Animal Fosterer Emilie Rackovan Opens Her Own Rescue

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Photo courtesy Thrifted Kittens Animal Rescue

Emilie Rackovan with a cat

Emilie Rackovan with a cat

Emilie Rackovan has loved animals for as long as she can remember. Her first word as a baby, in fact, was “dog.” Rackovan even had a habit of bringing strays into her childhood home. “My parents thought I was slipping collars off of peoples’ pets,” she remembers. As an adult, what began as Rackovan’s passion for fostering kittens eventually morphed into her becoming a social media influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, then launching her own animal rescue, Thrifted Kittens.

Fostering not only gives animals in need a better life but can be extremely beneficial to the fosterer’s life, providing senses of love, grounding and accountability to an animal that depends on them. “Having animals to pour heartbreak into can fill your heart back up,” Rackovan confirms. “Every animal has its own personality and I think that’s the coolest thing.”

Via her social media platform, Emiliexfosters on Instagram and TikTok, Rackovan shares video content of kittens and puppies she takes in, giving periodic updates about each animal’s recovery process as well highlighting their personalities and general cuteness. In addition to the animals she fosters, Rackovan has three pets of her own: Jada the dog and two cats, Lua and Blue Moon.

Rackovan believes the most important thing folks interested in fostering should know is to not go into it with the impression that an animal is theirs. “You should love and care for them like they’re your own, but if you go into it thinking it’s your animal, it’s going to be really hard to give them up,” she reckons. “I recommend not keeping your first couple of groups.”

Making Lives Better

She also suggests finding a balance, since fostering can become addictive, attesting from her own experience. “You get to meet all these new animals and have the dopamine hit of making their lives better, and that’s such an amazing feeling. When I first started, I would only have one group at a time, but then a few years later I would have like 30 kittens in my house and that wasn’t okay. I was taking great care of them but not myself.”

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Photo courtesy of Thirfted Kittens Animal Rescue

Emilie Rackovan with a dog

Emilie Rackovan with a dog

With Thrifted Kittens, Rackovan enlists a team of several dozen fosters to take care of vulnerable animals in the Milwaukee area, whether they be sick, orphaned, undersocialized, disabled or living with a complex medical condition. The rescue primarily receives animals from Milwaukee Area Domestic Animal Control Commission (MADACC) or occasionally from Wisconsin Humane Society. “We do our own rescues too, where someone will call and say they found kittens in their window well,” Rackovan mentions. “Over the summer we rescued a kitten that had fallen like 20 feet through a grate.”

Animals successfully fostered may then be adopted, which involves an application process. While it is cat-focused, Thrifted Kittens does take in and foster dogs. Rackovan serves as executive director and president on the board of directors that also comprises vice president and rescue coordinator Haley Holz, secretary and veterinarian Dr. Rebecca Ferring, treasurer and cat behavior specialist Samantha Bell and medical director Dr. Marcus Gordon. 

Brick-and-Mortar Space

Looking back on 2025, Thrifted Kittens took in more than 230 animals, completed more than 150 adoptions and raised over $150,000. In November, Rackovan received the keys to the rescue’s first brick-and-mortar space, located on Milwaukee’s East Side, which will function as organization headquarters and be used for storage. “I have big dreams of actually having a legitimate shelter,” Rackovan adds. “I don’t want to go too fast and burn out, so for now, I’m really happy with where we’re at.”

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Image courtesy Thrifted Kittens Animal Rescue

Thrifted Kittens Animal Rescue logo

Thrifted Kittens Animal Rescue logo

Rackovan notes that Thrifted Kittens takes an intersectional approach with its work, emphasizing how animal welfare is directly connected to other forms of social consciousness. “There’s no animal welfare without human welfare first,” she makes clear. “I absolutely hate when people say they work with animals because they hate people.”

Elaborating, Rackovan is cognizant of how animals that rescues take care of depend on people to survive—a notion sometimes overlooked by rescues when it comes to recognizing systemic socioeconomic issues. “The idea that we can talk about animal welfare without addressing human welfare is laughable. I do want people to adopt and not shop, and spay and neuter, but even if every single person adopted, the shelters would fill back up because people don’t have the long-term security and resources. How are we going to keep animals in the homes that adopt them?”

She continues about barriers to pet ownership, “I see rescues have insane requirements like that you have to own your house, have a fence, have references, show your income—making people jump through hoops to save a life. We don’t ask for all that.” 

Quick Adoption Process

Instead, Thrifted Kittens keeps its adoption process quick, straightforward and simple while being available and accessible to those with questions or concerns. Rackovan contends, “I would rather people get an animal through me where I can support them, even if they’ve fallen on hard times, rather than go to the puppy store and buy a puppy and not have the resources for it, and now there’s another animal in the shelter system.”

In accordance with such values, Thrifted Kittens strives to be as resource oriented as possible, especially for pet owners in underserved communities. “We can’t say yes to everybody, but wherever there’s a chance to keep pets and their people together, we really try to do that,” Rackovan explains. “We’ll try to help people find lower-cost care or help pay for surgeries or even give them an advance. With people losing SNAP benefits, we did a big pet food donation drive.”

Having originally studied theater in college, Rackovan’s animal welfare began when she moved to Los Angeles after freshman year. Abhorring LA life, Rackovan found joy in volunteering at local animal shelters. Upon moving back to Milwaukee, she returned to college and worked for organizations like Wisconsin Humane Society and Best Friends Animal Society, the latter being where she continues to work presently.

“I’ve always loved kittens,” Rackovan says. “They’re the highest population of euthanized animals in shelters just because so many of them come in and need much more care than shelters are able to provide.” She learned everything she could about fostering, and before she knew it began taking kittens in herself. “During COVID I changed jobs and ended up working from home, and I figured I could orphan kittens that needed to be bottle fed every few hours.”

Since then, Rackovan has taken in hundreds of animals and began sharing her fostering journey online. “I don’t think there’s been more than a week that I haven’t had a foster animal in my house,” she remarks, laughing. Rackovan now has more than 500,000 followers on TikTok and 400,000 on Instagram. Eventually, her trajectory led to the launch of Thrifted Kittens Animal Rescue in 2024.  “It’s grown really quickly, which I’m so proud of,” Rackovan affirms.

Visit the Thrifted Kittens website to donate or get involved.