially their second set of them, but at the time we
didn't know any better and followed the direction we were given. One week later, every single kitten came down with what we
would soon learn was fatal diarrhea. We took them back to the shelter for a vet visit, where we were told that they were fine, not
dehydrated and were probably just sick to their stomachs from the food changes during our weaning attempts. Satisfied that
everything was ok, we took them home. The next morning we woke up to little Miller looking incredibly emaciated, lying on the
bottom of the kitten pile, barely able to move. The shelter vet was not open and we obviously had to do something, so we took him
and Athena, another especially sick one, to our local vet.
This started a week and a half of insanity. Miller and Athena were admitted into intensive care with IV's, heat pads and constant
monitoring at the vet because their temperatures were 92 degrees and they were deathly dehydrated. They tested them for
Giardia, parasites, FIV. They did blood and fecal tests. All negative. The vet told us that they most likely had Panleukopenia, an
incurable virus, but by the time the specialized test would come back to confirm, they would most likely all be dead. So by the end
of that day, we had spent $600 for the tests and hospitalization and medication, had two near dead kittens and eight more that
could crash any second.
We were lost. We had no idea what to do, how to save them from this deadly virus or how far we would go emotionally and financially
to do so. And the entire time, various vets kept telling us that there was an extremely large chance that none of them would make
it and no one would fault us for putting them all to sleep. With a 90% mortality rate in kittens and even higher in kittens so young,
it might have even been the humane thing to do.
But if either of us became ill, we would never give up and we weren't going to give up on those tiny, helpless kittens that we had
come to love so much. So a week and a half later, we had spent $1.500, given five different medications to each kitten multiple
times per day, given subcutaneous fluids through a huge needle and syringe at least twice a day, gotten less than three hours of
sleep per night, called out of work, worked around the clock feeding, cleaning and trying to keep their spirits up, and Amber ended
up losing twelve pounds just in that week and a half. It was a nightmare that we just had to figure out as we went along. But in the
end, it was worth it because we saved six little angels and future best friends.
Now that the clouds have cleared, we want to give something back to all of the generous people out there who are trying their
hardest to save other innocent animals like our ten little kittens. Before everyone got sick, we had created a website with pictures
and descriptions of everyone that we sent to everone we knew to try to find them homes. Everyone loved the site, sent it to their
friends and checked it daily for updates on the little guys both when they were healthy and ill. We thought it would be a great idea
to create a site where we could create an individual page for other people and their animals in need of a home which will be the main
function of this site.
But more importantly, we want to help people like us, to save the critical animals who are sick or injured, so that they can have a
chance at life and not be hindered by their foster parents' financial situation.
| In Loving Memory of Athena, Miller, Spunky and Kaito |
Our Family
Amber and Kate
This is us, the human members of the family. Our life is our kids. They eat
better than we do, take up more room in the house and are spoiled rotten, but
they're worth it! We'd do anything for them and now we want to so something
for others too.
This is us, the human members of the family. Our life is our kids. They eat
better than we do, take up more room in the house and are spoiled rotten, but
they're worth it! We'd do anything for them and now we want to so something
for others too.
George
George is a six year old Toy Fox Terrier. He was our first dog and certainly the
most pampered. He had rough time as a puppy when the vet botched his
neutering/umbilical hernia removal at six months old. They failed to properly
close his body cavity and his small intestine fell out and became necrotic. He
had to have emergency surgery, part of his small intestine removed and
reattached, but he made a full recovery! He's been going grey ever since, but
he's still full of puppy energy and a fabulous family member!
George is a six year old Toy Fox Terrier. He was our first dog and certainly the
most pampered. He had rough time as a puppy when the vet botched his
neutering/umbilical hernia removal at six months old. They failed to properly
close his body cavity and his small intestine fell out and became necrotic. He
had to have emergency surgery, part of his small intestine removed and
reattached, but he made a full recovery! He's been going grey ever since, but
he's still full of puppy energy and a fabulous family member!
