Pets!
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Samwise, my new bud. He’s two going on terror.
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Here we have two dogs harassing me for my Logan’s yeast rolls.
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that’s stellar dog content, thank you.
I would like to offer a image of my cypurr-punk cats.
edit: now with
more puns. -
So insomniac and I decided that we wanted to adopt another cat after seeing several posts about the local animal control facility being full (with the consequences that implies) and their primary local rescue partners also being full and unable to pull any animals.
We haven’t intentionally adopted cats from rescues since 2008. Every kitty we’ve had since then has been foisted on us by the Cat Distribution System. It’s been really weird and emotional to see one of the two cats we’ve been considering get adopted and knowing the other has a meet and greet with potential adopters today.
There’s lots of other kitties available, so I know we’ll find a match and I’m happy they’re going to good homes, but I’m not accustomed to this emotional swing of getting invested in and then sad about a furbaby I’ve never met.
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So insomniac and I decided that we wanted to adopt another cat after seeing several posts about the local animal control facility being full (with the consequences that implies) and their primary local rescue partners also being full and unable to pull any animals.
We haven’t intentionally adopted cats from rescues since 2008. Every kitty we’ve had since then has been foisted on us by the Cat Distribution System. It’s been really weird and emotional to see one of the two cats we’ve been considering get adopted and knowing the other has a meet and greet with potential adopters today.
There’s lots of other kitties available, so I know we’ll find a match and I’m happy they’re going to good homes, but I’m not accustomed to this emotional swing of getting invested in and then sad about a furbaby I’ve never met.
Earlier this year I made noises at work about maybe wanting a second cat a couple of months down the road. Late January, one of my supervisors asks me if I’m still looking because her neighbor has a cat who needs a home (tragic backstory, too lazy to recount).
I see pictures of the cat. I can’t resist. I say ‘yes, just tell the person I need a week to get things situated at home’.
Half a week goes by and I am getting pictures, have talked to the person, everything. And then out of nowhere, two days before I’m supposed to go pick up the cat, the person says that they’ve grown attached and will be keeping it.
I was devastated.
Couple weeks later I adopted Miskatonic.
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Part of my responsibilities at my shelter is to approve or deny adoptions for our cats. This could be after the initial application, or after their Google meets home visit.
I hhattteee having competing apps for cats, but over 50% of interviews fail so it is nice when at least one of them is good so they can still go home promptly. (Over 75% of the initial apps fail, seriously, it is crazy any make it. But with that said, in the 3 years I’ve been there we have only had 10 cats returned with ~100 cats going home each year. )
But the WORST is when they are both amazing and we have to choose. I hate having to tell someone “You are amazing and please come meet more cats and you can take them home that same day! But we have decided to go with another family for these particular cats.”
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@Aria this might be a shitty and irresponsible thing I am about to tell you but you seem like you will use it for good so…find a poor rural shelter. Not a rescue. No hoops, no questions besides ‘are you allowed to have a cat.’ Walk out with cat.
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I absolutely got scared away from doing an application to adopt a cat because the application wanted a lot of info I wasn’t comfortable giving out (my income, etc.) and they wanted to do a walkthrough of my apartment as a second phase. Just not comfortable.
Luckily, the Cat Distribution System provided.
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@Snackness said in Pets!:
@Aria this might be a shitty and irresponsible thing I am about to tell you but you seem like you will use it for good so…find a poor rural shelter. Not a rescue. No hoops, no questions besides ‘are you allowed to have a cat.’ Walk out with cat.
In our area, it is Extremely Hard to get a cat and Basically Impossible to get a kitten. Since I had my heart set on a lil fluffy tabby kitten, I had to do this. I drove like 2 hours each way to a shelter in rural Connecticut to get my terrified, last of his litter, half-feral reject of a cat. And I love him very much.
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@Pyrephox while i appreciate the spirit behind pretty much everyone who decides to get into animal rescue volunteering, there are some truly unhinged and weird people/orgs out there.
Like fuck me, i thought doing PTA leadership at the regional level was bad (having to referee arguments within the local PTA/deal with legal issues like embezzlement and threats, ect) but my eyes were opened that it can be a lot worse!
Some of the invasive questions and expectations while clearly coming from a place of trauma/past problems…I think I’d be more worried about people who tolerated that stuff than people who noped out!
