Disposeable Pets Part 2

[Fierce Critter]

In my inbox today from a Freecycle group:

"One year old kitty, spayed, trained, all shots and fully declawed

needs a new home. She is a tabby black/gray with big white spots and

green eyes. She is very friendly and loves men. Because she is fully

declawed she would need to be an indoor only cat. She is terribly

afraid of my dogs which is why I think she would be better off

somewhere else. I am willing to drop off. She will be going to the

pound on Monday if I can't find someone to take her."

Alrighty. You've had the cat long enough to get her spayed, declaw her, see her 1st birthday.

You've had her long enough to see she doesn't get along well with your dogs.

And she gets all of 5 days before she faces gassing?

WHAT THE FUCK EVER.

I just cannot bring another cat into this house. If I had done so to rescue every cat put on these lists with this sort of "or else" wording, I'd easily be up to at least 25 cats by now.

I can't respond directly to this person because harassing other members is a bannable offense.

But I'm seething.

[jadnifer]

I can understand where you are coming from. She should have known not too long after she got the cat that it didnt do well with the dogs.

I know that there is a strong attachment to pets and maybe thats why she waited to make an ad. However, she should wait longer than that to take to a shelter.

[Brenda Starrr]

I'd have to choke a bitch.

What was she thinking? Or, was she???

[Fierce Critter]

Great. Just great. This one came this morning. (Emphasis mine)

Need to find good loving home for female husky shes going to humane society if I dont ;-( Located clinton twp MI

This beautiful husky needs a big yard to run in a loving family who can spend time with her. I work full time and live in a mobile home park where she has to be tied up and she is not happy here. I love her but I want to see her in a better place. I just got her shots updated and her tested for heart worm. Im just asking 100.00 to cover all the medical Ive paid out on her. I have a huge cage that will go with her if you want it. a bag of food nad some toys and leash with her collars. she loves kids and other animals. shes 11 months old.

So, you "work full time" and "live in a mobile home park" and the dog "has to be tied up"? AND YOU DIDN'T REALIZE THIS WAS GOING TO BE THE CASE BEFORE YOU GOT THE DOG?!?!?!

And she's going to be REALLY happy for the whole maybe 7 days she's going to get at the shelter before she's gassed.

Yeah. Right. Huskys are notorious for not getting along with cats. Found this out when we kept one from going to the pound back in NC. But we found the dog a wonderful home rather than return it to harm's way, even if it did piss off the former neglectful owner that we didn't give it back to her. Fuck her.

As for this dog, let me do my Sherlock Holmes bit on this one. Little Miss Idiot saw the CUUUUUUUUUUUTEST little Husky puppy at some dog adoption somewhere, and just couldn't resist taking it in. But Little Miss Idiot didn't research her breeds first, and didn't know that Huskys are INCREDIBLY friendly, excitable & active dogs, and more often than not, also don't get along with cats (they're known to kill them when kept together - not always, but often). Little Miss Idiot had to banish Riley to the outside because when locked into his HUGE CAGE indoors while she went to work, he would bark and whine non-stop because of the CAT or CATS Little Miss Idiot also owned, or, if no cats, he just barked and whined non-stop because a Husky is a BAD BREED to lock in a cage for 8+ hours a day. Then, Little Miss Idiot was just totally OVERWHELMED by how much attention a husky like Riley really needed as he grew, and didn't feel like she had the time or energy after a full day of work.

Fucking idiot.

[Brenda Starrr]

*bangs head on desk*

I think I'm actually speechless.

[LuluVox]

I'm reminded of a conversation I overheard the other day at the humane society in Westland, while waiting for my new kitty's vet appointment. One of the desk workers was on the phone with someone who, from what I could gather, had called after finding their cat drooling, and just assumed it had rabies. I heard the counter worker say in a frustrated voice, "we can't test the animal for rabies unless we euthanize it first," and, "cats will drool, it's not uncommon and it doesn't mean they have rabies; my cat drools when he's nervous." Then, after some pauses, she said in a disgusted voice, "Well, if you put the cat down, and it turns out not to have rabies...that's just really sad." So, basically, this person was willing to get their cat put to sleep just because it was drooling. Yeah, people are dumb.

[kellygrrrrrl]

=(

my god, people are dumb.

If I had a house, and a yard, I'd take the husky in a minute.

But, alas. I live in an apartment....with no yard.

[BrassFusion]

FC, you forgot to highlight the part where she asked for 100 dollars to cover medical expenses.

Lemme get this straight...

If you COULD take the dog, and offered to, but for some reason couldn't or wouldn't pay the money, would she still abandon it in the Humane Society?

Rather, if she wasn't willing to pay the medical expenses and wanted that to fall on the dog's permanent owner, why didn't she just neglect to have it cared for? I could see some trailer trash doing that, just letting a poor dog go without medical attention and shots because they're too cheap to pay for it before they give up the dog they never should've had.

[Guest Megalicious]

I'm reminded of a conversation I overheard the other day at the humane society in Westland, while waiting for my new kitty's vet appointment. One of the desk workers was on the phone with someone who, from what I could gather, had called after finding their cat drooling, and just assumed it had rabies. I heard the counter worker say in a frustrated voice, "we can't test the animal for rabies unless we euthanize it first," and, "cats will drool, it's not uncommon and it doesn't mean they have rabies; my cat drools when he's nervous." Then, after some pauses, she said in a disgusted voice, "Well, if you put the cat down, and it turns out not to have rabies...that's just really sad." So, basically, this person was willing to get their cat put to sleep just because it was drooling. Yeah, people are dumb.

My god Amanda, that is horrible.

[jadnifer]

I dont know if I could read any more of these in the future. They make me want to cry.