Nero
Nero is a 1 1/2 year old Doberman/Shepherd mix. We rescued her from the
Philly SPCA in the summer of 2007. We always said that we would get a big dog
the day we bought a house and we stuck to that...literally! We sped from the
closing right to the SPCA and took her home that night! We all camped out in
the empty house on the floor and she's been happy here ever since! She's a big,
hyper nut but we love her to death!
Nero is a 1 1/2 year old Doberman/Shepherd mix. We rescued her from the
Philly SPCA in the summer of 2007. We always said that we would get a big dog
the day we bought a house and we stuck to that...literally! We sped from the
closing right to the SPCA and took her home that night! We all camped out in
the empty house on the floor and she's been happy here ever since! She's a big,
hyper nut but we love her to death!
Guinness
Guinness is a one year old black lab. She kind of fell into our laps when we heard
that someone had found a litter of black lab puppies. But Nero had been begging
us for a big friend to play with, so we just had to get her. She's the only
retriever in the entire world who does not retrieve (!!) but she is one of the
happiest, most loving dogs we've ever met. And she never wants to leave our
side. And God forbid you separate her from Nero, she goes nuts crying and
wimpering for her best friend.
Guinness is a one year old black lab. She kind of fell into our laps when we heard
that someone had found a litter of black lab puppies. But Nero had been begging
us for a big friend to play with, so we just had to get her. She's the only
retriever in the entire world who does not retrieve (!!) but she is one of the
happiest, most loving dogs we've ever met. And she never wants to leave our
side. And God forbid you separate her from Nero, she goes nuts crying and
wimpering for her best friend.
Rasputin
Rasputin (aka Putin Pie) is a three year old cat. Kate found him in her yard when
he was five weeks old along with his brother, Scooter. (who now lives with
Kate's parents) She soon found him limping and took him to the vet. After the
X-rays came back, she found out that his femur was broken completely in two
pieces. After major reconstructive surgery, pins connecting the bones and
$2,000, Putin Pie is as good as new! Now Putin is George's best friend and the
adoptive mother of our foster kittens! He has no idea he's a boy, licking them,
trying to carry them by their scruffs and following them around to make sure
they ok!
Rasputin (aka Putin Pie) is a three year old cat. Kate found him in her yard when
he was five weeks old along with his brother, Scooter. (who now lives with
Kate's parents) She soon found him limping and took him to the vet. After the
X-rays came back, she found out that his femur was broken completely in two
pieces. After major reconstructive surgery, pins connecting the bones and
$2,000, Putin Pie is as good as new! Now Putin is George's best friend and the
adoptive mother of our foster kittens! He has no idea he's a boy, licking them,
trying to carry them by their scruffs and following them around to make sure
they ok!
Fat
Fat is a seven year old cat. He is really fat, hence the name. We adopted him
when Amber's mother decided that her family was allergic and he's lived with us
ever since. He enjoys sleeping and eating and sleeping and eating with Putin Pie.
Fat is a seven year old cat. He is really fat, hence the name. We adopted him
when Amber's mother decided that her family was allergic and he's lived with us
ever since. He enjoys sleeping and eating and sleeping and eating with Putin Pie.
Snuggle Bug
Snuggle Bug (aka Snuggly Buggly Boo Bear Pie) is a ten week old miracle kitten.
She was the very sickest of the six kittens that survived our sad story above.
We were determined to save her though, no matter what the cost, so she
literally spent three days attached to Amber's hip, hence why she's now spoiled
rotten. She's had the prettiest little eyes and expressions since she was less
than two weeks old. Amber promised her that if she made it through the
Panleuk, she could stay and live with us forever, and we're thrilled to have her
as the new addition to our fabulous family.
Snuggle Bug (aka Snuggly Buggly Boo Bear Pie) is a ten week old miracle kitten.
