wait for it….wait for it….wait for it…

I have a big draft of a post I am working on.  It will be a summary of the last 3 weekends.  Stay tuned…..

A comment from an adopter…

Me again folks.  After contemplating this situation for several weeks, I have finally decided that I am going to post a recent comment that I received.  The comment can be viewed on our blog, but on an old post.  At that location, no one would ever read it.  I assume that because this person wrote to the blog and wrote a comment, she actually wanted everyone to see what she had to say.  I feel that it is our responsibility to post the bad with the good, so I decided that we would put the comment on a post so that everyone can read it.  Following her post, is a reply from us.  The comment was forwarded, at her request, to the manager of the shelter, who has since been in contact with her.

“Your story on Houdini was so sweet and the person who adopted him is me. He is a good cat and the humane society in general does wonderful things for animals but unfortunately, poor Houdini was infected with an upper respiratory infection when I brought him home and I didn’t know it. He sneezed once or twice when my girlfriend and I were picking him up at the foster home but his foster mom blew it off as an allergy. So, to make a long story short, this is a highly infectious disease among cats I’d never seen before so didn’t know what I was bringing home to my three healthy indoor cats.

Of course they were all infected and still are after almost five months and almost $600 in vet bills. At this point I don’t know what to do. After all the antibiotics my cats have been given (injected AND liquit) with no improvement, I don’t know what else to do. My 16-year old girl is suffering from this and with her quality of life diminishing, I’m considering putting her to sleep.

My three other cats, Houdini and I have all wanted this to work and it would have if Houdini had been a healthy cat. I don’t blame him because he caught this infectious disease from another unhealthy cat, but things have been going downhill from the time I brought him home to now and it’s almost all I think about because it’s so distressing.

I tried contacting the Carthage Humane Society via email after sending them a snail mail letter but their website doesn’t have anything available for email contact. If possible, would you please forward this to them and maybe we can come to some kind of resolution.

It’s just all too sad that this had to happen and as infected as Houdini was – and still is – I can’t imagine it isn’t happening many more times considering the amount of cats that were in the foster home where he was living. There were cats everywhere and they were probably all in various stages of infection from this highly contageous disease. They were probably adopted out and infected even more cats and more cats.

It’s not like the world has a shortage of adoptable cats so if they can’t cure the problem so animal loving people like me would adopt a disease free cat, these cats should unfortunatly be euthanized so as not to spread this disease.

Jan”
Our reply was:

“Jan – thank you for taking the time to write in about Houdini. As you read in our post, we all think Houdini is a very special kitty. I am sorry to hear that you and your family and kitties are having such a hard time. I just wanted to comment on your letter.

As you know, we only provide animals to potential adopters that, to the best of our knowledge, are healthy. Houdini’s foster mom was confident enough about his health to let Houdini live among her personal pets. If she had thought that Houdini had some type of health issue, she would not have let him live with her pets. Also, she would have postponed the adoption until after he had been seen by a vet and medical treatment administered. If Houdini was suffering from an upper respiratory disease, this is not so uncommon and is very inexpensive and easy to treat.

We do hope that you followed our advice and got a vet check within the first week of adoption. This is a preventative step that we recommend to the new parents so that if there is a problem, it can be caught right away and the adopter has the option to return the pet and get a refund. Apparently, he was healthy at some point if your vet was able to declaw him. Most vets that I work with will not even consider performing this serious and painful surgery if a cat has a fever or otherwise appears to be under the weather. It is possible that the stress of the car ride to your home or the introduction of him to your other pets or the stress of the major declaw surgery caused stress. Cats are very sensitive creatures and get stressed out very easily. Any stress can drop the normal defenses of the immune system and make the pet more prone to illness.

I am very sorry that your family has suffered, but it was explained very clearly in the contract that you accept the pet without any guarantee of health and that you promise to provide vet care throughout the life of the pet. As with children, as petowners, we must be dedicated to our pets and accept them – if our children are blind, we accept them, provide care and love them forever. Also, I believe it was made very clear that the foster mom was very fond of Houdini and if you had wanted to return him to her if you felt that he was unhealthy or unacceptable – she would have gladly taken him in.

