Lessons from Local Leaders:

Erika Amuedo

Twelve Kittens, One Soul Cat, and Ten Years of Learning: How Erika Amuedo Became One of Northern Virginia’s Most Dedicated Foster Volunteers

She started with no experience, a bathroom full of kitten paw prints, and zero idea what she was doing. A decade later, Erika Amuedo is one of the most trusted neonatal and medical fosters working with Allies for Community Cats — and she’s still learning.

She Walked In Completely Blind

When Erika Amuedo began fostering cats, she didn’t have a manual. She didn’t have a mentor walking her through the process. She had a love for animals, a willingness to open her home, and absolutely no idea what was coming.

“I went in completely blind,” she says, laughing. “I didn’t know anything.”

Her first litter of kittens came in with coccidia — a parasitic infection — and before she knew what was happening, her bathroom was covered in the evidence. Paw prints across the floor. Mess on every surface. Four small, sick kittens doing what sick kittens do.

“It takes a lot of love to care for poopy kittens,” she says.

But she didn’t quit. She cleaned up, asked questions, absorbed everything she could, and filed it away for next time. The first signs to watch for. The importance of having the right setup — puppy pads, easy-to-clean surfaces, a designated space that makes both the kitten and the caregiver’s lives easier. What begins as chaos, she discovered, becomes manageable the moment you understand what you’re dealing with.

That was ten years ago. Erika is still learning, she says — still drawing knowledge from every medical case she takes in. But the person who walked in blind has long since become someone others turn to when they need guidance.

What a Neonatal Foster Actually Does

Most people have a general sense of what fostering a pet means. Fewer understand what it means to specialize in neonatal care — which is exactly what Erika does.

Neonatal refers to kittens four weeks old and under. These are not the playful, curious kittens most people picture when they think of fostering. These are animals at their most fragile. At under two weeks, their eyes are still closed. By two weeks, the eyes begin to open. At three weeks, they’re starting to move, but their coordination is unreliable — wobbly, uncertain, still figuring out how their bodies work. By four weeks, their ears have sharpened and their footing has steadied, but they are still entirely dependent on human care.

These kittens need feeding schedules, warmth regulation, and constant monitoring. They cannot communicate what’s wrong. The caregiver has to watch for signs — lethargy, weight changes, breathing, the texture and color of what’s in the litter box — and respond before a small problem becomes a crisis.

It’s not work for everyone. Erika knew that going in. What she didn’t know, at the beginning, was that it would become her calling.

Cleo

Of all the animals Erika has fostered over the past decade, one has stayed with her in a way the others haven’t.

Her name is Cleo.

She came in at four weeks old, the only survivor from her litter. Her mother hadn’t made it either. She arrived without teeth. She arrived without fur. She had botflies — a parasitic infestation that, in a kitten that small, is a serious medical emergency.

“I wasn’t super experienced at the time,” Erika says. “And she made me learn and grow as a foster.”

Cleo is, in Erika’s words, her soul cat. The foster who became permanent. The one she couldn’t let go of — and didn’t have to. She describes the love between them with a simplicity that says more than a long explanation would. “I love her so much.”

There’s a phrase in the rescue world for what happened: a foster fail. A foster who gets too attached and adopts the animal instead of placing it. The term is affectionate, and in Erika’s experience, it happens constantly. Her advice to anyone worried they’ll become one? “Don’t just foster one. Get a larger litter — your attention will be divided.” But she also says fosters get priority if they do decide they can’t let one go. The rescue wants to keep its fosters. Cleo, clearly, was worth keeping.

What Fostering Looks Like Day to Day

The image most people carry of fostering is a warm, cozy one — kittens playing on a blanket, a person on a couch with a lap full of fur. The reality is more layered than that, and Erika is honest about it.

Allies for Community Cats uses a tiered approach. When a new animal comes in, it goes first to a specialized medical foster — someone like Erika — who deworming, checks for illness, and monitors closely for the first few days. Once a kitten has been cleared and shows no signs of illness, it moves to a less experienced foster who wants the fun part: the playing, the bonding, the watching a tiny creature grow into a full personality.

For a newer foster, the day-to-day is genuinely straightforward. Scoop the litter box once a day. Feed in the morning and at night. Play with them. That’s it.

But Erika is also clear about the other side of it — the part people don’t always anticipate when they sign up. Managing multiple litters at once means keeping them separated to prevent the spread of illness. At her peak, Erika has had twelve kittens at once, housed in different areas of her home, each group managed independently until she was confident they were healthy enough to mix.

Twelve kittens. A person with a full life, like everyone else in this work. All of them volunteers.