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I’m fairly sure the rescue I work with is one of the more unhinged ones. I swear they have added several new questions to the app, and every one has a story behind it.
We are considering a new one “Have you ever surrendered a cat due to medical needs?” Because we have a beautiful orange baby who was surrendered with half his face missing. He turned out to be FIV+, was not neutered, and we had to have his eye amputated on top of all the healing for the infection. Several thousand dollars went in and people donated specifically for his care. Now the owners who surrendered him are attempting to get him back.
I don’t think this question will make it, but this isn’t the first time a cat has come to us on death’s door, we’ve saved them, and then they try to get the cat back.
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@Snackness said in Pets!:
@Aria this might be a shitty and irresponsible thing I am about to tell you but you seem like you will use it for good so…find a poor rural shelter. Not a rescue. No hoops, no questions besides ‘are you allowed to have a cat.’ Walk out with cat.
I do appreciate this suggestion! We’re going with the group we picked because Philly’s animal control had a painfully low survival rate for years and though they’ve gotten much better, it’s not great and they’re currently full. (Yo, @Tez or literally anyone - you want a cat? Come to Philly.) I could very easily walk in the door and say, “Hey, I want a cat” and they’d shove three in my arms before I made it back to my car. The problem is that I don’t have the heart to walk into that building again. Even when I was doing transport for rescues and pulling seven cats at a time to redistribute to fosters and much needed medical care facilities, I’d end up leaving in tears because I’d have to watch other pets getting surrendered while I was in the waiting room. It felt like a losing battle, no matter how much good I was doing.
Fortunately, the shelter we’re going with is their biggest no-kill partner. So literally the space we free up will result in another kitty getting sprung from animal control within 48 hours to take that spot.
I’m just deep in my feels about because one of the cats we were considering looked like the little guy we lost to pancreatic cancer in early 2022. I spent about 2.5 seconds thinking their Instagram photo for him was me somehow stumbling onto my own feed by accident, then being confused about this pic I didn’t remember taking of Kolya. It’s dumb and life doesn’t work this way, but for just a little bit it was like the universe was giving me my cat back.
I am very happy he has a home and the kitty they’ve recommended to us badly needs one, but I’m still having a hard time feeling excited about it instead of feeling like I’m losing Kolya all over again.
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@Aria That all sounds so fucking hard. I’m sorry. It sounds like he was really loved, and I’m sure whatever kitty you get will be too.
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All of that is so hard. My heart hurts around animal rescue. I had to represent a defendant who stole thousands of dollars from a local rescue once. I ended up donating a thousand dollars after the case was over and it wasn’t a conflict anymore because I knew they were never going to see that restitution – not because the now clean former defendant wouldn’t try to pay but because a vet tech who went off the deep end like that will probably never work again.
I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to wander into a local shelter and adopt the first face I looked at and her big dumb brother and I feel deep empathy for you guys who JUST. WANT. KITTY. I see these adoption events locally all the time where the shelters around here are desperate for adopting families and I hear about east coast people who can’t get a cat and I am like AAAAAH. I WISH we could mash together. Fkn geography.
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On condition of his FeLV test coming back negative tomorrow…
We adopted the kitty they recommended to us - a ten year old little man currently named Steely Daniel, which is absolutely fantastic as a name but we’re generally not jamming out to “Reelin’ in the Years”.
I am trying to convince insomniac that his name should be Sir Catrick Stewart, instead.
He has a snaggle toofs and a wonky eye that we’re hoping is just some glaucoma and will be taking him to our regular vet ASAP to confirm.
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I’m crossing my fingers for you!!! He looks like a DELIGHT!!!
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Life giveth, life taketh.
It’s taken me a while to post this, but I did share a billion pictures of her, so I figured. We lost my dog back at the beginning of August. She was thirteen, so she had a very good run (and run, and run, and run…), and she’d started getting a bit blind and probably a little deaf, but she was otherwise quite healthy. Then what we thought was a bad UTI turned out to be bladder cancer, and it was pretty clear she already had a partial blockage. Hardest fucking decision I’ve ever had to make, but she went quick and peaceful and on a good day.
There’ll be another dog, hopefully sooner rather than later, maybe even much sooner, but there’ll never be another Riley. She was with me and my family through our hardest times. She was, genuinely, my best friend.
I like to think she’s being a little shit to my brother right now.
