Pet Adoption in America 101 - #2 - I'm Cat-a-tonic

Pet Adoption in America 101 - #2 - I'm Cat-a-tonic

In most chain pet-stores they have a practice at the cash register of asking you if you’d like to donate to help a homeless pet.  My usual response after the sticker shock of the bill is tell them, “No.  There are quite a few of those pets living in my house – I am contributing directly to the solution.”  My response usually flies over the head of the bright-eyed, freshly tattooed PETA cashier waiting on me.  Anybody can be a protester or demonstrator when they are living at their parents’ house, right?  Every now and then one of them may say, “Ooohhh that’s nice.   So how many pets do you have?”  At present, I need to be in a DPA (Domesticated Pets Anonymous) meeting before I quote an exact figure.  The only help my Higher Power has given me with this problem is a couple of deaths in the aviary this past month.  I don’t think that’s funny and I don’t think that’s a good solution to my truly non-problematic life situation!

So let’s talk about cats.  Most people don’t have to adopt a cat.  If you live long enough, someone else’s cat will adopt you.  Really that’s how it goes.  I think that cats leave their homes because of some very deep instinct that says, “Someone else may provide me better food so I’ll just wander out and check on that.”  That’s why I don’t let my cats outside.  They don’t have that option of shopping for a new home.  Plus they have the Life of Reilly at my house and they darn well better be knowing it.  And of course, I know that they are not going to fare too well if they run into the wildlife that exists in my part of the country.  Saving myself a trip to the vet that I don’t want to make, they live inside and lounge around all day.  My next life, maybe I should come back as a cat?

No.  I think it probably stinks to be a cat.  Even though we perceive them as aloof and individualistic, they really are dependent on people once they are domesticated.  They count on us to clean their box, remember to give them food & water, and pay attention to whether or not they are truly as healthy as they fake themselves to be.  I told someone recently that birds, not unlike cats, hide their illnesses until they are just about at Death’s Doorstep.  Then, it’s up to you to figure out what the next step is.  It’s a crazy thing. 

I could say I don’t think I was born a “cat-person,” I became one out of compassion.  But then again most pickles don’t realize they were cucumbers in their previous environment.  In 1992 I was living on the edge of a city and a grey tiger kitten was roaming through the yard a few houses down.  The little girl sitting in the driveway played with it for about FIVE HOURS and then her mother took her inside and left the kitten out.  That really made me mad because now the kitten had no chance at remembering where it lived, and was all loved-up by a kid, and had to figure out what next.  Usually the tires of someone’s car are what’s next.  So I went over there, knowing nothing at all about cat care in any way, and picked the kitten up and brought it home.  Really Simba was the sort of kitten you would like to put a bonnet on and push in a baby carriage – she had such a great disposition.  When she was about two years old, I said to her, “You know, you are the perfect first cat.  You are also the perfect last cat.”

Not even two weeks later I was walking from the street to the driveway, and this adorable calico shot out from under a parked car and began doing figure-8’s around my ankles.  The perfect second cat?  I looked down and said, “So what’s your issue?”  She had come from the derelict empty house on our street – the one where the basement window was smashed out and cats came and went like cowboy’s going to the Saloon in an old west ghost town.  She meowed and continued the ankle hypnosis on me.  I looked down and said, “Well, then, come on….”  And she followed me into the house, upstairs, and went straight to the dogfood dish and ate dog food for what seemed an inestimable amount of hours. 

This new family member was of some concern to the primary cat.  And the dog was kind of stunned by the bold-faced thievery occurring at her dish.  But everyone got over it.  Even me.  I took the cat a day later to the vet’s office for a routine once-over.  The young vet took the cat from me and said, “I’m taking her in the back to test her for feline leukemia.  If she is positive I will have to put her down.”  She turned on her heel and walked out the door.  And I got teary-eyed at the prospect.  Well, 13 years later the healthy senior citizen cat is just sleeping and eating and occasionally being “charged” by the youngest dog in the house.   So as she begins to down-scale physically, I thought I should get a healthy cat in the picture.  (The first cat has been gone to Kitty Heaven over two years now.)

The run-around begins.  I have a mental picture of what I want:  a female, white, some color, short hair domestic kitten.  One shelter was so dirty that I walked through, that I could barely stand the smell.  Another shelter was difficult to find:  a non-descript brick building faded in the sun, it was probably an old armory or a school of some sort.  I never did get IN that building, but picked a cat named Priscilla from the online selection.  I called the woman in charge.  The conversation began:

Me:  “Hi.  I’m looking to adopt the cat Priscilla.”

Her:  “She isn’t ready yet.  We can’t let her go for a week.”

Me:  “Gee, that’s perfect because I will be coming back from vacation and can get her then.”

Her:  “We’ll talk to you then.”

I came back from vacation to a message on my answering machine:  “We are calling to see if you are still interested in one of our cats.  We have a great black cat here….”

HUH?  I call them:  “Hi.  You left a message about a black cat?  I was looking at Priscilla, the WHITE cat.”
“Oh, she’s been adopted out.”

Me:  “How could THAT happen?  You said she wasn’t ready to go.”

“Oh, well someone else came and took her brother Rodney so we let her go too.”

Goodbye.

I found an amazing kitten online in the Hudson area.  If they were selling her at cost for her breed, she would have been a very expensive designer cat.  They never returned my emails. 

I located a kitten in a shelter listed online.  It was a little bit further south than I wish it was, but you know how that goes.  I was a woman on a mission!  I called them on a rainy autumn Saturday and said I was coming.  I had sent my application down to the shelter via fax a week prior for the same cat.  I called them half-way there and they said, “On Saturdays we only do adoptions until 4:00 pm and we close at 4:30pm.”  I practically begged them, “Well, I am half way to you, should I turn around?  At least can I come see her?”  I pulled in the driveway to see a statue of St. Francis right in front of me.  It’s nice to know that one of Heaven’s finest “animal welfare agents” is on your side.  I checked my clock:  It was 4:28 pm.  Like a child in a candy store window, I put my hand on the glass and waved.  They let me in and told me promptly that adoptions were closed.

“Can I at least see the kitten?”

“Oh, okay.  She’s back here.”  The woman guided me through the cleanest shelter I have ever seen.  (And, sadly, I have choked my way through some very dirty ones.)  I kept walking to the pen in the back where two kittens played.  The kitten I had seen online, Sola, looked up at me as if she had detected me on radar, came right to the front of the cage and extended her paw out to me.  The woman said, “Do you want to see her?”  Sure.  She put the kitten in my arms.  Decision made.  And she says to me, “What do you think?”  I replied, “It’s a definite yes.”  She replied,  “Oh, okay.  I’ll take an extra 15 minutes and do the paperwork.”  Really.  All these commercials and spots on the evening news to place these animals and you have to coax cooperation out of the workers.  How frustrating.

Two years later, she is an incredibly beautiful white cat – seal point Siamese mix – every morning she sits on the bathroom sink and “visits” with me as I put my make up on.  And sometimes if I walk by her, she extends that paw to me just like she did when we first met.  It makes me wonder why adopters have to run the emotional gauntlet to secure this piece of happiness.

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