Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Sign this blood oath, and the kitty is yours
We went to the local humane society on the assumptions (A) they would have lots of cats in need of a good home, and (B) they would be willing to adopt them out to us. (A) was true beyond a doubt. I saw few cats I wouldn’t want as pets — the long-hairs, since I’m not willing to put my allergy to that stringent a test. As for (B), therein lies a tale.
“We’d like to adopt three cats,” I said upon arrival. “Ours went feral.”
You would think a volunteer would be delighted to adopt out three cats, wouldn’t you? But I had made a cardinal error: I’d said too much. “Ours went feral” seemed to push all her hostility buttons.
“If you give your cats enough affection, they won’t go feral,” she said, implying we were either liars or uncaring idiots.
Next mistake: we told her we had a mouse problem and we liked having cats around because they scared off the rodents.
“We don’t adopt out working cats. It’s against our policy. We care for these cats as if they were our pets. We only adopt them out to loving homes.”
“I think you misunderstood me,” I said. “That isn’t the only reason –”
“You see, we’re at the opposite end of the spectrum. We’re the Humane Society.”
I wish I were exaggerating.
Round about now, we whispered to each other: Let’s go to the pet store. They’ll either have a few cats for sale or they’ll know some families with kittens that need homes. But then, our Volunteer Ogre said, “The cats are in here, if you would like to meet them.”
“Are you talking to me?” I said. I couldn’t believe it. She had just called us inhumane, uncaring assholes (without saying assholes, naturally), and now she had decided to let us near her precious cats?
We decided she must have changed her mind. She had noticed our son; she wouldn’t tease a child with the promise of kitties, would she? We settled into the process of meeting the cats, but fifteen minutes later, she came in to ‘see how we were doing’ and reiterated she had ‘serious reservations’ about letting us have any cats.
Jake befriended a black cat with no tail and a scarred ear. I went out to the front desk and said, “We’d like to adopt the black cat with no tail.”
“You can’t have that one. She’s no good around children.”
“But my son is wonderful with cats. He’s amazing. You’ve never seen anyone, adult or child, who has such a way with cats –”
“That cat needs a nice, quiet home. We tried her in a home with children. It was a nightmare.”
I began to imagine that I was in Monty Python’s Cheese Shop skit, only with cats instead of cheese. I wanted to say, You DO have cats for adoption, don’t you?
One of my older patients stood at the desk with her husband, waiting to adopt a dog. They’re great people. They toodle around town in their Miata with the top down, like Miami Beach denizens who turned the wrong way at St. Louis. She chatted me up while the volunteer dealt with a transfer of kittens from a foster mom to an adoptive owner.
I imagine the volunteer figured out I was a doctor. She gave me PAGES AND PAGES of paperwork to fill out. Suddenly, we were good buddies, and when we indicated we wanted the young Tabby, she said, “And her sister, too. Wouldn’t you like her sister?”
“Well, yes, we wanted at least two cats,” I said. I doubt she heard the subtext: But you were being such a twit, we didn’t think you’d adopt out any to us.
Bottom line: after something like an hour, hour and a half, we walked out with Molly and Kersten. They look like they’re six months old, and though they were friendly in the shelter, they’re still (six hours later) hiding in their carriers. Even my son, St. Frances of Catssisi, can’t coax them out.
I’ll post pix when I can.
These will be indoor cats, by the way. The volunteer told us a scary statistic: the average life expectancy of an indoor-outdoor cat used to be eight years, but the American Humane Society has downgraded that to two years. With foxes, dogs, and mountain lions in our area, I don’t want to put another cat at risk.
D.
Adopt me Hoff.
I don’t shed too much. I purr. No paperwork involved.
I have to warn you though, the whiskey bill can get pretty steep.
Ours are all indoor/outdoor – they seem to go a little crazy if housebound – and they range in age from two years (Puufy) to nine (Ghost). Since we’ve been married (almost 18 years) we’ve lost 2 cats to traffic accidents, 1 to old age (she was 16 and a vicious hunter), given away I can’t keep track of how many (Need a good mouser? Here! Take two, they’ll play!), and a few have just wandered off for greater and greater lengths of time until they just never came back (chose new homes or went feral).
But I live in sort-of-rural Iowa, which is a different kind of place to be. 😉
I’m betting you’ve got coyotes, too. They do very well in urban environments, they’re smart, quick, and quiet, and housecats are perfect prey for them.
I remember when we went to the labrador adoption org in our area hoping to adopt a homeless older dog and we weren’t good enough.
We even had a home visit. A three hour including-a-tour-of-our-bedroom-because-she-HAD-to-see-where-her-precious-dog-would-sleep home visit and we still weren’t good enough even though we’d bought toys and dog beds already.
