Adopting a cat, possibly from abroad - advice needed.

[BellaMoo]

Looking for some advice. We’d love to adopt a young cat to join our family. We’ve been looking and locally there just don’t seem to be very many cats at all, especially ones that seem to be ok to live with children (we’ve got school age children).

I joined a couple of Facebook groups and there seem to be dozens of cats available from other countries. It seems expensive, but then so are kittens!

Has anyone done it and can talk me through the process. Or are there good reasons why I shouldn’t even consider it?
Is it worth contacting shelters locally?

Any help or advice would be really appreciated.

We got two from our local rescue which is two old ladies and now a younger kitten fosterer has joined them. They always seem to have cats ans kittens to rehome and I even rehomed a chicken off them. I thought some of the cat charities ran waiting lists for kittens which you could maybe get on. There is a website with all your local charities on there think it’s called catchat

If you do adopt from abroad, just make sure you're happy with how the rescue is set up in particular that they have enough UK based volunteers as back up if something goes wrong i.e. if the cat turns out to not settle in your home if you have young children (it's rare but could happen).

With private rehomes you risk the lack of back up as well - and won't really know if the cat is as healthy as people tell you. At least UK rescues usually provide you with full vet records.

I used to volunteer for a cat rescue and have friends who are still very involved and I think everyone's found this past year very strange in cat rescue. Lots more demand than usual with people working from home and wanting a pet, and also not as many cats coming in from homes (presumably as people are not moving house or making big life changes which are usually the reasons for people giving up their pet to a rescue).

Op
Your experience with rescues is the same as mine- just none available! This was before the first lockdown too. That was why I went for an international rescue.
She has been fantastic
🙂

I think this mad practice of adopting cats and dogs from other countries should be stopped. It's madness. Please don't be a party to it.

Why? Are foreign cats less worthy than UK ones?

We brought a semi feral kitten back from overseas. He would almost certainly have died if we had left him behind.

Take a look on catchat.org. They list all your local shelters, so there maybe others locally that you can also try.

Also maybe you could consider a slightly older cat or a more timid one and then you might find there are more cats that might work for your family?

If you’re prepared to wait for a couple of months for the peak of kitten season there will be cats and kittens in rescues needing homes. There always are as you go into May/June.

Here for example is our foster family who will be needing homes in six weeks time.

Looking into similar. Ended up buying kitten last year but really not happy spending £150 for mixed breed kittens from people who see them as money making and helping them to keep breeding and making money and see all these posts about shelters abroad being over run but can't find much information about process for adopting from abroad

I adopted mine from www.ra-na.com/ (Rescue Animals of North Africa) as none of my local shelters had any indoor only cats. They're a British charity but rescue mostly from Tunisia, and in my experience pretty well organised. I think they're also a bit more relaxed about children than most of the UK charities.

Sorry, just realized this is an old thread. Hope you found a cat OP!

I know it's an old thread, but shelters here are overrun. It's the worst year we have ever known (and we have known some bad years!). It's a combination of the huge number of lock down pets being abandoned (many unneutered and consequently giving birth in gardens/alleyways etc), plus the lack of vets making all neutering appointments difficult to get, leading to yet more kittens being born. The situation in the UK is horrific. I can guarantee there is no shortage of unwanted cats and kittens here.