After Animal Remembrance Day

Some people, like Mudpie's human, chose to burn candles yesterday in memory of all the animals who've been "humanely" slaughtered in Humane Pet Genocide Society shelters. 

https://www.mochasmysteriesmeows.com/2022/09/its-time-to-seethelight-about-pet.html

The last time I went into a shelter and came out carrying a cat, years ago, the cat was Dusty. Dusty had just been picked up beside a road that morning, and when I stroked her so much dust came out of her fur that I wondered whether her coat would even be gray underneath It was gray, but a different shade. I wasn't looking for a pretty cat, though, but for a nursing mother cat who could adopt the kittens Graybelle had left behind. What got Dusty out of the shelter fast were (1) that she was still a nursing mother and (2) that she wanted very much to be taken out of the shelter. 

It was the oldfashioned kind of shelter, with four tiers of cages along either side of an aisle, so all the cats' nerves were strained to the breaking point, and fleas and infectious diseases circulated freely. Many paws were poking out of cages, waving, even grabbing as humans passed by. "Meow," the cats who had had human friends were all saying, "meow. Meow!"--obviously meaning "Get me out of here!" The dogs, caged in a different room, heard the cats meowing and joined in, barking and howling, "What about me?" The oldfashioned city and country animal shelters were always noisy when any potential adopters came in.

Dusty wasn't louder than all those other animals and didn't try to be. She just looked at me, nonverbally saying, "You are going to get me out of here, aren't you? I'm a good cat. Well, most of the time."

Dusty's story has been told elsewhere. She didn't adopt the kittens, nor did she stay with me very long. She moved on to her Purrmanent Home, where she lived for seven years. She had looked like a year-old kitten when I met her; she never looked any older. She always seemed to recognize me. A few months before she died I finally found the time to sit and pet her for as long as she wanted--about an hour and a half. She was a good cat, most of the time.

Nowadays adopting a shelter animal can be very different than it was in my youth, when if you'd rented a room in a house that didn't already have cats you just loaded your housemates into the van (some resident of those group houses for single yuppies always had a van) and went to the city shelter and paid ten dollars for a kitten. 

Mindful that the oldfashioned shelter experience is traumatic enough for humans, let alone cats, today's private shelters often try to offer better situations for the cats. Many of the Petfinder pages linked here mention that all the shelter's animals are in foster homes, and in order to meet a stray animal you must first pass a background check so that the foster family feel comfortable about bringing you into their home. They may want to visit your home, too. 

People who "volunteer to foster" animals, thus getting temporary pets at no charge, can easily bond with their "foster" pets and actually try to discourage adoption. Even more easily they can succumb to the Deadly Sin of Avarice, screaming about how horrible it is that commercial breeders sell animals for profit while they themselves are selling animals of lower value, or even petnapped animals, for the same high prices. A show-quality pedigreed animal might legitimately be valued at $500 because its offspring will be sold for high prices. An animal that looks a bit like the pedigreed one, but has been neutered, may be advertised by a shelter with an "adoption fee" of $500. Several things are wrong here and the position of this web site is that we should avoid encouraging either control freaks or greedheads. 

However, it's also possible that adopters and "foster families" will become friends, and continue to visit each other even after the animals are gone. 

Either way, animals are likely to stay in "foster home" situations longer than they stayed in oldfashioned shelters. Shelters traditionally killed anmals when they ran out of cages to keep new arrivals in. Many animals died of infectious diseases in shelters. Some may have died from what they must have experienced as the sheer horror of being in an oldfashioned shelter--a completely unnatural, unhealthy, hostile environment. 

Some animals who are listed as being in "foster homes" may, as far as they're concerned, have found their fur-ever homes. Sometimes animals know when someone wants to take them away from a place where they'd rather stay, and they make themselves as unadoptable as possible. If an animal like Jade from Atlanta, whom this web site picked as the most photogenic twice before e-mailing the shelter to ask why Jade hadn't been adopted already, wants to stay in its "foster home" forever, and its foster human wants to keep it, well, at least the two of them agree.

Eventually, however, a point of saturation may be reached. If a rescue organization really stands by a "no-kill" policy, even if the organization releases every animal to the first person who offers it a home, the organization will run out of "foster homes" as surely as the oldfashioned shelters ran out of cages. Then what happens to homeless animals?

We saw what happens, a few years ago, with the antisocial cat Barnie, a gorgeous Himalayan-type fluffball abandoned near the Cat Sanctuary. Seeing Barnie some distance from the road, I said to it, "If you can get along with my cats you're welcome to stay with us." Barnie, however, preferred to get along without my cats; it started sneaking around the house at night and attacking them. At least it attacked the lttle spring kitten, Violet, and the sweet old homebody cat, Irene. It avoided Queen Cat Heather, who could at least look mean although I don't think she ever did anything unkind, and her sons. I'm quite sure Irene never did anything unkind, so when I saw that Barnie had injured Irene, I wanted to do something unkind...something as cruel as putting wretched Barnie in a shelter. But the shelters were full. Nobody had room for Barnie in a "foster home." A city shelter would be obliged to take Barnie if it was reported as anuisance by residents of the city. I loaded Barnie into a duffel bag and started walking to the city, planning to dump Barnie outside a house where it would be reported as a nuisance...and someone came along and gave me forty dollars for that horrible kitten. 

Barnie was not a normal animal and may not have had a normal experience, but Barnie's story suggests to me that shelters may need to do more to offset the intrusiveness of "application forms" and home visits.

 Gentle Readers, I invite you to consider the good and bad aspects of "foster care" from the point of view of these photogenic foster pets:

1. Lucy from New York City

Web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/lucy-53828902/ny/new-york/frankies-fund-for-feline-care-and-rescue-ny1043/

Lucy looks like a Tortie from here, but shelter staff describe her as a brown tabby. On one side she's mostly a sort of cocoa-heather-motttled mix with faint tabby markings. She is thought to be about ten years old, and has had minor health problems. Shelter staff are guessing that she'll do best as an only pet and, of course, having been declawed, she'll have to live indoors all the time.

2. Lotta from D.C. 

Web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/lotta-57399963/dc/washington/lucky-dog-animal-rescue-dc20/

Don't you have to adore the way her stripes line up? Lotta had a son, who's been adopted. In foster care she's been described as "Velcro Cat" because she clings to her foster human. She's thought to be about two years old and in good health.

3.  Bandele from Atlanta 

Web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/bandele-56773438/ga/atlanta/atlanta-humane-society-ga251/

Bandele is described as a lovable little old lady cat, active and healthy, with no interest in going outside, happy to snuggle with humans when she feels like it and get up and leave when she feels like it. She's in a "foster home" and, to be perfectly fair, you can sign up to be her "foster home" for two weeks to see how she fits into your family.

Do you think "foster care" will serve these cats better than an oldfashioned shelter would? What about the cats who will still be kept in a shelter, or who may be euthanized, if these cats aren't adopted?