Tails of the City: Meet Super Foster Darlene Ogoshi
Darlene Ogoshi has taken in nearly 100 animals since 2020, helping them develop so they can find forever homes.
Photo: Courtney Mau
Every morning, Mason, Gordon and Enzo, the three cuddly kittens Darlene Ogoshi was fostering at the time, meow and call for her. She hardly minds. “As soon as I come to them, they immediately give love, and I always appreciate that,” she says about the tabbies.
Ogoshi spent 31 years working as a nurse, and now, after retiring in 2020, she’s still caring for others—they just now have fur and four paws. In the past four and a half years, she’s fostered nearly 100 animals, mostly kittens, from the Hawaiian Humane Society. She’s what the nonprofit considers a “super foster,” a special human with a huge heart for animals. “Usually, I take care of the babies—sometimes, they’re a little sick, like they may have a kitty cold or some sort of skin infection, so I medicate them and watch them,” she says.
Photo: Courtney Mau
As a lifelong animal lover, Ogoshi after retirement reached out to the Humane Society to help out in whatever way was needed. She started doing laundry there, but then learned about the organization’s other volunteer opportunities, including its foster program. After taking in her first fur babies, she by her own admission became a “serial foster.”
It fit. She’s aligned to the Humane Society’s mission and knows there are countless animals in need of homes. Plus, what she gives she more than receives in the form of unconditional love. “I don’t quantify the energy I spend on them. It’s not work,” she says.
But is it difficult giving back her fosters so they can be adopted into forever homes?
“They’re adorable, but I see it as a temporary thing,” she says. “I know I’m just part of a continuum, and I’m helping them to be more adoptable. They learn to trust people because some of them have never had human interaction before. Having this ongoing interaction with them helps them get adopted quickly, and that’s what’s so fulfilling.”
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Diane Seo is the editorial director of HONOLULU Magazine.
