I love animals and whoever doesn't love kittens must be pure evil, right? So in doing a good deed, I agreed to take in 3 little kittens until they could be adopted out my a local animal rescue organization. With 3 adorable kittens, this should be quick, fun, easy and the only pain should come from having to say goodbye as they get placed with their loving families. Well, that would be the case if the judgy animal hoarders weren't waiting in the wings making sure these kittens couldn't be adopted.
The first issue I see in getting adorable kittens adopted out is that most places want to wait until the kitties are well into their awkward stage before even putting them up for adoption. It seems that all animal adoptions organizations have taken a hard line on getting the animals they adopt out fixed first. It makes perfect sense unless it means that kittens throughout the area must be kept in foster homes until they are big enough for surgery. To make matters worse, they schedule the operations after they are big enough but then you have to wait weeks longer. Apparently these organizations don't trust anyone or any procedures to ensure the new pet owners will actually get the animals fixed. The problem is that it's harder to adopt out these juvenile animals and the new owners have not gotten the opportunity to do that valuable bonding that happens when an animal is between 2 and 5 or more months old. This time-frame in an animals life is when serious human to animal bonding can take place. On top of that it's an easier time for training and habits to be formed and they're frankly way more adoptable. It seems that setting up a system of money deposits, checks and balances should accomplish the desired goal fairly easily.
So once the kittens are in the gawky stage and fixed, they're ready to be presented to the world. It would make sense for them to be in the shelter at this point in time, right? After all, people looking to adopt a pet go to the shelter. That's not where the animal hoarders disguised as rescue people go. Nope, they decide to display the animals in a shopping area. Aren't these the same people who discourage buying animals on a whim because of the life long commitment? So each and every weekend I had to trek the kittens to the shopping area and at the end of the day I had to trek the kittens back to my house. After many weeks of this I had to start asking why they weren't adopting out any animals (ALL the animals were still there at the end of the day)? Soon, I started to hear the stories of the people who did want to adopt the kittens but how the animal hoarders continually "rejected" potential pet owners for a variety of totally BS reasons. One lady wanted to adopt 2 of the kittens and the rescue leader actually said she just didn't have a good feeling about her.
When the kittens were nearly full grown, I knew I had to do something. We were planning a vacation so I let them know that I'd be gone for a few weeks. Our vacation was more like a few days but I had to buy some time. Did they think I was going to adopt the kittens or that if they just rejected enough people, I would keep them forever? At any rate, they arranged anther foster situation for the kitties while I was gone with one of the more active volunteers (hoarders). The lady who took the kittens was down to a reasonable number of cats in the teens (yikes). A few weeks later when I (a-hem) returned, I called to check on the kittens hoping that they were adopted out. No such luck.
After talking with my husband and coming to the conclusion that we just couldn't volunteer anymore, I let them know that I would not be picking the kittens back up. Never mind the time, driving them to multiple adoption events per week, the food, the cat litter, the fact that they didn't let me in on the fact that when I first got the kittens they were all sick with terrible diarrhea (potentially putting my own pets at risk), I was okay with all that. I was not okay with the verbal abuse and accusations about what a horrible person I am for not continuing in their thankless racket. I guess if they had not totally misrepresented how they operate and their success level at actually finding homes for the animals I could have been more understanding but come on already!
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