What does it mean to Nurture?

"Water the seeds you want to grow."

Yesterday, when I arrived at the kennel, the youth proudly told me they had rescued a kitten. One of the youth was sitting in the classroom with this tiny kitten tucked under his sweatshirt, trying to comfort and keep him calm. Knowing nothing about kittens, he had followed his nurturing instincts and took one of our dog X-pens, put down some blankets, and a small dog bowl with water to make him a comfortable area.

We are Project POOCH. It's built into our name that we work with dogs, not cats. But we had an opportunity. A big part of our mission is helping youth learn respect and compassion for all life. And here we had youth who had taken the initiative to rescue and comfort this tiny life. He didn't have to do that. He could have walked right on by. But he chose to engage, to rescue, to love, to nurture. And now, it was our turn to nurture and cultivate that seed of care and compassion and demonstrate through our actions that he had made a good choice.

So, we sprung into action. We repurposed several small kennels previously used for drying dogs after baths into a cat area. The youth scrubbed them clean, and we moved two of them into our classroom area and two into our isolation/quarantine area (so we would have options). We made a quick trip to the store for kitty supplies (food, litterbox, and toys) and set up a safe area for our new kitty in the classroom.

We don't know where this road is leading. Maybe this kitty will become a POOCH kitty to help us socialize our dogs with cats. Maybe we will work with one of our local shelters to find this kitty a home. We told the youth yesterday that we would take this a day at a time, and figure it out as a team.