However, I hope to eventually become an animal cop to stop people from being cruel to their animals. I know that I wouldnt be able to save every one of them, but the ones I do save will have a better life than the ones that we are talking about on here.

*goes and sits in the corner and cries*

-even if i couldnt afford my kitty anymore and had to give her away, I would NEVER EVER give her to the shelter because she deserves to have a full life, just like any other animal.

Dont worry though, Misty will be with me forever!

[The Void]

Seriously people like this make me sick. So sick that I'd hav someone else email her and tell her she is one sick bitch.

[Fierce Critter]

Sigh.

That one was bad enough. This one genuinely set me crying.

E-mail subject: Please help this poor cat!!!

Can anyone help this cat? it is so beautiful and needs a second chance at life. I took her picture at the shelter today.

her time ends tomorrow...she is super loving and friendly. She doesn't deserve to die due to the stupidity of her former owners.

If you can help, or know someone who can, please email me or call me on my cell phone 734-***-****.

The cat's PetFinder page

Thank you,

Kalin

Alrighty. So I went to the link, knowing I shouldn't. And I immediately wanted to save that cat.

Just like I've immediately wanted to save the other dozens similarly listed over the past year that I've seen on these lists.

I actually contacted the person via-e-mail. I absolutely CANNOT bring in another animal into this house. It would NOT be fair to the rest of the brood. And I'm BARELY making headway with Mama, who has SERIOUS SERIOUS anti-social problems I'm only beginning to see crack.

But I couldn't see that cat die.

Luckily for me AND the cat, the person wrote me back to let me know they'd gone ahead and took it out of the shelter to save it. But now they're trying to find someone to save a mother that's pregnant with kittens.

Slightly different story than the imbecile with the husky, or the person with the cat mentioned in my first post.

But this stuff is really starting to bust down the defenses I have fought very, very hard to put up in order to not feel like I'm personally responsible for every endangered domestic animal out there.

I can't be. Nobody can. I'm just really, really getting sick of all this. I almost wish there was a way I could block just those e-mails from coming. I'm sick of feeling like a coldhearted bitch.

When I went to pick what were to be our 5th and 6th (and, we thought final) cats from a NC animal shelter, they led us back to the cages where they had no less than 30 kittens, all less than 8 weeks old. I was picking cats like shoes then - by color. And went there for orange tabbies, two brothers. That's when I got my Jack and his brother, whom if you recall, the brother died a week after we got him home and Jack died of FIP about 8 months later.

But when Jon and I decided on Jack and his brother, what hurt - what still hurts in memory - was the eyes of the little, grey fuzzy baby watching me from inside the cage. Oh, God. I wanted to save her, too. And her brothers and sisters. And Jack's other brothers and sisters. And I knew I just couldn't. So I left with just Jack and his brother, knowing that in less than 12 hours, the rest of them were going to be dead. Just fucking dead.

I can still see the little grey's face, and I still hurt. It still makes me cry. I'm almost certain that taking in my fuzzy grey Isabeau & her brother were, in part, an attempt to "save" the little grey girl I had to leave behind the day I got Jack. I love my Isabeau & Gus absolutely to death.

But having them, and the 12 others, have never even slightly dimmed the painful memory of that little grey.

I fucking hate this goddamn fucking heartless world. Be it babies, kittens, puppies, the elderly. Whatever, whomever the neglected, the "disposeable". I'm just so fucking sick of it I could scream.

End rant. I'm sorry. Today REALLY got to me. Too many at once. I haven't even dared check the rest of my e-mail.

[BrassFusion]

*hugs a critter*

Adopting pets is like giving blood. They always need blood, and sometimes they might not have enough donations (I have a great aunt who recently died, and toward the end they stopped giving her transfusions because their supply was low and she wasn't "worth it"), but every person that contributes affects the overall outcome. You can't drain ALL your blood, because then you wouldn't be helping anyone. And you can't adopt 20, 30, 100 cats, because it wouldn't be fair to any of them and MOST OF ALL it wouldn't be fair to you.

So you just take care of the ones that you can handle, and you're doing YOUR PART to negate animal abuse. Trying to convince other people to adopt instead of trying to save them all yourself is a great thing to do though, and I'm sure it works.

[Fierce Critter]

One thing for sure.

We have learned that picking cats like shoes isn't the right way to go.

Our 3-legged Tiki is our 3rd black female cat (2 legs in back, one in front). She wasn't picked based on color, she was picked because she needed me. And every day I have with her, I'm so happy that the little tabby baby I had gone back to adopt was adopted before I could get there that day. Which left me disappointed - until I saw Tiki hopping around that cold, steel cage. OMG - I love my Tiki so much.

We won't add to our brood. And someday, we will sadly see our brood diminish over time. We will more than likely never let our numbers get this high again.

But you can count on one thing. Every animal that does end up in our house will, odds excellent, be missing a freaking leg. Or two. Or be blind. Or deaf. Or some condition nobody else wants to be "bothered" with.

I still want to kidnap Tiki's twin - the tiny black female named Dusty that hops around our neighborhood on 2 front legs and only 1 back leg. She's just meant to be safe in our house with Tiki. They can kick each other's asses and fall down while trying.

[jadnifer]

I feel the same way as Critter. I wish that I could adopt every animal I see. However, I know that I couldnt possibly do that because I wouldnt be able to afford it. I have my Misty, but somehow, sometimes, I wish that I could just have a whole houseful of furry babies. Someday, I will be able to get a whole lot more of them.

In the meantime though, I have to take care of the one that I have. Of course, it tears my heart out to hear of the ones that dont even have a chance because there is something "wrong" with them. If I had my choice, I would pick one that had a disability. They deserve a chance at life just like all the rest of them.

I give props to you Critter for all the love that you have shown to the babies that you have and all the love to the babies that you cant.