Some of these animal people need downers. They are just too tightly wound.
M
And for the record, I would like to say I’ve spent over $4,000 I don’t have to rebuild both of my dog’s knees.
That’s going to be my intro line the next time I deal with those militant save-the-animals people.
M
Congratulations on passing the test. I’m impressed. We’ve had some negative experiences with shelters, so despite preferring the idea of adopting from a shelter, in practice, it was made impossible, so we’ve relied on friends and the classifieds (and pet stores for the non-dog/cat pets).
Hope Molly & Kersten (is there a story behind the names?) are starting to settle in now. Good luck.
Erin, I think it would be worth it just to watch you lap Cutty Sark from a bowl.
Tam: that’s a good record. I wonder why you don’t have any nasty predators out your way?
Dean, you may be right. We haven’t heard of any coyotes around here, but they are notorious for picking off pets.
Michelle, nice to know we’re not the only ones to get the major hosing. I thought about mentioning Tolerance (our cat whom we spent close to a thou on to rebuild his leg after a mauling), but I figured she would take it as more evidence of our ineptitude.
But I think there’s potential here for a romantic comedy: the heroine is a shelter volunteer who refuses to adopt out to anyone because she’s too attached to her animals. Then Man-of-her-Dreams comes along and she releases all the cats back into the wild as a metaphor for the unchaining of her heart. Is that awful, or what?
Darla, yeah, I don’t think I’d go back to the shelter any time soon. As for the names, those are the names Le Ogresse had assigned to them. I didn’t dare suggest we might be *gasp* changing their names, lest she give us a lecture on harming their tender feline psyches.
I like the names, though. I’m hoping Jake sees fit to leave ’em be.
Oh, and they’re finally warming up to us a bit. I should be able to post photos later today.
Next time round, give a long-hair a try. I’m badly allergic to short-haired cats (hives, itchy eyes, waterworks) but can cuddle my parents’ Himalayans for hours with no ill effects.
Congrats, by the way. I’m sure they’ll settle in and begin wreaking havoc in no time.
This was a funny post Doug, though I’m sure you found the ordeal irritating. It amazes me how difficult it really is to adopt pets. As I think I told you, here in this pet adoption center, kittens cost $100 and older cats, $50, and you have to sign a paper promising you will be good to the cats…like they’re going to do home visits?
The kittens were scared and will come out of the carriers on their own. I’m glad you are going to keep them indoors. I hope you don’t have any nubby upholstered furniture.
ARGH. Shelters turning down pet adopters while they don’t have enough room to take in all the homeless pets?! That’s insane.
We’ve just been adopted by a homeless cat, so we didn’t have to go looking. Sounds like we dodged the bullet. The last time I adopted a pet from the humane society, all I had to do was pay the $40 or whatever the fee was, and agree to bring it back for spaying. When did it get so complicated?
Oh, I know exactly the attitude you’re speaking of. It’s unbelievable – these people will rail on and on about the irresponsible twits that got those cats there in the first place, how there are so many of them and it’s so terrible and if only people would give them loving homes, but any sign whatsoever that you don’t fit their profile of the perfect cat owner and it’s as though you’re worse than the terrible people that put the cat there in the first place. It always makes me wonder if they’d be half so finicky with placing a child with an adopting home.
Awhile back my husband had a hankering for a specific breed of cat that he’d grown up with, and when being interviewed by someone attempting to give her cat away, it was as if a door had slammed as soon as he mentioned we planned to move within a few weeks. You would’ve thought he’d said our plans were to use the cat for some wild and painful experiments which would be capped with its sacrifice on the next full moon. Heaven forbid the cat either come to us after we moved or that it should be traumatized by moving with us!
sxKitten: but as it is, the fur gets into everything! I had to pick a hair out of our chocolate chip cookie dough this afternoon. That’s just not right.
Sis: this humane society DOES require us to sign a consent allowing for home visits — and if they don’t like what they see, they can repossess the cat.
Hi Charlene. It’s a question of personalities more than anything else. The cats we adopted in California — that was all no sweat, give us your money, here’s your cat. We had to sign an agreement to provide for the cat, and that was that. Here in Oregon, we had to PROVE ourselves. Most obnoxious.
fiveandfour: all I know is, if that woman comes into my office as a patient, I’m going to give her the same treatment. “I’m not sure I want to treat you. I have serious reservations.” And I would, too.
Hi Doug, I’m a real live lurker. Been reading you blog for a few months and come by every day to read your very entertaining musings. Anyway, I thought I would delurkify myself to comment on your experience at the cat refuge. (Not that I’m trying to start a cat fight or anything!)
