Why Did The Humane Society Tell Me Their Cats Run Away?
Saturday, December 26, 2009 2:44Posted in category Feature
I’m not joking here. When I was talking to the adoption tech yesterday she was like “You can never let them outside or else they’ll run away and never come back.” Those were her exact words. Her reasoning was that they would either run off to try and find their old homes or they were used to being strays so they would just take off. I was kind of flummoxed. Do they say that sort of thing to everyone that is a potential adopter?
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Café Mocha Valencia says:
December 26th, 2009 at 6:06 am
I know you’re not joking. Nor is the shelter. Most shelters don’t want you to let cats outside because their likelihood of injury is so much higher. There’s wild animals than can eat them, cars that can run them over, loose dogs that could kill them, diseases from other cats, cruel people that could poison them, sick children that could torture them. Do I really have to keep going??? And a lot of the cats at shelters have never know the outdoors – so it’s very cruel to think they’ll adapt to life outdoors.
Think of it from the shelter’s perspective. They’re put a lot of time, money and love into caring for the animals that are dumped there – some often on the verge of death and many that have to go through months and months with a foster parent rehabilitating them from abuse or making feral cats social. So why would you think they’d want you to take a cat from the safety of the shelter to the dangerous outdoors?
Café Mocha Valencia says:
December 26th, 2009 at 10:59 am
The cat charity I work for never says this to potential adopters. We recommend keeping a cat in for at least 4-6 weeks so they get used to the new scents/familiarise themselves with their surroundings.
We have had it on a few occasions where a cat has returned to it’s old home and so sometimes we try and rehome them in a different area of town or a few towns over.