Bella Rugema ’27 is a straight-A student, a ballerina, a representative on the Student Council, and a savior for cats who need help finding a home.
Rugema has been fostering cats since 2018 when she and her mom found two pregnant sister cats in their backyard. The two mamas had their babies at the same time. The Rugemas located the cats, took them in, and started fostering them.
“We found an organization which was Good Neighbors Animal Rescue, but now it’s renamed Meowtown Animal Rescue…We decided to keep fostering because the cats and mamas brought so much joy to us and also it felt so good to help these cats find safe homes,” Rugema said.
Meowtown is a local not-for-profit organization that is completely run by volunteers.
“Meowtown was started […] to serve the Fort Worth community cat population by rescuing abandoned cats, pregnant mamas, and kittens, and helping them find forever homes. We also aid in TNVR (Trap Neuter Vaccinate Release) efforts by lending traps and assisting in trapping and transporting ferals to help stop overpopulation,” Meowtown board president Ashleigh Powell said.
Powell said that there were many ways for people to get involved with Meowtown. The organization occasionally hosts volunteer events and other administrative opportunities for the community to get involved. The best way to help is to become a foster family, but they recognize that not everyone can do that.
Meowtown has three main ways of aiding in the adoption process. The first way is when someone reaches out to the organization and wants help finding a temporary home (foster home) for a stray cat. Another way is when a family reaches out to Meowtown to become a foster. They are sent an application, and their home is checked for safety. They also have a handful of return fosters like the Rugemas.
“Meowtown supports us and other foster [families] by paying (through fundraisers and money from adoptions) for the cats to get their shots and surgeries while also providing different resources…They [also] help us connect with different vats and event hosts where we bring the foster cats,” Rugema said.
Rugema said that they’ll typically receive a kitten that the organization needs to be fostered. Although kittens typically get adopted fairly quickly, they need to be at least nine weeks old, be at least two pounds, have their first round of shots completed, and be spayed or neutered before they can be handed over to their forever home.
Older cats usually take longer to get adopted, and they have had bigger cats for up to a year and a half. Rugema also says that adopters are deeply vetted to ensure that each cat goes to a safe and happy home.
The Rugema’s responsibilities contain more than just taking care of the cats. In addition to feeding them and cleaning their litter box, they need to help the felines get adopted. Meowtown’s Instagram posts pictures (primarily taken by Rugema’s mom) to display the cats to potential adopters. The cats are also posted on a website called PetFinder, which is “the biggest thing that helps cats get adopted,” according to Rugema.
Although fostering the cats is hard work, it is also satisfying.
“Some of my favorite stories were when we had really sick cats that we were able to nurture them into health, obviously, with the help of […] the organization,” Rugema said.
The Rugemas have fostered 133 cats in total. Three of them have been “foster fails,” as Rugema called them, or cats that she and her mom fostered and loved so much that they had to adopt them themselves.
The Rugemas currently have seven cats in their house: one that they have had since before they started fostering, the three foster fails that they have adopted, and three others that they are fostering temporarily; two older disabled ones and one kitten.
Saying goodbye is bittersweet, though. Rugema remarked on a foster who had just gotten adopted named Nori, who she said was “just the sweetest,” detailing how she was going to “miss her so much.” And although saying goodbye is hard, each cat adopted is another life saved, which makes it all worthwhile.
