Why is it so hard to adopt a cat?

[Bubbinsmakesthree]

Trying to adopt cats at the moment…why is it such an ordeal?!

I’ve filled in application form after application form.
Had to supply multiple forms of ID
Been given the third degree over my motivations
Questions upon questions upon questions
And after jumping through all the hoops the applications go into a black hole and we hear nothing in response.

I thought rescues were overflowing with cats - but when you want to adopt it feels like you’re fighting over access to a rare commodity. Why is it so hard?

Hmm I don't know. Do you live in a flat? Have small DC? Dogs? Other cats?

If you have primary-age DC there will be a lot of cats that aren't suitable for you.

I don’t know but we found the same. Couldn’t even get to the filling in application stage as the wait lists were full. This was a year or so ago.
we have kids so you would have to be a bit choosy I guess but we couldn’t get anywhere.
in the end we bought a kitten. Shame really as I would have loved to rehome one from a charity as I have done in the past.

I wonder this too
I live in a flat but in the past, even taking elderly indoor cats has been rife with obstacles.

Hmmm. I've never had any trouble in a variety of circumstances. Recommend a large rescue run by trained adults. E.g a cats protection centre.

No idea but my sister has had cats her whole life, owns a garden flat in a nice suburb and just desperately wanted a companion cat after her 15 year relationship broke down. Oh, and she doesn't have any other pets and works from home, and has a PhD in animal biology.

She applied for a year and to about six charities before finally being approved by a charity 60 miles away from where she lives ¯\(ツ)/¯

I've always found it a fairly easy process to adopt cats. Do you live near a main road? Would you be happy to have a special needs cat? It doesn't always mean hard work sometimes it just means they have to be indoor only etc. But then we found out last cat in a bag by the bins so cats do seem to have a habit of adopting me rather than the other way round.

Cats Protection didn’t do anything like that. A few sensible questions and that was it iirc.

Battersea finally offered me a home visit appointment … a couple of months after we’d brought our Cats Protection cat home.

However, the Cats Protection cats that were suitable for children did tend to get reserved in a nanosecond (even pre covid) so I did have to check the website a lot and move fast.

Having volunteered with cat rescues, I'd suggest visiting the shelter in person rather than relying on online applications. Talk to the staff and volunteers and make your case, and find out what you can do to make your home more acceptable for adoption. Make it clear that you are willing to adopt older cats, cats with chronic health issues, FIV positive cats.

We got ours from cats protection and it was really straightforward. Just went in, filled in a form then came back the next day to meet our kitties and took them away with us that day. We have no children, have a garden and are never both out of the house for more than about 5 hours so i guess fairly straightforward to 'pass' the application.

I'm a single woman. I've had over the years no less than 10 hard to home cats some with serious medical problems.
I own my own home well away fron main roads with a nice garden.
Since covid I've found it virtually impossible to adopt a cat without waiting for months or jumping through hoops.
So after my last cat died aged 21 I adopted a friend's cat and a friend cat's kitten.
Four months after that the rescue got back to me saying I could have one of their elderly cats with diabetes. Id have loved it but they missed the boat messing me around.

Approach welfare & rescue for specific breeds, there will often be retired Queens and Studs looking for forever homes to retire and be spoilt rotten.

I adopted from Cats Protection earlier this year and found it really straightforward. What rescues have you applied to and where are you based? Someone on here may be able to recommend some smaller local rescues.

We've used Cats Protection/RSPCA in the past but latest mog arrived via DS2's keen to rehome friend from work.

No idea how we'd fare now.

I live 20 minutes from a small, overrun, cat charity who will throw cats at you if you try to leave without one.

I've previously gone just to meet a pair of 3yo sisters and ended up leaving with them,completely unprepared.

If you're in the West Midlands I can hook you up with my cat dealer?

We had this twelve years ago, because we both worked full time and lived in a flat. A ground floor flat with a garden! Because of different working patterns there was only one day where he would've been left 4-5 hours. Still not good enough. Bought our lovely cat from Preloved. Lost him a few weeks ago to the heart condition the vet thought would take him before his fifth birthday, he would've been twelve this week. Still wake up expecting him on the foot of the bed ☹️

So sorry, Ambridge. Sounds like you gave him a wonderful life.

We adopted ours from a national organisation's rescue centre about one & a half hours drive away. I really didn't think they'd let us have him as we weren't local, but we saw him online, adored him on sight & applied specifically for him. They interviewed us & wanted to see detailed photos of the house & garden. Then we saw him, went off for lunch to think about it, went back & took him home with us. That was seven years ago, though.

We were black listed because we had to give MIL's cats to a rescue when she went into a home. We already had an elderly cat prone to stress related cystitis and we couldn't take another elderly cat in our house.DH used our details instead of his mothers!

3 years later our old lady had died and the rescues he'd talked to about his mums cats wouldn't talk to us at all.

I think that the cat gets to vote too, and you know what they can be like.

I find this such bullshit. A primary age child - so a 7/8/9/10 year old?! Why would a cat not be able to be around a 9 year old?

I've got a 4 year old and we've brought her up to respect the cats space and they live in total harmony

We adopted a kitten recently from a local rescue-it was really simple. I found them online, emailed the lady, she visited and did a home check the next day and approved us then and there. We visited the kittens a week later.

Perhaps the time of year? Despite being overrun, my local little rescue are only allowing previous adopters/ known people to foster anything straightforward, let alone adopt until after Xmas.

I’ve always had ferals, and it could just be a very localised anomaly, but I have noticed a slight new tendency to describe ex strays or anything less than outgoing and friendly as feral or semi feral and only suitable for homes able to accommodate them. I’ve had a few friends/ colleagues mention various feral cats their local rescues are desperate to find suitable homes for, but on closer investigation they aren’t remotely feral, at worst they just need time and a quieter home rather than a big noisy household.
My local rescue aren’t doing that and I’ve got no reason to think the large rescues would so it could just be a coincidence, but I do wonder if some cats are being dismissed as unsuitable for adoption on the false assumption they need to be treated as ferals.

To be fair we do want what is probably the most popular type of cat - we do have children so couldn’t take a cat that needed an adult household. But that’s about the limit of our fussiness.

And we have a catflap, own a house with a garden, on a quiet road…all the usual prerequisites.

Might be worth offering to foster, you get to know the cat and they get to know you

We’ve just taken in 2 farm kittens but our previous cats were adopted from CPL about 8 years ago and it was just come for a look round, meet some cats that might be suitable, fall in love with a couple of them and then fill in the donation forms and arrange a time to pick them up. No further checks that I recall - they googled our address but only to see if it was far enough away from the area one of the cats (who was a stray) had been found.

Now the dog was a whole different story…