It's hard. It can be heartbreaking, if you visit a traditional shelter where different animals are on display in rows of cages. There may be a hundred or more cats who want you to get them out of there, and you may want to get them all out of there...and you know you have room for only two cats, and you already live with one of them.
Petfinder can help you avoid the guilt. Though Petfinder animals are basically shelter animals, mostly mixed breeds and either sterilized or put up for adoption on condition that you will have them sterilized, many organizations that use Petfinder offer alternatives to the traditional city shelter. Many animals are living in "foster homes" that offer a normal environment; rather than invite the world to visit their homes, "foster families" will bring individual animals to meet you in the park, or the mall parking lot--or at your home, if you let them.
I suppose the way these photo contests work, when they work, is that catless people see one of these cat pictures, think "I want to see that face around my house," and go straight to Petfinder to arrange to meet that particular cat, but that's not your only alternative. Each Petfinder pet's page is supposed to link to the organization's page and to the main Petfinder page for that region. (Petfinder defines "regions" by mileage, starting at a specified zipcode and working outward. Zipcode 10101 always yields several pages of pictures of animals right in New York City; zipcode 30303 always yields relatively few photos from metropolitan Atlanta and can seem to include most of Georgia.) You can compare pictures. You can compare "adoption fees."
I usually avoid fancy breeds. I'm sure Norwegian Forest cats are very lovable animals--big fluffy things, often throwbacks to their full ancestral size with a healthy weight two or three times the average house cat's--but there's nothing cute about a cat with a $750 price tag. You can, however, search for fancy breeds. Every now and then breeders will send purebred, pedigreed, even show-quality-looking animals with some minor genetic flaw to shelters. The animals are "not breeding stock" but can still be good pets, and they still have the look and pedigree of their more favored relatives. Usually breeders have waiting lists of people who want to adopt these animals, but not always. If you watch and wait you might find any fancy breed that interests you on Petfinder. They're not what I look for but they do occasionally pop up.
So what do you look for? Color? That's not much to go on. Shelters and Petfinder pages usually have several cats in each color type you might mention.
Weight? Do you want to adopt, or avoid, acat whose healthy adult weight is more than fifteen pounds? Ir'a nor easy to predict cats' size by looking at kittens. Cats who are going to weigh thirty pounds usually start out in the normal kitten size range, not always even at the large end of the range, and just keep growing. Most cats reach their full healthy size during the second year of their lives, but sometimes a thirty-pound cat who weighs fifteen pounds when it's two years old continues to add pounds and inches up into its fifth year.
Voice, or use of it? That can be important. Yappy dogs and whiny cats are annoying and ay even provoke abuse. What animals have to say, however, and how they say it, may be completely different in their Purrmanent Homes than it was at a shelter.
Desperation? Being in a shelter can make animals desperate, especially in the old-school city shelters where the strays dragged in were likely to have left their homes in search of places to die in peace. I once looked into a cage where a mother cat was nursing her kittens. Behind me another cat kept insisting "Meow, meow, meow." With horror I realized that the mother cat hadn't just closed her eyes in maternal bliss, but had died. "Meow," the othe rcat persisted. "It's contagious! Let me out of here before her fleas start biting me." I took the living cat out of there. She was sick for a few weeks, but she survived. She was a friendly, lovable cat, but never again seemed quite so urgent, in approaching humans, as she did in the shelter.
Would you adopt a cat because it nipped you? Many shelters assume that nobody ever would! Some shelters will euthanize animals who bite even when they've been provoked--e.g. a "humane rescuer" sets down a bowl of food in front of a hungry alley cat, then jerks the food away as the cat digs in. I think this can be a mistake because of my experience with, specifically, "diluted red" and/or Siamese-type cats. The temperament that seems to go with these color patterns is wary, sometimes to the point of biting defensively if they're picked up. Even if they were born in your house, and you've been counting them and stroking each little head for ten days, on the day its eyes open a pale-colored kitten who is going to be pale orange or brown will hiss and spit at the sight of you. Touch it and it will bite! The first time you get even a surface wound on your thumb, the flow of blood will amaze you. Whether you pointedly ignore Little Spitter and fuss over the milder-tempered kittens and their mother, or pick up Little Spitter and hold on to it until it gives up the fight, the result is likely to be the ame. In a day or two, Little Spitter adores you and wants to be your favorite cat. Cats put all their hesitations and fears up front, at the beginning of a relationship, and very off-putting it an be, and then they love their friends wholeheartedly. I wouldn't pick a kitten because it bit me, and I don't really approve o giving a cat the idea that it can expect to bite humans and live, but if you want to be adored by a cat I'd recommend giving a Little Spitter a second look. I'd withhold the snuggling and petting until the cat approached me, but I'd expect the hissing to be replaced by displays of affection.
