Creative and Low Cost Adoption

I saw a post forwarded around from the No More Homeless Pets Forum that some shelters across the nation are drastically reducing cat and kitten adoption fees, and, adoptions have skyrocketed. One shelter reduced cat and kitten adoption fees to $1 and adopted out scores of cats and kittens that otherwise would have been euthanized.

I have worries about such methods. How do they know these kittens and cats are going to decent homes, or are not going to be used for dog fighting bait, research or snake food?

But even with high adoption fees, that's no guarantee the cat is getting a good home. I remember one cat a local rescue adopted out. She was declawed, and fortunately microchipped to that rescue, and the adoptor never changed the chip registration. She went to an older woman in Salem who paid their $85 adoption fee. She ended up on the streets and finally turned in to Humane Society of the Willamette Valley. She lived because she had the microchip. The local rescue went and reclaimed her.

I adopted out two kittens as a favor to a local charity worker, to her daughter, a recovering addict. The stipulation was that the mother would watch out for the kittens. Nobody did, and one ended up out the door and gone, rather quickly. I still search for that cat.

The feeling is, with low adoption fee events, that it saves some lives, because kill shelters often kill hundreds or thousands of cats a year. Some, even with high adoption fees, are going to go to bad people because there are bad people out there, lots of them, who want a cat to abuse or just want a cat without reflecting on the fact they may be unable to care for a cat or are people who move frequently, leave their cat behind and just get a new one later on.

But at least the cat or kitten is fixed, is the feeling, and the cat will not go on to reproduce. Some adoption screening does take place at such low cost adoption events, too. And many of these folks would otherwise go to a free kitten ad and get an unfixed kitten, that later would be reproducing--in the people's residence, or, if abandoned, on the streets.

ABC News recently featured a NY shelter who has gotten creative. They publicize mug shot type photos of cats and dogs in their shelter. The card at the bottom of the photo identifies the reason they were surrendered. Such as: Victim of Divorce. Or: Owner Moved. This shows the public that there's nothing wrong with these cats and dogs, that it's not their fault they are on death row.

The director of Heartland for a time had a job at a shelter in Detroit or some city back that way. I can't recall the city, for sure. She told me to try to wrap my mind around the number 40,000, because that's how many animals came through that shelter each year. Most never made it out alive.

I remember a story out of Las Vegas last year. They had disease strike a shelter there. Might have been distemper or parvo, I can't remember. They proceeded to euthanize 5000 animals. 5000.

So any sort of campaign that helps get spayed and neutered cats, kittens, dogs and puppies, into homes, without the threat of that animal going on to reproduce and become part of the problem, should be celebrated.