Paradise Cay resident’s love of animals guides her work with foster kittens

Tina Atherton is seen with a few of the 13 kittens she cared for in November. The Paradise Cay resident is a longtime volunteer with the Richmond-based Milo Foundation and the Vacaville-based Cat Tales Rescue; she estimates she’s fostered some 300 kittens in the past six years. (Frank Fennema / For The Ark)

Tina Atherton has fostered more than 300 kittens the past six years. But don’t call her a crazy cat lady; she’s an animal lover making up for lost time.

Atherton has been fostering animals for the Milo Foundation in Richmond for the past dozen years and for nearly six years with Cat Tales Rescue out of Vacaville.

Growing up, Atherton says, she wanted pets, but it wasn’t practical. Her father was a hotelier, and the family moved more than a dozen times. Pets also didn’t make sense later when she was a young executive working long hours in Seattle, or when she and her husband, Drew, moved to Marin County in 2010. However, she did make time to take her three young children, Lucas, Emie and Gavin, to the Milo Foundation in Richmond to help socialize litters of puppies and kittens.

“Looking back, it was those early trips to visit with shelter animals that opened my eyes to the incredible need for foster families,” she says.

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