To think animal shelter charities push potential pet adopters towards breeders with their absurdly stringent adoption criteria?

[Thepeopleversuswork]

OK so I’m probably being grumpy about this because I have had bad experiences and maybe unfair.

But I have just been turned down for a third time in five years trying the adopt a cat, apparently (as far as I can tell) because I have a job and live in a city.

I’m a middle aged woman living in a quiet street on the outskirts of SE London with my own home and a teenager and partner. I have sufficient income to support a cat. I have a large back garden. I am an animal lover who has had cats before.

The last two charities I have applied to had ridiculously detailed diligence procedures including several home visits and a dodgy quasi isometric test. Another agency which imports stray cats from overseas required me to send videos of the traffic on every street within a half mile radius and character references.

After weeks of consideration I was told in each case that I couldn’t adopt due to traffic risk.

I get that the volunteers at these places become very attached to their animals and of course it’s only right that people are vetted before taking an animal, especially one that has been mistreated. But the rigmarole in the application process is ludicrously over the top and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that they basically don’t want you to adopt a cat unless you live in a huge rural stately home and don’t have a job. As soon as they hear the word “London“ or any indication that you work outside the home they basically rule you out in my experience.

I’ve now gone down the route of getting a cat via Gumtree but it makes me sad and it seems so self defeating; these charities are putting well meaning and committed animal lovers off applying and making it far easier for unscrupulous people to breed and sell animals.

Can anyone who works for one of these charities try to explain why it’s so difficult?

Hi OP
depending on where you are, have you tried Croydon animal Samaritans?

www.croydonanimalsamaritans.co.uk/

It's madness. Cats don't need much apart from food and and a comfy place to sleep.
The rescues make it like you are trying to adopt a child!!

To kill birds and wildlife?? I wish everyone cat proofed their yards there would be so much more natural wildlife!!

Yes we have a very 'big on the scene' rescue near us and the criteria are ridiculous. Also all of the cats seem to have such issues so narrows down potential adopters. We had a pre-teen and Rhys always seemed to make us unsuitable

We have bought our last few cats

I've never been able to adopt from any of our local rescues, none of them will consider families with children under the age of 13. Our 2 cats found us, one left our neighbours when they got a new puppy and they ended up agreeing to us keeping her. The other turned up in our garden one day clearly neglected, covered in ticks and wounds etc. We tried to find an owner on local social media pages with no luck and eventually had a local lady who rescues cats come out with a humane trap and he was taken to our local vets. They fell in love with him at the vets and had him living there for over a month, he hated the cages so they just let him have free run of the surgery! They couldn't face sending him off to a shelter so got in touch with us via the rescue lady to see if we'd like to adopt him. We adopted him through the RSPCA and were asked no questions at all, just had to fill in a form.

I get that the charities have to cater to the lowest common denominator, the stupidest, shittest pet owner to avoid further trauma to their animals, but fuck me.
We tried to adopt a dog-someone is always home, childfree house, no visitors, no cats, gardens, walks, have had dogs before. Had to jump through hoops, twatting about for days with a fence that was already fine, send videos.

In the end I just gave up and went to a breeder. Zero loss to me, except a waste of my time, but a dog that could have had an excellent home was failed by the charity. 🤷🏼‍♀️

We were turned down for a dog because we both work full time. At no point would they listen to the fact that we both have flexible hours and work from home. I’ve worked full time from home for 6 years now and my DH the last 4. We both travel but only ever one of us at a time. Our dogs, which we ended up buying, are never alone more than a couple of hours, we also have horses and love walking, these dogs live an amazing life but because my work contract says 37.5 hours they were not interested 🤷‍♀️

Vaguely, whereabouts are you OP?

It's in the OP

SE London. But outskirts towards Kent. I live in a very quiet residential area.

Sorry @Thepeopleversuswork ! It's been a long day already!

