Rehoming animals on social media - WHY?

[FreakInTheSheets]

I'm in a number of groups about cats as I have an elderly one with a number of health conditions.

A significant minority of the posts, however, are "I've just had a baby, does anyone want my cat?" and "we're moving to Australia, if someone doesn't take my 15yr cat, I'll just have to put her to sleep".

Literally is it news to people that in these circumstances you contact a rescue? Not rehome on social media to someone who's potentially just passing it to a bloke to train his XL Bully.

Depends what you mean by social media. I'm very rescue-minded, but if for some reason I could no longer keep my cats and family couldn't take them then I'd probably reach out my friends and their friends via our private social media channels and maybe even my neighbours on the WhatsApp group to see if any of them are looking to take on a cat, before I took them to a rescue as a last resort. None of them would be feeding them to Rottweilers.

Obviously offering them to the public in general on a town-wide Facebook group would be dodgy though .

And dogs require more care in picking a home than cats.

I took a dog from Facebook as was scared it would get into the wrong hands. When we took it to vet for a check up and to be neutered etc they said they thought it had come from a puppy farm and was no longer useful 😱 also had a considerable sized lump that turned out to be a cyst the size of a golf ball because it had been left untreated. Suspect they thought it was cancer and didn't want to pay for treatment. Poor little thing. People are awful sometimes

These are facebook groups called things like "Birmingham Cat Owners" and "Cats with Hyperthyroidism". Most of the participants are presumably genuine cat lovers but some won't be!!

I've also seen it on Gumtree.

I just can't understand why rehoming pets is so socially acceptable and so common. No-one seems to raise an eyebrow. I waited until I was 30 and was completely settled in a home of my own before I adopted my cat from a rescue. And I thought very long and hard before I did it. By getting her, as far as I was concerned, I was ruling out thing like moving to Australia! Now I get that people's lives change and human children come first but as I say, I'm seeing these posts ALL THE TIME and the posters seem entirely unashamed.