As for the shelter infecting every cat in the four state area with upper respiratory disease and that they should all be euthanized, I must strongly disagree. The staff at the shelter is very conscious of the animals that it cares for and never knowingly adopts sick animals to the public. All animals that are ill are seen by a vet and/or treated with medication and isolated from the general population immediately upon showing symptoms of illness. If you had taken in a kitten from Jo Anybody at the Wal-Mart parking lot, there is a possibility that you would have had even MORE of a chance of getting a cat that was sick than you would when adopting from the shelter. At least our pets are monitored several times a day and treated as needed.

I must agree with you when you say there is not a shortage of adoptable cats – that is true and that is something that we work tirelessly to fix. Spare Cat Rescue sponsors several low-cost spay/neuter clinics each year for cat owners to reduce the population of unwanted cats in the shelters and on the streets. Despite one bad adoption experience out of several hundred last year, we must continue to try to find loving homes for the temporary residents at the shelter. It would be heartless for us to stop our work because of this one unfortunate incident. I think of all of the success stories from last year and all of those animals would not have found loving homes if we had not been dedicated to finding them homes.

It is very unfortunate that your experience with the adoption has been so negative and I wish it hadn’t been that way at all. We wanted Houdini to find his forever home and him and his new family to be happy together. It’s what we hope for all of our temporary residents. Please understand, Jan – we are pet owners, too. We love our pets and we love animals. We would never knowingly adopt a sick animal to someone because we know and understand and feel the pain and suffering that could happen if we adopted unhealthy animals to people. That is not what we are here to do. We want to find good homes for our animals and we want our animals AND their families to be very happy.

As you have requested, I will be forwarding your message to the staff at Carthage Humane Society, along with your email address.

Thanks again for writing to us and I wish the best for Houdini and your other kitties. I hope everyone is feeling better soon!”

All of us at the shelter and Spare Cat Rescue are very fond of Houdini and we really do hope that he is feeling better soon, along with Jan’s other kitties.  As animal lover’s ourselves, we always wish the best for our animal loving friends and their furry friends and we do not ever wish emotional hardships on any fellow animal lover.

Jan has been in contact with the shelter again and had kind words for them as well as an animal story for us.  (We always love animal stories…)

We’re back….

Howdy folks.  Sorry to abandon you all for so long, but our computer blew up again for the 3rd time in a week.  I think we are finally fixed now.  I wanted to throw it into the street and run over it 30 or 40 times with the truck, but refrained.

In animal news, we had a very good weekend this Saturday at Petsmart.  We adopted a sister and brother siamese pair to a young couple.  They spent a lot of time examining each cat and reading their profiles before making their final decision.  We are very happy that Bobby and Lacy found a great home and are able to stay together!

Another awesome cat that we had was Taj – he also found a loving home!  And we adopted a dog named Sissy to a good home, too.   We hope that all of the new parents will stop by on Saturdays and let us know how everyone is doing.  And bring pictures.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the shelter and noticed that my current favorite shelter cat, Lexington, was not there anymore.  Lexington was a large declawed and neutered male adult kitty that was surrendered with his brother the week of Christmas.  His brother got adopted right away, but poor Lexington was terrified and hid in his litter box for weeks and weeks.  The staff and volunteers worked with him patiently and eventually he came out of his shell and became more sociable and wanted attention.  He was a real sweet boy.  Then, one week, a girl came to get a new kitty and fell in love with Lexington and took him home!  We were very happy that the shelter was able to be patient with him while they waited for the right person to find him.