Would you look for the neediest cat, the one others were likely not to consider? One respondent told PBird he'd deliberately chosen a three-legged cat. Perhaps that cat had seen other people adopt other cats and not consider her...she stuck close to that man for the next eighteen years!
Relatively few adopters seem to mention looking for an elderly animal, though there can be valid reasons to choose one. Senior animals tend to be calmer and sometimes have a calming influence on young animals. For a few years our local vet was blessed with a geriatric social tomcat, Old Toby, whose effect on sick, scared visitors could seem miraculous. I remember taking Polly, who really was feral, in for medication. She was just short of an hysterical fit, digging her claws into me and yelling, when Old Toby came out and purred at her. Polly was awestruck. She was awfully young and sick to have "fallen in love." I think her reaction was move like "There are other cats like us in this world!" She didn't even seem to mind going back for rabies shots later; she liked to say hello to Toby! Old animals are going to break your heart, but everything and everybody else is too, unless you die and break their hearts first.
Some adopters do look for a young animal who's likely to be with them for a good long time. This can be a good idea especially if there are children in the family. Even tough, hard-boiled teenagers tend to stop strutting around acting "cool" when a family pet dies. (That's one argument in favor of a cat, small dog, or horse over a chicken.) To those looking for kittens, Serena has something to say:
OFFICIAL MESSAGE FROM SERENA TO CAT PEOPLE
"Do not adopt just one kitten at a time. Even if there is an adult cat in the family, or you adopt a kitten and its mother, every kitten needs another kitten to play with. If you want to adopt a mother cat who has been able to keep only one kitten alive, adopt a motherless kitten too. Nature intended kittens to have people of their own age and temperament to play with. Adults and humans just aren't the same. I would know. I had a good, loving mother and a good, patient human, and I still felt discontented with life until my foster brother came along."
Do you look for an animal who seems to be a leader among others? The whole idea of "alpha animals" has led to misunderstandings, some shelter workers say. An "alpha animal" should not be allowed to domineer over humans, nor need it be. Animals usually follow a leader who, as they perceive things, has better ideas than they have about finding food and shelter and having fun. Sometimes an animal who's not been an ideal leader for other animals--one who's dominated its family by abusing them, e.g.--settles down and becomes a good follower when transferred to an environment where the other animals are bigger and stronger than it is. Queen Cats and top dogs do like to have a sense of responsibility, though. They need something to do.
What about a nice, docile follower? Prepare for surprises. Cats can form bonds, usually between mother and kitten or among siblings, in which somebody seems to be the follower much of the time. On closer observation, the relationship may offer some compensation to the beta cat. Sometimes the beta cat is the big strong guard to a tiny tyrant. Sometimes social cats even seem to work out divisions of responsibility according to their talents. Sometimes a cat who's content to be the follower to one beloved friend or relative expects to be the boss in any other relationships. In any case, the mere fact that a cat is social enough to take the "follower" role does indicate that it's more social, and to some extent more intelligent, than the average cat.
Do you look for a cuddler? To some extent snuggling up to humans is a learned behavior for cats, and to some extent it may be part of a physical temperament pattern. Then again, a cat who feels an unusual need to cuddle may be motivate to relieve chronic pain. When I learned that all of the cats at a nearby cat sanctuary were FIV-positive, though loved and lovable, I was shocked...and then I thought, "Well, that would explain why all the female-line descendants of Patchnose had such long hard times with minor infections, and why none of them's lived the full ten years a cat can normally expect." The line of descent just coincidentally happened to shift from female to male in the next generation...and Burr's un-cuddly daughter Serena has been much stronger and healthier than the other cats in the family. Some cuddly cats are healthy, but when the smallest cat in the litter is also the cuddliest, I'd think twice about spending money on it. Check for contagious diseases; if its problem isn't contagious, the organization ought to let it go free of charge, or at a reduced fee.
A hunter? City neighborhoods need hunting cats more, not less, than rural neighborhoods do. I've tried to protect my cats from some of the hazards of hunting with a policy that dead rodents are redeemable for extra kibble. Cats can pick up some infections, as can humans, by handling infected rodens or birds they don't eat. (Any adult bird a cat can catch is probably carrying something nasty.) Most cats also have a natural appetite for freshly killed rodents. Giving a cat extra food in exchange for letting you scoop up and burn their prey is not a perfect solution. We do not live in a perfect world.
