How to use it

No jargon. If something here does not match what you see, tell me: support@purrgressapp.com.

Getting started

Signing in

You sign in with a Google account. That does not have to be a Gmail address: you can make a Google account using an email you already have. There is no separate password to remember, and no account to create on this site.

Joining a rescue, or starting one

If a coordinator has invited you, sign in with the exact email address they invited and the invitation is waiting. Invitations expire after three days, so if nothing shows up, ask them to send it again.

If you are setting things up for your own rescue, create a team. You become its owner, and you can invite everyone else from Settings → People and roles.

You can belong to more than one rescue with the same account. Use Settings → Switch team to move between them. Each rescue only ever sees its own animals.

Adding a litter and its kittens

Go to the Litters tab and tap New litter. Give it a name you will recognise at 3am, like "Porch babies" or "Tuesday's 4". Add the date of birth if you know it, or your best guess: there is an estimated switch so the app knows not to treat a guess as gospel. Age drives the suggested feeding amounts and the expected weight gain, so a rough date is much better than none.

Then tap Add kitten for each one. A collar colour or a distinguishing mark in the name helps when you have five tabbies that look identical.

The daily routine

The Round tab

Round is the screen you will live in. It lists the kittens in your care, sorted so the ones needing attention come first, and shows how long since each was fed and how much they have had today. The switch at the top flips between My litters and Everyone, which matters if you are a coordinator seeing the whole rescue.

Logging a feeding: the quick way

Every kitten on the Round tab has a round button on the right with a number in it. That number is the suggested amount for that kitten right now, worked out from its age and weight. Tap it once and the feeding is logged. A message appears at the bottom confirming what was recorded, with Undo if you hit the wrong kitten.

That is the whole interaction for a normal feed at 3am. It assumes a bottle, a good latch, and nothing else worth noting.

Logging a feeding: the full way

When there is more to record, tap the kitten and then the orange Feed button. The amount arrives pre-filled with the same estimate, so it is two taps if you only wanted to confirm it.

When the estimate is wrong, and it often will be, the row of buttons (1 ml, 2 ml, 3 ml and so on) sets the amount in one tap, and there is a fine adjustment beside it. Everything else on the sheet has a sensible default, so you only touch what was unusual:

• Method for bottle, syringe, or eating on their own
• Latch for how well it went
• Urinated and stool, which matter more than people expect for a neonate
• Formula and notes if you want them

The whole thing is designed for one hand, because the other one has a kitten in it.

Use the full sheet whenever something was different: a refused feed, a poor latch, a smaller amount than suggested, anything you would have written in the margin of a paper log. The quick button is for the ordinary ones.

Logging a weight

On the same screen, the Weigh button. Type the number and save. It works in grams or in pounds and ounces, whichever you set under Settings → Weight unit, and it shows the other unit underneath so you can sanity check against a scale or a vet's paperwork.

As you type, it tells you what the change means: how much gained or lost since last time, roughly per day, and whether that is normal for the age. A loss in a young kitten gets a red warning, because that is the moment to act rather than to finish the round.

Weigh at the same time each day if you can, ideally before a feed. Consistency matters more than which time you pick.

Fixing mistakes

Everyone logs a feeding on the wrong kitten eventually.

• To correct an entry, tap it in the log. It reopens with everything filled in, and you can change the amount, the time, or anything else.
• To delete an entry, swipe it from right to left. A message appears at the bottom with Undo if you were too quick.

Deleting the most recent weight puts the kitten's current weight back to whatever the previous reading was, so the card corrects itself.

Logged on the wrong kitten? Delete it there, then log it on the right one using Past record (below) to give it the correct time. There is no way to move an entry between kittens yet.

Coming from paper

If you have been keeping a notebook, you can bring it in. Both the feeding sheet and the weight sheet have a Past record switch. Turn it on and a date and time picker appears, so the entry is filed when it actually happened rather than now.