The place we got our tom from is a good one, but too far for you (outskirts of Southampton)

In the end I just gave up and went to a breeder. Zero loss to me, except a waste of my time, but a dog that could have had an excellent home was failed by the charity. 🤷🏼‍♀️

This is exactly it: a lot of these animals are missing out on a chance to go to loving homes because of arbitrary and unreasonable rules. And the families who are missing out on rehoming pets just go to breeders. So the animals are losing out.

If you are happy with adopting from abroad, then I got my gorgeous boy from a lady who rescues from Dubai. Because in Covid my local rescue wasn't picking up the phone.

Had to provide 2 references and it didn't matter that one of them was my mum. Also did a tour of the house and outside, again if you said they would be indoor cats she would be OK with that.

My boy was outdoors but I changed that to indoors last year as he was going missing and getting into fights. Rescue lady took the view 'whatever you do, it's better than the life they have on the streets'

DM if you are interested.

I was turned down many years ago under similar circumstances. I am a single female, financially stable, house, quiet largish garden and experience of owning cats. But I am worse than cruella deville because I work and live in a suburban area in the outskirts of a city!

I bought a kitten from gumtree after the third rejection when I tried to adopt an adult cat in a need of a forever home.

my cat is very well cared for - regular vets visits, insured, good quality wet food, flea treated, safe garden to hunt in during the day of she wants, and she sleeps on my pillow beside me every night🥰.

my friend is a housewife is a more rural setting. The shelter allowed her to adopt two cats. The novelty soon wore off when they plucked a carpet so now they live outside, and to be honest aren’t very well cared for 😢.

To be honest I wasn't thinking of the local wildlife when we did it, I was thinking of Harry's safety - we had a spate of cats and other wildlife being killed by kids with catapults. He did manage to catch a couple of birds but as his total in the 15 years we had him was 4 birds, 4 mice, a few frogs and some earthworms he didn't present much of a risk!

Seriously, I couldn't believe it when they told me that cats should be able to roam. To be fair they did contact me to offer me a seriously ill cat who needed a home and went on to tell me I'd be responsible for the vet fees!

I agree re rescues OP - and I used to actually work for a local cat rescue organisation in London. Their criteria were a bit less stringent than you are talking about, but nevertheless it became hard for people to adopt cats due to the traffic issue. It's understandable that charities do not want to home a cat and then hear a year later it has already been run over, but it meant that cats ended up staying at indoor foster homes for much too long, and then new cats could not be taken in by the charity because there was insufficient 'turnover'.

If traffic is an issue, I think that nowadays any charity would be happy to home a cat with you if you agreed to cat-proof the garden so the cat could go outside but not roam - assuming you would be happy to do that.

I'm not clear if you have already bought a cat on Gumtree. If not, please don't. No reputable breeder would advertise on there so you are likely to end up buying from a backyard breeder who has not taken any care with the animals.

Research a breed and visit the breeder when you can see the kittens with their mum. It'll be expensive. Alternatively, research some local charities who may have less strict criteria. The local vets may be able to recommend one.

It's so frustrating. We ended up getting ours from an overseas rescue too. Luckily we had a friend who was connected to the charity. I mostly don't remember the vetting fiascos here, but i do recall one telling me "you're looking for a pet, not a companion, so we can't help you". What an assumption - we've not been on holiday in the last several years because our eldest dog is very ill and we don't want to cause her any angst or upset.