I have worked in cat and dog refuges (here in Western Australia) so I’ll try to explain where your Volunteer Ogre was coming from because, believe me, I know exactly why your experience seemed to go from bad to worse. I have worked in both cat and dog refuges but I’ll talk about my experience in dog refuges as that is closer to my heart, but really, the story is much the same for the cat refuges, just the injuries may be different.
First, VOs at refuges are obviously hardcore animal lovers. That doesn’t give them a premium on loving animals but there are degrees in everything and people who work in refuges are quite often on the extreme end of the luuurve scale where the flashing lights are going off. And yes, for better or worse, VOs do treat them all like their own pets.
But to get to the point…we (all the VOs) see the horrible side of the animals v’s humans relationship. We see well dressed women in Beemers dropping off poodles with hair so matted that they look double their size and it requires sedation by a Vet to clip the animal to prevent slicing into their skin, animals that are so thin that you can almost put your fingers around their spine, elderly dogs tied to the gate in the dead of night, people who drive into the parking area and throw their dogs out before driving off at high speed, dogs that come to us with life threatening injuries to the face and neck after being used in organized dog fighting, dogs with no social skills whatsoever because they have been kept out the back and fed once a day but otherwise totally ignored, dogs that are so filthy and matted that they have fly larvae around their back end, dogs with teeth that are so rotted to the core that total extraction is required, dogs that cower in a corner as if they are waiting for their next beating….I could go on and on but I’m sure you get the picture.
So, do innocent comments like ‘our last cats went feral’ and now we want to pick up another couple make our hearts stop and warning lights start flashing. Are we suspicious, over cautious, sometimes rude? Bloody oath we are!
No VO is going to sell a cat/dog to a person that they are unsure of. Plus, after working in a refuge you tend to develop very sensitive bullshit antennae – so, any hint of a lie (and believe me, we’ve heard them all) will be picked up in the flash of a snappy Chihuahua’s eye!
Your VO obviously realised (after your bumpy start) that you were good owners and I’m glad. I’m sure Ash and Mist will have (hopefully) long and happy lives with you all. And maybe, sometime in the near future (or if your VO does come in for an ENT consultation), you will find it in your heart to forgive her!!! She was just trying to do her best by your newest best friends!
Good to meet you, Annie — thanks for delurking.
I understand what you’re saying. My counter-argument (if le Ogresse had bothered to listen) was — and I no longer believe this, but this is how we felt at the time — it felt cruel keeping them indoors since they seemed to love the outdoors so much. I gave too much credit to their intelligence and too little credit to the skill of our local predators, I guess. I never realized the stats were so horrible for indoor/outdoor cats.
Thanks for your insights 😉
As for our local predators…
There are some, skunks, raccoons, eve coyotes on occasion but so far there’s never been a problem here with coyotes and pets. There’s so much other game around.
As for the skunks, raccoons, weasels and what not, Ghost goes out, kicks kitty ass, and kills them. I have stories, and vet bills to repair the battle damage. We call him our $2,000 cat lol, and he Will Not Allow another predator in his territory. But, then again, our cats aren’t exactly “teeny” (Cooper, Twitch and Ghost are all over 20 lbs, Abby’s about 15 and Puufy – the smallest – about 12). Only Twitch is ‘fat’. Picking up Ghost is like picking up a cream colored fuzzy brick.
We’re pretty rural and the cats bring home lots of dead things, rodents, rabbits and birds, mostly, with the occasional snake, squirrel or possum. The cats are usually fairly near the house and come when we call them for supper. All are fixed, all hunt, and all are calm, friendly critters who are gentle with kids and love being ported around.
I think the indoor/outdoor issue comes down to personal preference. Yes, our cats run a greater risk of being injured or killed out in the great outdoors. I admit that. But they love being outside, love watching me grumble as I play doorman for the fiftieth time this past hour, love sunning on the deck, and love bringing home an uninjured groundsquirrel to play with. (Twitch is especially prone to the catch & release program). While I know that sooner or later Ghost will lose in his never ending battle against raccoons, I cannot deny him his nature and he’d be utterly miserable stuck inside for the rest of his life.
Annie,
What you say makes a great deal of sense. However — and it’s a pretty huge however — folks who staff the front lines at shelters need to learn to integrate some people skills along with their protective instincts. I’ve heard too many stories of perfectly good pet owners being turned away by over-zealous shelter-staffers. These folks will never return to a shelter again and will buy from pet stores — the very LAST thing we want, right?
Education is key, not making people feel like shit for not already being perfect pet-owners when they come in to adopt.
