@bethostern

I recently started following the Instagram account of Beth Stern. Beth (we're very close at this point) is a model and animal welfare advocate who is married to Howard Stern. She has the BEST LIFE EVER. Here she is sunning herself on the balcony of her and Howard's oceanfront Hamptons compound.

But I don't say "best life" because of the enviable real estate/bikini bod. It's the kittens. Beth fosters kittens. Her feed is 90% kitten photos. All day. Every day. 

Like I said: best life ever.

Never one to keep my obsessions private, I immediately clued in some fellow feline-crazed coworkers. Soon enough, we were sending each other screenshots of her cutest charges on a semi-daily basis with messages like "I CAN'T!!!!!!!"

Beth's own cats are the cast-offs - the blind, the in-bred. For example, Yoda, below with the squashy face, has a heart defect. He spends his days in the foster room, grooming the kittens. He is REALLY adorable and entertaining, and unless some miracle of veterinary science manages to keep his heart going (fingers crossed), the day he dies is going to be a rough one in the office.

Anyway, one day, while skimming the comments on a particularly adorable photo, I saw that Beth has an email address for people wanting to adopt her fosters. 

(Side note: when you foster kittens, you don't keep them. You socialize the kittens with lots of human interaction so they'll eventually make good pets, and help keep the shelter less crowded. Once the kittens are two pounds (!), they can be spayed/neutered and put up for adoption. Carla and Bianca were Mom's first foster kittens). 

I sent the email address to my co-worker, whose beloved family cat died earlier this year, and who had mentioned that they were finally ready for a new cat. She immediately freaked out and wrote a long, touching missive to Beth.

It was a BRILLIANT email. "Now is not the time for subtlety," she said, showing it to me. It included many photos of their deceased family cat, displaying his integration into their family life. There was a Sears-style Christmas card photo of my co-worker at age nine with her sister - and the cat. There were photos of Socks as a kitten, and as an old, happy house cat, to show off their track record as a "forever family." She threw in a shot of Socks at home, so Beth could see that they live in a nice house and aren't paupers. 

It worked! Beth wrote back, and the process was started. My co-worker is adopting Archie and Dweezil, below, and their two thousand Instagram likes. 

Cat ladies are the best. I once asked my team if they went home at the end of the day and complained about how I make them look at pictures of Carla and Bianca like, sitting around. One of them gave me a look and held up her new iPhone case, emblazoned with a cat and the caption "CHECK MEOWT." We squeal equally over kitten photos and shots of our fat old family cats doing nothing. "But LOOK AT HIM!!!!!!!!!!" we squee. "LOOK AT HOW CUTE HE IS JUST SITTING THERE!!!!!"