This promotes animal welfare?
Saturday, March 27th, 2010
UPDATED BELOW
My favorite cat ever was Chester, a 20-lb. black and white cat I adopted from the Atlanta Humane Society when he was about 2 years old. A friend used to call Chester “a dog in a cat suit,” because he was far more gregarious than the usual cat. People who usually didn’t like cats loved Chester.
Chester lived to about the age of 14. He was diabetic the last three years of his life and I had to give him daily insulin shots. During one of the most awful weeks of my life, I came home and found Chester having a seizure. I rushed him to the vet’s office, where he had to be euthanized. (He had lived much longer than expected.) This was the same week two good friends died of AIDS. Everything seemed to hit me at once in the vet’s office and I began crying uncontrollably. That was about 15 years ago and I still dream frequently of Chester.
Friday night, I stopped by the Ponce de Leon PetSmart’s adoption center, operated by a volunteer organization called Furkids. I saw a black-and-white cat named Spanky. His appearance naturally reminded me instantly of Chester. But then he also did exactly the same thing Chester did when I first saw him at the Humane Society. He stood on his hind legs and inserted a paw through the cage, waving at me. A kid standing beside me said, “That cat likes you.” I played with him through the cage and it was clear that he was hyper-affectionate, like Chester.
I resisted adopting him for a handful of reasons, including the fact that our two cats, Mr. Mew and Marlene, died in the last few years and I’m not anxious to have that brutal experience again. The more I thought about it, though, the more I felt inclined to adopt him. Wayne offered to go with me today, Saturday, to check him out again.
When we got to the store about 12:15 p.m., I went looking for someone to let Spanky out of his cage, so we could play with him a bit. But I couldn’t find anyone. A sign said that adoption center volunteers arrive there at noon on Saturdays. By 1:30 p.m. nobody had arrived. We called the two numbers posted on the door — and both of them were fax lines.
The store manager came by and suggested that we go ahead and fill out an application to adopt Spanky and she would see that Furkids got it. We did that and, as we were preparing to leave, a man showed up. We thought he might be the volunteer, but he turned out to be someone who had been trying for two weeks to adopt Spanky and had heard nothing about his application, despite the claim that they process apps within 72 hours. He also said — contrary to what PetSmart employees told us — that he never found anyone manning the place unless it was to clean the cages.
We were disappointed that he had filed an application before us, but he seemed like a very nice guy and I was glad Spanky was getting a good home. Well, that presumes anyone at Furkids eventually bothers to process the guy’s application. Apart from my disappointment, I was astounded that an organization supposedly devoted to the welfare of animals would keep a cat in a small cage for two weeks when someone wanted to adopt him.
I told this to the store manager, who became very defensive, claiming the store had no control over Furkids’ operation. That made Wayne angry and he pointed out that she was holding our application, was going to file it for us and was in charge of the store that provides Furkids’ space. He noted, pointing to Spanky’s likely adopter, that it wasn’t true, as she had said, that volunteers were almost always there as scheduled.
Finally, Wayne said the store should at least require Furkids to post something on the cage when someone has made application to adopt a cat. I pulled him away at this point. I haven’t seen him get that angry since he kicked the hell out of a bus in Turkey after an eight-hour nightmarish trip on it.
I know that it’s not easy to operate an organization on a volunteer basis, but if nobody’s going to show up, at least have a working phone number where people can leave a message. (The store manager did leave a message on a private line for us.) And if you’re going to say you process applications within 72 hours and can’t do it within two weeks, don’t say you’re putting the welfare of animals first. Spanky and the other cats in the PetSmart center seem to be functioning as marketing tools for Furkids, which has many more cats for adoption on its website.
In fairness, Furkids had a fundraiser scheduled for Saturday night at Variety Playhouse, so perhaps their volunteers were putting their energy into making preparations for that. But that’s why god gave us the power to post a sign on the door when schedules change.
I hope Spanky gets out of his damn cage soon! And I hope nobody else has to loiter there for hours, only to learn that someone else has already applied to adopt the cat they want.
(Photo of Spanky from the Furkids website.)
UPDATED MAR 31, 2010
To my surprise, I received a phone call yesterday from a volunteer with Furkids. She said she had about 10 minutes of questions she needed to ask me. I told her I was surprised that she called, given that someone else had filed an earlier application to adopt Spanky.
She told me that there had been some mix-up in communications with him. But, she said, order of application is only one consideration in deciding who adopts a cat. After some discussion about our negative experience at the PetSmart store, she proceeded to ask me a series of questions that reinforced my earlier sense that I was trying to adopt a human baby.
We would have to sign a contract that Spanky would never be permitted to go outside. Because Spanky is so social, there must be another pet in the house. (There was no explanation of who made this determination.) If that other pet was an indoor-outdoor cat, we would have to find a way to keep Spanky inside and we’d have to prove that the other cat’s shots were current by providing the name of a veterinarian she could call.
In our case, the “other cat” is Nubs, a neighbor’s cat that basically just moved in with us. I told the volunteer that I did not feel good about asking the neighbor if she’d kept Nubs’ shots current. (In any case, in the past we have used services that come to various venues every month or so to innoculate pets at greatly reduced prices.)
By this point in the conversation, at least 15 minutes, I was over it. I’d already reconciled myself to the fact that someone else had beat us in the application process, but I also found this interview process offensive. Some of the questions were obvious “trick questions” and, for being so, I found myself having to resist lying. I also found myself getting angry. I knew all of her concerns were legitimate but the bottom line, I said, is that Spanky has spent two weeks, probably more, in a small cage with minimal contact with anyone, even though two obviously competent people have tried to adopt him.
The volunteer explained that FurKids has over 400 cats for adoption, that it’s a no-kill shelter and thus can be pickier than the Humane Society about who can adopt its rescued cats. “The Humane Society kills a lot of cats,” she said. That’s tragic but it’s a very good reason to adopt at the Humane Society rather than Furkids. To me, this is an organization — a volunteer organization — whose good intentions exceed common sense in some regards.