'I wasn't prepared for my friend's question, or the heartbreak it uncovered'

I've been a foster carer for Hills Cat Rescue for the past three years, and I've fostered approximately 40 rescue kittens and cats during that time.

Our job is to nurse them back to health, and then to find them forever homes. That process cakes one to three months.

Every now and then, I'll find myself becoming attached to one kitten in particular. Usually its one of the little ones who has required more special care. To see them growing and thriving is just incredible, and I would love to keep them all forever.

But the job is to find them all happy homes, and with so many kittens and cats in need, finding loving homes is the most important part of this work.

Which is how I can usually bring myself to part with them, even the special ones.

I thought I was okay with it, until a friend innocently asked me: "No disrespect, but how do you part with them?"

Honest answer? With great difficulty, some more than others.

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When Cosmo came to us, he was probably three weeks old.

He was tiny and weak, scruffy and dirty, and couldn't control his own temperature. He would shiver constantly.

Cosmo came to me with seven others, called the Winston Hills eight, because they were found in a garden in Winston Hills.

There were three litters all up, and Cosmo was from a different litter to the other seven placed in my care.

Every one of them needed special attention. There was a lot of bottle and hand feeding and the filling of hot water bottles, by myself, my partner Shamus and the kids, a real group effort.

I had to force feed Cosmo at first. He had no will to live and he fought me every second, but I kept on squeezing sugar water and formula into his mouth several times a day for those first few days.

Shamus would put him in his shirt pocket and leave him there to keep him warm.

I would hold him with one hand and make dinner with the other, to keep him warm and close.

It took several days for him to start to turn the corner. He slowly began drinking his sugar water and formula instead of trying to spit it out, and joining the rest of the kittens to eat.

Cosmo's feeding method back then was to stand in the middle of the food and lap it up from all around him, covering himself from head to toe. He was just so little, that's the only way he could do it.

He was eventually able to climb on the cat litter, but couldn't get himself down.

He was the last to be able to get up the stairs. Then he could get himself up, but would have to wait to be carried down.

The rest of the Winston Hills eight have found incredible forever homes with loving families who adore them, and this has warmed my heart.

I had secretly hoped Cosmo would be the last to find his forever home, because he was the smallest and was still catching up, and because I wanted us to have some extra time with him.

An incredible forever home has now been found for Cosmo and he will be picked up in a matter of days.

Over the past few days, I have started to try to distance myself from him a little, in preparation for him leaving. But he still follows me around the house like a little puppy, and I can't help but to cuddle him and kiss him and tell him how much I love him.

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He's just special, in every way. He has the funniest personality, and he's so playful. Yesterday he started randomly bringing corn chips into Shamus' office and dropping them at his feet, like little presents. We have no idea where he got the chips from!

Over Christmas and the New Year I was sick and it was Cosmo who kept me company the entire time, snuggling as close to me as he could.

Every night he sleeps with us and we both reach out for him for cuddles, and to make sure he is okay, throughout the night.

When I am working, he is on Shamus' lap, or on his shoulder like a little parrot.

I can't even imagine the emptiness of him not being there. The will be such a huge void in our home after he is gone.

I know what you are going to say. "Just keep him!" But I can't, for some very good reasons.

Firstly, we already have two cats, Timmy, and Jack. Timmy was a rescue cat from our local vet, and Jack was our first "foster fail". He was just too terrified to meet potential new owners due to some trauma he had suffered, so he stayed with us.

And secondly, because if I kept every kitten we formed an attachment to, I'd have at least 12 cats, as many of my fellow foster carers do.

But thirdly, those fellow foster carers with several cats own their homes. I am renting. And even if I wasn't, I don't think I'd ever be more than a two-cat person, max.

But Cosmo is my dear, beautiful, sweet little boy.

The family who is taking him are very excited to have him, and they have a young child who will give him all the love and attention he needs. So that's something.

When most people first find out I foster rescue kittens, they make comments like, "That must be so fun!" and "How cute!"

And it is fun, and they are cute, but it is also a lot of work, particularly during those first two weeks when they are learning to eat, when they are in a pile in a kitten tent that has to been cleaned out several times a day.

When they are tiny, they don't know how to bathe themselves, so we do that, for them.

Once they learn how to eat, the litter training begins.

Then there is the most important work of spending as much time with them as possible so they are comfortable with people, being picked up and kissed and hugged and played with.

I could move onto a new group of rescue kittens and cats to help me fill the void left by Cosmo leaving, but I think I'll wait a bit. There's only so much heartbreak I can take.

I just keep reminding myself, and Shamus, and the kids, that we have done excellent work and we have been so lucky to find Cosmo, and all of them, incredible homes.

I wonder if they will remember us? Or if all of the love we have given them sits somewhere in their sub-consciousnesses or souls.

I used to drop the kittens off to their new homes, and then my daughter would cry the whole way home. These days, they get picked up from my house. And I say the same thing to each of them.

"Love you forever."

Then I give them a kiss and a hug and place them in their cat carrier and send them on their way.

I ask each family to send me some photos as soon as the kittens are settled, which (rudely) is often later that night or the next day.

And then I ask for a photo when they are fully grown.

And then, I move on.

It doesn't really get any easier, even though I tell people that it does.

But knowing they will have incredible lives is helpful, and part of me hopes that they will keep all the love I have given them, and all the love my partner and my kids have given them, with them in some way, even if they do forget about us.

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