Backdated entries show up in the log and on the growth chart, but they do not change the kitten's "last fed" time and they will not set off reminders. So you can sit down and type in a week of history without your phone deciding everyone is overdue.

Medical records take any date normally, with no switch needed. Vaccination dates, lot numbers, dewormer, spay or neuter dates and microchip numbers can all be entered as they happened.

Medications

On a kitten's Medical tab you can set up a course: the drug, the dose, how often, and how many doses. Most courses are for the whole litter, since dewormer rarely goes to one kitten alone, but you can make one for a single kitten when only one of them needs it.

When a dose is due, the course shows a Give button. Tapping it brings up the litter with a checkbox beside each kitten and their current weight, so you tick the ones that actually got it and log them together. The dose goes into each kitten's own medical history, which is what a vet or an adopter will want to see later.

Reading the growth chart

The Growth tab plots every weight you have recorded, with a shaded band behind it showing the normal range of gain for that age, projected from the first weight you entered.

Inside the band is fine. Below it means gaining too slowly. Below the line entirely means losing, which in a young kitten is urgent rather than interesting. The kitten cards on the Round tab carry the same warning as a coloured chip, so you can see it without opening anything.

None of this is a diagnosis. It is a prompt to look at the animal and call someone if you do not like what you see.

When a kitten leaves

Adopted, transferred, returned to field, or died: open the kitten and set the outcome, with the date. The record stays complete, including every feeding and every weight, but the kitten stops appearing in rounds and stops triggering reminders.

When the last kitten in a litter has left care, the litter moves to the Archive on its own. It is still there under the Archive button on the Litters tab, so you can look up a cat you placed two years ago. If one comes back, setting them to active restores the litter too.

Working with other people

Roles

• Foster: sees only the litters assigned to them, and can log everything for those litters.
• Coordinator: sees every animal in the rescue, invites fosters, and assigns litters.
• Co-owner: as above, plus managing people and backups.
• Owner: the last word, and the only one who can hand over ownership.

Inviting someone

Settings → People and roles → Invite, then their email address and a role. The app does not email them. Tell them yourself, and tell them to sign in with that exact address. The invitation expires after three days.

Names

Google accounts often show a nickname rather than a name. Coordinators and above can set a display name for anyone on the team, and anyone can set their own, from the People and roles screen. It applies to entries already logged, so the feeding log stops saying something unhelpful.

Alerts for someone else's litter

By default you are only alerted about litters assigned to you. If you are covering a weekend for another foster, one of you offers and the other accepts, under Settings → Alerts & sharing. Both sides have to agree, you choose whether it is feeding alerts, medication alerts or both, and either of you can stop it at any time.

Reminders

Reminders are per litter, not per kitten, so a litter of six does not mean six alarms. They start once you have logged a first feeding, space themselves by age, and stop when the kittens are old enough not to need them.

They only work in the Android app. A browser cannot alert you with the tab closed, so if you are using Purrgress on an iPhone or in a browser, the Round tab is your reminder.

Set a separate alarm for overnight feeds anyway. Phones delay notifications, restart, and run out of battery, and some brands are aggressive about killing apps in the background. If your phone is a Samsung, Xiaomi or similar, it is worth excluding Purrgress from battery optimisation.

A few smaller things

• No signal? Keep logging. Everything saves on the phone and syncs when you are back. Photos are the exception and need a connection.
• Backups go to your own Google Drive, from Settings. Owners and co-owners can run them.
• On an iPhone, open the app in Safari, then Share and Add to Home Screen. It then behaves much like an installed app.
• Grams or pounds is per phone, not per rescue. Two fosters can use different units on the same kitten.

Still stuck

Email support@purrgressapp.com. Telling me what you were trying to do is more useful than telling me what went wrong, and a screenshot is worth several paragraphs.

If something would make your fostering easier, suggest it. The obvious features are the ones I have needed myself, so the useful ideas come from people whose fostering looks different from mine.