Hi Tam. I wish we could allow them to be indoor/outdoor cats, but we haven’t had much luck with that. Until/unless we figure out what’s nailing our cats — I mean, it could be one of our neighbors, for heaven’s sake — I’m keeping these guys indoors.
Selah, I know what you mean. The whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth. Sure, I pushed her buttons (inadvertantly), but she assumed the worst about us without bothering to really talk to us. “People skills” is a good phrase for what she lacked.
Thanks for sharing your horror story, Doug. I’m already working on my cover spiel for when (if!) Dean decides we could use a cat in our house.
One day I’ll tell you all about the veterinary clinic I worked for, the one that had the box of kittens in the back room, all of which had been adopted out except fo rthis lovely large orange tabby. In order to adopt the cat you had to give your name to the front office secretary. Now, I worked there, and my dog was a patient, so uh, I think I’ve passed some sort of test, and the vets all said that sure, I could take the cat home after work.
But the secretary wouldn’t let me take the cat home, because she had talked to the cat, and HE SAID that he wanted to be in a multi-cat home.
Um, yeah. Cat conversations.
Adopting animals is often just a little too hard.
I’ve always adopted pets–and I adopt adult pets, too. I’d never had any problems at all. I adopted one kitty from an animal shelter when my sons and I went in to find out about their adoption requirements–they invited me to come meet the animals and this cat started yowling insistently the second we walked into the room. The volunteer said, “That’s odd, she doesn’t like ANYONE.” We let her out to play, and a little while later, drove home with her. (She’s now an outdoor-only cat after an injury wrecked her bladder control. I wish she could be inside, but c’mon, y’all. You can’t tell me making a cat wear diapers ain’t cruel!) She’s been happy out there for 4 years now and mostly hangs out on the porch to terrorize my dogs.
There’s Ellis, whom I adopted from my parents after he fell in love with me. My dad found him in a box outside his office one morning–someone had dropped off a box of kittens, thinking the telephone office (industrial, windowless brick square) was the pound. Everyone who worked there got a kitten. Dad just happened to get the evil one.
Then Pharaoh, adopted from a PetsMart adoption day when I went in to get fish food. Came out with a cat. *shrug* Don’t ask me, I dunno either. But, he’s been absolutely wonderful and I can’t imagine not having him. He rules the house.
I adopted my little dog long-distance, after finding him on PetFinder.com and speaking with the shelter owner several times on the phone. Dolan had been in the shelter for a year, had been in 3 homes before that, had been abused somewhere along the line, and he was only 4 years old. So he’s here now, getting totally spoiled. No problems at all getting him, although I think the shelter guy figured that if I was willing to drive 5 hours each way to get this dog, I must not be planning to drag it home behind the car or something.
Then I wanted a German Shepherd, because where I live, it’s just prudent to have a big-ass dog in the yard. And that’s when the trouble began. “We don’t adopt GUARD-dogs,” one lady sneered, like I’d asked for a dog who wouldn’t mind getting sodomized daily. Another shelter said, “A 4-foot high chainlink fenced yard isn’t good enough. It needs to be higher.” No matter that I’ve got almost a full acre of yard for the dog to play in and have never seen any German Shepherd who can jump a 4-foot fence. I’d have to add at least a foot to the fence before that lady was satisfied, and do you know how much that’d cost? Then from another GS rescue place, “What happened to your last dog?” Well, he was my mother’s, and she’d left him with me for a year while she moved and they got their house fixed up and yard fenced in so she could have him. “We don’t approve of people just shuffling their pets around,” they tell me. Oy, vey.
I finally decided to buy a puppy, and you know something? The breeder I found, after lots of research, was FAR pickier than any shelter could ever be. I drove 2 hours to get Simi, and the breeder insisted that all household members be present. Not a problem. She had us sit on the porch with the puppy AND the pup’s sire and dam, because she was watching for any sign from the dogs that we weren’t okay. (Animals really have a sense for this.) We spent a good hour there, $400 in cash in hand, proving that we were good people before she’d take our money and let us have the dog.
And that? I totally didn’t mind. This dog was in-demand. Simi’s a pure-breed German Shepherd from a breeder used by the sheriff’s dept for their drug dogs. If I didn’t buy her, someone else would. No way would she have still been ‘homeless’ 24 hours later. This breeder had every right to be picky, but shelters? They really do need to lighten up. I’m DAMN good to my furbabies and really don’t appreciate the Nazi treatment. These shelters weren’t interested in talking to my vet, my neighbors, my references, visiting my house, nothing. That’s what got me. Argh. I feel your pain, Doug!