Prop B got shot down, after Missouri voters passed it in November.  We will have to wait and see what the “new” prop B says.  Recently, I had the pleasure of visiting a dog breeder here locally while I was working my “real” job.  I was very impressed by the operation.  All of the dogs had inside areas with an outside run.  All of dogs had lots of clean water – and on the coldest days, the man put out fresh, clean water for them so they wouldn’t have to lick ice.  Their outside areas were spotless with no feces at all.  All of the dogs were very, very nice and very well socialized.  They all looked very healthy and clean and groomed.  I had the opportunity to return there several times for work and this is what I found each time.  The man that was caring for the dogs was always out working the kennels and was very dedicated.  I’m ok with breeders that can run a kennel like that.

I can’t remember when I wrote last.  One of my feral cats has returned – sparsely.  After consulting with neighbors and other cat “experts”, we have come to the conclusion that the other 3 are probably dead.  The 4th one, Inky, is terrified and will not come close to me anymore and only comes to eat at our house every few days.  The other day, a bird flew over and he was so scared that it made me very sad.  I don’t know what has happened to him or what he saw, but he is very, very terrified.  I am happy that he is ok, but I am sad about the other 3.

Our bulbs that we planted in the new garden at the shelter are finally popping up.  We are very anxious to start planting more flowers there, but the weather does not seem to cooperate.  Today in Joplin, we had so much hail that it looked like it had snowed an inch.  It was really weird!  I am ready for spring!

The last two Thursday of March we be our low-cost spay/neuter cat clinics.  Both days are already completely booked and we are very excited to be able to help pet owners in our area.  Just last week, someone surrendered 6 black lab puppies to the shelter.  Black lab puppies/dogs are the least likely to be adopted and a large percent of those that are surrendered to shelters are put down because they are not adopted.  You all know that I am partial to black dogs and cats, so we won’t revisit that topic.  I asked the shelter employee if the momma dog was surrendered with the puppies and he said “no”.  This makes me very angry because these people will probably not get the momma dog fixed and she will more than likely have many more litters of puppies and they will turn them all into the shelter again and again and again.  I would be excited if we could have some type of program where people surrendering litters of puppies and kittens could only do so if they allowed us to spay the momma dog/cat for them to prevent further unwanted litters.  Currently, they have no motivation for fixing their dog because after they turned the puppies over, it is no longer their problem – it is OUR problem.  We will stop talking about that for now because I am getting angry….

One of our volunteers made a great suggestion the other day.  She said, “We should challenge everyone we know to help the shelter.  Every time I go to the dollar store and bleach is on sale for $1, I buy one for myself and an extra one for the shelter.”  What a great idea!   So, we thought that it would be great to challenge our family and friends to do the same.  Every time they buy kitty litter, pick up a bag of the cheap generic clay stuff for the shelter – it costs less than $5.  When you buy food for your cat/dog, pick up a bag for the shelter.  When you go the Costco or Sam’s club and you buy the mondo packs of toilet paper and paper towels, why not donate 1 or 2 rolls to the shelter?  Around back-to-school time, you can get fantastic deals on office supplies.  Why not buy pens and tape and supplies for the shelter?  This would be something that almost everyone could do that would not put a huge strain on your finances, but would help the shelter out tremendously!  Just think – if you told 10 of your friends and they told 10 friends and each one of you donated 1 roll of paper towels, for example, that would be 100 rolls of paper towels that the shelter would not have to buy and they would be able to spend that money in more helpful ways for the animals.  I also admire young children who have birthday parties and ask their friends to bring supplies for the shelter instead of gifts for them.  That generosity from such a young person really touches me.  You could also have a rummage sale and donate 10% of your sales to the shelter.  Even if you only give them $10, that’s $10 that they didn’t have before and it helps!

Before I go, here are some photos for all of you to enjoy.  I know for a fact that some of you don’t actually read the blog, but only look at the photos…..

My sweet Lexington found a home!!!

Big Boy Taj found a home!!!

Mikey went home with Corey and their new family!

Corey went home with Mikey and their new family!!

Sweet Shabby Chic found a loving home!!

Beautiful Lacy found a loving home!!!

Frisky Bobby found a loving home, too!