The first time I adopted a shelter cat, I knew almost nothing about cats. I thought of myself as more of a dog person, not that I knew much about the care of dogs either. Anyway, for the summer I was sharing a house with people who knew even less than I did so, as discussed in another post, we all went to the shelter and someone else fell in love with a loud, aggressive kitten we called Bili. Bili was a one-man cat if I ever saw one. Nobody else ever did seem to like her, and she never seemed to want them to. She picked out her man. I signed the document of adoption, but I suspect Bili was glad when I left. One less Other Person to distract Her Person from his proper business of adoring her!
The last time I adopted a shelter cat, I knew enough about cats to know that I was looking for a foster mother for orphans. That was Dusty. There was a blog post about her, years ago, shortly after the end of her life. She didn't become my pet but she always remembered me as a friend, and she was the only cat one of my elders ever really loved, in the eighty-nine years he lived.
I tend to like the idea of letting cats, like human friends, find me...but if it took longer than a week or two I think I might go to a shelter and at least consider whether I could live with the cat who'd been there longest. The most unadoptable. You never know. I think that was how the vet found Old Toby.
Then again, I might look for a cat family, just because their relationships are interesting.
Here are some photogenic cats who have stories. They're not the most unadoptable, but...if I were in their neighborhood, I'd like to meet these cats.
Zipcode 10101: Miss Polly Toes from New Jersey
Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/miss-polly-toes-41620994/nj/stewartsville/gateway-regional-rescue-nj-nj619/
Not everybody's cup of tea, Miss Polly Toes. She likes a little petting and will slap you when she's had enough. If Serena, my dearly beloved office kitten and friend and working partner, were lost or stolen, would that be the first thing animal rescuers would notice about her, or would it be "Does not like petting"? Serena likes petting sometimes. The rest of the time, she's a gentle cat, she does not want to hurt anybody, she's more likely to make a slapping gesture in your direction than actually to slap you, but she will not pretend she had any particular need to be cuddled. Miss Polly Toes sounds like the same sort of cat. Non-cuddlers have their own ways of showing affection. If you'd like to try to bond with a non-cuddler, this might be the cat for you.
(Is the picture confusing? She has four paws; she's side-stepping across the left forepaw.)
Zipcode 20202: Seattle from Parksville
His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/seattle-sing-sing-64803302/md/parkville/the-furry-paws-foster-inn-md517/
It happens now and then: Someone's been doing a good job with a Cat Sanctuary, starts feeling ill, goes to a doctor, is told "At the very least you'll need a long, expensive, debilitating course of treatments; you'll not be able to maintain your own home," tries frantically to place all the cats, is probably too frail to do that very energetically...and the last dozen or so cats wind up in a shelter. Seattle, a young male cat, and his younger half-siblings Austin, Savannah, and Baltimore, all have extra toes. They're used to living together, though they'd probably like a new home, since they have to have a new home, where each one would have purr very own lap to sit on.
Zipcode 30303: Vera (and Penny and Lilith) from Atlanta
That's not any of the Weird Sisters' best picture but it's the one that shows them together. These are three semi-social polydactyl cats, sisters. Any one of them would be a distinctive pet because of the extra toes, but if you want to live with a cat family as interesting as mine, here's your chance. See for yourself. I don't make up the things my cats do. By the sound of them you won't have to make up the things the Weird Sisters will do, either, to have an interesting cat blog.
This web site has featured the Sisters before. But a funny thing happened when I was checking out the photos for this week's contest. Petfinder's Georgia page doesn't have a lot of shelter cats, and the photos of the cats they do have seem to reflect an emphasis on marketing the cats, getting them adopted, rather than maintaining their web pages. But there was, on the Georgia page for polydactyl cats, right beside the Sisters, a clear winner--a high-resolution, well photographed, lifelike photo of an adorable little Tuxie kitten, rolling over to display its white polydactyl paws against its black coat. I thought, "I'll nag readers to help find a home for the Sisters and then I'll feature the Adorable Tuxie," and in the five minutes it took to gank the picture and link for the Sisters, the Adorable Tuxie's picture disappeared. The best photo of a shelter cat with extra toes, in Georgia, is no longer a valid photo of a shelter cat.
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