She was the very sickest of the six kittens that survived our sad story above.
We were determined to save her though, no matter what the cost, so she
literally spent three days attached to Amber's hip, hence why she's now spoiled
rotten. She's had the prettiest little eyes and expressions since she was less
than two weeks old. Amber promised her that if she made it through the
Panleuk, she could stay and live with us forever, and we're thrilled to have her
as the new addition to our fabulous family.
Chico
Chico is a ten week old kitten, with a face only a mother could love! He's the
slow one of the litters and was very late in learning to clean himself. He loves
cuddling up to the TV remote for some reason and he absolutely loves his sister,
Snuggle Bear. He is named after Danny's parents' cat, who is also aesthetically
challenged but that doesn't mean they're not cute to us!!
Chico is a ten week old kitten, with a face only a mother could love! He's the
slow one of the litters and was very late in learning to clean himself. He loves
cuddling up to the TV remote for some reason and he absolutely loves his sister,
Snuggle Bear. He is named after Danny's parents' cat, who is also aesthetically
challenged but that doesn't mean they're not cute to us!!
Cosmo
Cosmo is a 1 1/2 year old Red Bellied Parrot. He is a goofball, constantly hanging
upside down from all the swings and toys in his cage and jabbering non stop.
He's absolutely fascinated by the kittens and they all became close friends.
He's a great talker, saying "Hello," "I love you," "Hi Cosmoman," "Hi buddy," "Hi
Mommy," mimicking our microwave beeps perfectly, mimicking our creeky door
and he has perfected the cat call whistle. Since the kittens joined us, he's even
learned to meow! We discovered this talent when we thought a kitten was
stuck inside our couch, crying non stop. But then we counted and they were all
sleeping right next to us! Yes, it was Cosmoman, the nut.
Cosmo is a 1 1/2 year old Red Bellied Parrot. He is a goofball, constantly hanging
upside down from all the swings and toys in his cage and jabbering non stop.
He's absolutely fascinated by the kittens and they all became close friends.
He's a great talker, saying "Hello," "I love you," "Hi Cosmoman," "Hi buddy," "Hi
Mommy," mimicking our microwave beeps perfectly, mimicking our creeky door
and he has perfected the cat call whistle. Since the kittens joined us, he's even
learned to meow! We discovered this talent when we thought a kitten was
stuck inside our couch, crying non stop. But then we counted and they were all
sleeping right next to us! Yes, it was Cosmoman, the nut.
Soco & Lime
Soco and Lime are two cute little parakeets. When Cosmo upgraded to a
fabulous, huge cage, we had an empty house that needed a tenant so we got Soco
and realized we were missing the Lime! They enjoy jabbering back and forth
with Cosmoman and he likes the company too!
Soco and Lime are two cute little parakeets. When Cosmo upgraded to a
fabulous, huge cage, we had an empty house that needed a tenant so we got Soco
and realized we were missing the Lime! They enjoy jabbering back and forth
with Cosmoman and he likes the company too!
The Stooges
The Stooges are three, two year old Red Bellied Pacus. They live in a 125 gallon
fish tank in our living room. They're crazy friendly and enjoy staring at us all
day and begging for food when we walk by. They also enjoy scaring our guests
because they look just like piranhas! They were about the size of a half dollar
when we got them and now they're about eight inches long!
The Stooges are three, two year old Red Bellied Pacus. They live in a 125 gallon
fish tank in our living room. They're crazy friendly and enjoy staring at us all
day and begging for food when we walk by. They also enjoy scaring our guests
because they look just like piranhas! They were about the size of a half dollar
when we got them and now they're about eight inches long!
| Athena 3/28/08-5/16/08 |
| Miller 3/28/08-5/17/08 |
| Spunky 3/21/08-5/17/08 |
| Kaito 3/18/08-5/19/08 |
| We miss you kids. |
Click on the pictures for even more pictures!
| click "Our Inspiration" for more pictures |
