We Heart Cats

Dear cat lovers,

This time of year, all of our local animal shelters are over-filled with new kittens. These come from various places–from irresponsible pet owners who don’t get their animals spayed or neutered and rescued cats from the wild. When we went to adopt Roja and Blanca, the local county shelter (which is a “kill shelter”) literally had tiny pet carriers stacked four levels high, filled with sad, scared cats and kittens, in addition to their regular rows and rows of cages filled with older animals.

I urge you to visit your local pet shelter or ASPCA facility and adopt a new pet…..older cats are in plentiful supply, and have had their shots and have been spayed/neutered. This will lessen your up-front expenses. Many of these animals have been life-long pets to older humans who have either passed away or entered nursing homes–they don’t all come from the wild.

A great resource is the Petfinder website. Petfinder lists over 215,000 pets around the country that you can find with a simple search feature. They also have lists of pet shelters and rescue groups that you can also search by location. And although, of course, I’d love for you to adopt a cat, they also list dogs and sometimes even other animals such as rabbits, chickens, horses, etc.

All of our six current cats were either rescued from the wild, or adopted from a kill shelter. They have all been wonderful pets to us and none of them had major health problems when we got them.

Frequently, large pet stores will sponsor a Pet Adoption Day, and that’s a good place to scope out the animals, too. Although I’ve found that some of the best pets (our Demi, for example) are not good travelers, and are often left behind at the shelters during these events.

So please, at least visit your local shelters. You never know what a great friend you might bring home with you.

I leave you with that thought, and an arty photo of Louie, who was rescued from the top of a tree after being chased by Two Big Bad Dogs. He had a torn back leg muscle, but was recently clocked racing through our house at approximately 150 miles per hour.

Hugs and hisses,

bobbi c. and the herd
Copyright ©2007 bobbi a. chukran

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