From the other side of the picture I was the homing officer for my local branch of Cats Protection for 5 years. The homing criteria is set for the benefit of the cat not a human who wants a cat. We were careful with busy areas (I’m not in London) because so many cats are killed on the road.
If we had a good home offered but it was near a normally busy through road we would encourage adopters towards older female cats as they generally stay closer to home. Kittens and males are more adventurous.
We also required access to a safe garden unless the cat needed to be an indoor only cat for health reasons.
We were happy with catios or well cat proofed gardens.
We did home cats to homes with children if the cat had previously been happy living with children but many who came into rescue wanted a quiet adult only home.
We did not home with children under 5 because many cats can’t cope with toddlers and preschoolers.
There was no issue with the adopter going out to work except that if they wanted a kitten we would only home a pair so that a single kitten was not left alone all day.
As volunteers we all came in for a lot of verbal abuse from angry people who didn’t meet our criteria. Mostly people with young children living in flats.
Thankfully we also came across many nice people who understood the cat’s welfare was our priority.
We desperately wanted to get our cats into homes and none of our fosterers wanted to delay that but it had to be a home that was what the cat needed, even more so when these cats had already lost at least one home in their life already.
It was a stressful job and a lot of volunteers burn out, me included. If you love cats being faced every day with the harm humans do both inadvertently and intentionally is soul destroying.
I still get so angry with people who don’t neuter their pets and so add to the problem of too many cats for homes available.

This in spades .
Nice lifestyle paid for by donations.

Importing animals seems crazy given disease risk - so many puppies being sold and imported from overseas as “ rescues “
A lucrative income in some cases.
Far better to spay and neuter cats and dogs rather than endlessly selling them on.

Some “rescues” can be animal hoarder situations-
very unregulated.

I often get slammed for this opinion...but I think rescues are (mostly) incompetent. They seem unable to understand that the perfect adopter does not exist and instead would rather keep a dog/cat in a cage or kennel for months on end.

I often think they're worse with dogs though. They very often don't actually know the dogs they're trying to get adopted at all and try and pair them with completely unsuitable families. They are also, fundamentally, dishonest. One (National) animal rescue went through a big thing a while ago of describing XL bullies as 'Mongrels' or 'unknown' in the description of the breed but actually burying the fact it was an XL bully in the detail. They described all the ones I nosey-ed at as being appropriate for those with young children and other pets (really?!). Shocking tbh.

I have a rescue dog. The charity (recently in the news for a big donation...) told me it was dog friendly and child friendly and not nervous. I could tell it was not. It was so bloody obviously to anyone who knew what to look for. I took the dog anyway - better I took it than some poor bastard with young children.

Ultimately, after the things I've seen recently, I would never adopt again. It's too risky and they make you jump through too many hoops when they fail to do their own jobs properly.

Animal shelter charities fail the animals and potential adopters.

OP I think it depends on the local chapter of the rescues. I've had friends adopt from the same one, different locations, very different experience. One had your issues, the other had a home visit with cat in tow... cat stayed!
Some people in charge are just power crazy.

Try a smaller, independent rescue. We went to Glossop Cat rescue, saw the cat. Had a home visit with cat 3 days later, and she's happily snoozing on my lap now.

I often get slammed for this opinion...but I think rescues are (mostly) incompetent. They seem unable to understand that the perfect adopter does not exist and instead would rather keep a dog/cat in a cage or kennel for months on end.

This. When I spoke to Battersea they spent ages telling me how busy they are, their cattery is full and they have a long waiting list. When I asked which cats would be suitable for us I was told none. I'm sorry but I don't believe that out of all their cats not a single one would have been suitable.

No, they’re not pushing them to buy an animal from a breeder. It’s good that the rescues are looking for suitable homes, these animals have often gone through enough already.

The person chooses to buy from a breeder instead of accepting that they’re not suitable to have an animal, if multiple rescues tell them the same things. They don’t accept that they can not provide a suitable home because they think their wants come above the animals need for a safe environment. These individuals are the issue, not the rescues.

Have you read the reasons people are being rejected @GraveyardWhistling? Do you really think not having a spare room is a good reason? Or not having a cat flap? Or having a cat proofed garden? Or going out to work?

Yes we had a problem with adopting a dog due to house and garden layout. We are semi-rural backing onto a hill but they didn't like the garden being terraced.

This happened to a friend of mine.

I was turned down for working from home - this was obviously pre Covid! I really didn't get the logic behind that one. Would they really rather the dogs were potentially left alone for hours on end?