Where to get rescue cats with young family

[wintersdawn]

I've 2 kids 6 and 8 and we're looking at getting 2 cats, I'm keen to get rescue cats but all the ones I seem to find are no to young families. How to people with young children find rescue cats?

If you're near London/South East try Celia Hammond.

Whereabouts do you live. The RSPCA and most rescues say if their cats are suitable to live with children.

Cats Protection will put on profiles if cats are family friendly

I had a lovely experience with the Blue Cross. I know a few other families who did too.

I think most will but on each individual cat and home environment. The Cats Protection website makes it hard to filter the family friendly ones as they don't always know the background so may select the no default. I would assume this is the same with a lot of rescues.
Is definitely worth calling various rescues noth larger and small. January is a busy month as lots of people are looking to adopt so you may not find the right cat for you immediately.

We've rescued from cats protection with children the same age.

I have a four year old DD and got a rescue cat from a Scottish branch of Cats Protection last year. They had several that said they were okay for families with children. There was quite a detailed online form asking about your circumstances, experience with cats, etc. I couldn’t complete/send it via my phone so sent an email covering all the info instead. They were quite happy to let us have our new boy.

Think I'm just being unlucky with my searches. RSPCA and cats protection near us are all listed as needing mature families. I'll try blue cross and just keep looking it may well be the wrong time of year.

I found that our local cats protection and RSPCA websites and Facebook pages did not have an up to date list of all the cats available, when we turned up at the rspca there were actually 120 cats available (only about 30 on the website). We asked the staff which cats were suitable to be homed with primary age kids and there were loads !

So suggest you give your local rescue a call or pop in!

We got ours from Cats Protection. I guess it depends how many younger cats they have in. Most of the older cats want older families and no other pets.

Good luck.

Local pet rescues.

It's best to contact charities directly rather than just looking on websites, as not all cats end up being listed online if they already have suitable adopters waiting to be matched to suitable cats. Family friendly, sociable cats tend to get adopted within days/weeks as they are so popular (compared to cats that need to be the only cat in an adult only home, for example).

You can find your local rescues on this website www.catchat.org/index.php/cat-rescue-centres-uk-ireland

If your children are well behaved and know how to behave sensibly with animals, bring them along to the rescue. I found that when the rehomers saw that my kids behaved appropriately they were reassured, and it also allows you to get matched with the right cats. I can recommend a couple of places in the north west if needed.

Celia Hammond refused to give me a cat, when my DD was 3. Cats Protection were delighted to offer me a choice of cats.

It depends on the cats - most of the kittens I have seen on Rescue are ok with younger children ...maybe with the exception of the unsocialised kittens from semi feral Mums?
If they are born in Rescue or very young they can use the socialisation window .

I cannot remember what age group ours were suitable for but my DS are older (20 and 17) so we were ready to take on board the foibles of our two. The boy was very shy (we knew before we even met him) but my DC wouldnt mind being shunned or even bitten .
He's turned into an amazing little cat , his sister is the one who will get toothy

There will be cats who have been family pets so use to children but maybe in Rescue they are timid or fearful.
Some ex-strays love a homelife and take to anyone !

You just have to keep trying with local rescues. I foster for a rescue charity and we are willing to adopt to families with DCs at that age, but it is cat dependent.

All our cats are in foster homes, so the potential adoptees visit the fosterers to meet the cats - here we can see how the cats react to the whole family, as well as if the family like the cats.

I don't know what age cats you are looking for, but we probably wouldn't want to place very young kittens with a family like yours, but would probably be more willing to older kittens - eg those born during last spring/summer are often still in rescue now if they had health or socialisation problems in early kittenhood and weren't ready for adoption at 2/3/4 months old.