“We all have families, kids, sports, nine to five jobs,” she says. “It really just takes someone willing to do it.”

Community Cats and the Scale of the Problem

Allies for Community Cats focuses primarily on TNR — trap, neuter, and return — for feral cat populations. It’s a distinction worth understanding, because community cats are not lost pets. They are feral animals: cats that have had zero contact with humans, that will not come to you, that will run from you, and that are genuinely afraid.

You don’t socialize a feral adult cat the same way you would a domestic one. You trap, alter, vaccinate, and return. The ear tip — a small notch removed from one ear during surgery — is the universal indicator that a feral cat has been through TNR. If you see a stray without one, that’s the signal to call your local shelter or a TNR rescue.

The math behind why this matters is staggering. One unaltered female cat can have up to three litters a year, with anywhere from one to five kittens per litter. Within six months, those kittens can reproduce. The population compounds rapidly — and the downstream consequences fall on shelters, rescues, and the animals themselves.

Animals die every day, Erika says plainly, because of unmanaged reproduction and human neglect. She doesn’t say it to be dramatic. She says it because it’s true, and because she has spent ten years watching the problem up close.

“Every home would have to have eight cats for every cat to have a home.”

What to Do When You Find a Kitten

If you’ve ever spotted a kitten outside and felt the pull to intervene, Erika’s guidance is worth knowing.

The first question is whether the kitten is in a safe place. If it is, and if it looks healthy and is quiet — content, not distressed — leave it. The mother is almost certainly nearby. She may be out hunting. She will come back. A quiet, healthy-looking kitten is not an abandoned kitten.

“Don’t touch it,” Erika says. “If the kitten looks healthy and the kitten’s quiet, that is a content, happy, healthy kitten. The mom is likely close by.”

If the kitten is clearly injured, underweight, or has been alone for a prolonged period, then it’s time to contact a local rescue or shelter. They’ll assess the situation, locate the mother if possible, and handle the process of getting both mom and babies the care they need — including, eventually, spaying the mother and returning her to the colony where she was found. Her territory is her home. Relocating a feral cat doesn’t help her; it disorientation and disrupts the colony structure.

The principle is the same whether you find a kitten or an adult feral cat: don’t remove them from their territory unless you’re prepared to see the process through with a rescue or shelter.

The Thing That Would Help Most

Erika is matter-of-fact about what Allies for Community Cats needs above everything else: more fosters.

Shelters have a finite number of cages. When those fill, the overflow goes to small, volunteer-run rescues. And when rescues can’t place animals with fosters, they have to turn animals away. It’s not a failure of will — it’s a capacity problem, and it has a direct solution.

“Even a one-week commitment would really help out a rescue,” Erika says. A single week is enough time to move animals around, wait for an adoption to finalize, or create breathing room in a system that never has quite enough of it.

There are also other ways to help for those who aren’t ready to foster. Donations, of course — veterinary care is the organization’s biggest expense. But also supplies. Used towels. Old pet beds. Things that might be sitting in a closet that would mean something real to an animal in a foster home.

And if fostering feels out of reach because of the fear of getting attached? Erika doesn’t try to talk people out of that feeling. She just redirects it.

“I would tell that person, don’t just foster one.”

What the Animals Have Taught Her

Ten years into this work, Erika doesn’t pretend the job is easy. She has seen animals come in in terrible shape. She has learned things she wishes she hadn’t needed to know. She has watched the problem continue despite everything she and Stacy and the rest of the Allies for Community Cats network do every week.

But she has also watched a hissing, terrified kitten come out of its shell. She has seen the moment a personality emerges from underneath the fear — when a cat that arrived spitting and defensive finally decides, slowly, that maybe people are okay. And she has stood beside families who have come to pick up a forever pet and watched the expression on their faces when they meet their new family member for the first time.

“Seeing the smile on the family’s faces when they come to pick up their forever family member — it’s a really rewarding experience,” she says.

It teaches patience, she says. It grows you. It opens your eyes to the scale of a problem that most people move through their lives without seeing. But it also, in the particular way that only showing up for something consistently over years can do, gives back something it would be hard to name.

Ask Erika Amuedo what it’s given her. She’ll probably just say: Cleo.

Connect with Allies for Community Cats

To apply to foster, donate supplies, or learn more about TNR and community cat care in Northern Virginia, search Allies for Community Cats online or find them on Facebook. The foster application is on their website, and they are always accepting new volunteers — no experience required.

Facebook: Allies for Community Cats

If you’re in Northern Virginia and looking to adopt, ask about Luna — an eight-to-nine-week-old kitten who loves to climb, gets along with dogs and other cats, and is ready for her forever home.

Reach Allies for Community Cats Below