Lost our kittens....but not in that way.

[Mamathulu]

So a friend's cat had three kittens about a month ago. Sadly one died. We said we'd have one, and another friend of theirs was going to have the other. All fine.
Then my friend had a local unneutered tom cat enter their house, attack the mother, the kittens, their other two cats, her, her other half, and would have probably attacked her son and the kittens as well - I assume at that point they got him out. But he kept coming back. (I have a feeling he may well be the father, but I don't have that much information.) Friend tries to track down the tom's owner. Neighbour knows who he belongs to, but won't say. RSPCA won't collect a cat that hasn't come to harm itself. (God knows why they couldn't seal up their own cat flap, but that's none of my beeswax, really.)

SO, a few days ago, she arranges for a local charity to take the mother and kittens to keep them safe. In signing over the cats to them, she tells them that she has two adoptive parents lined up for the kittens, mentions where we live, and that's no problem, if we contact them in a few weeks, then they'll come and do a home check and it should all be fine.

TODAY - she messages me to say her other friend isn't sure about having the other kitten now, so if I'm still happy to have both, I just need to contact the charity and let them know. So I rang, left a message. Eventually we speak on the phone. Apparently I now live too far away for them to have the time to do a home check. Admittedly it's an hour's drive away. Thinking that transport must be the issue, I offer to come and pick them up and drop them off. It's not that - they just don't have the time to spare. So we offer to send them photos, videos and a facetime so they can see our house, and they can see from google that we don't live on a main road. Not good enough.
Basically, nothing I say can provide a solution. And the kittens are now theirs, and there is fuck all I can do about it. There's nothing on the signover form to say anything about a previous arrangement for the kittens.

I'm not pissed off with my owner friends - the tomcat really did attack them properly - her injuries were really nasty, so she did the only thing she could. But I am (I think rightfully) very annoyed that the 'charity' took in these cats with no intention of getting the kittens to their agreed adoptive homes, and have probably just earmarked them for themselves or their friends. I tried so hard to be reasonable, level headed, listen to her, and find a solution, but she didn't want to know.

She said I should just get some other kittens more locally to me.

It wasn't the fucking point. Of course I can, but I had watched them being born, watched videos of their first moments with their mummy, their first steps into the wide world of the living room. I felt like an adoptive mummy to them already. I know IBU, but I'm so pissed off about it. Perhaps because there is literally nothing I can do about it. I know i just need to let it go, but I was excited because they look like little versions of our own cat that we already have, so it was going to be like having little mini-Mamathulucats. And she's just stolen them. What can I do to shake myself out of this grumpy pissed-offness?

This is Mamathulucat, for reference!

Is it possible to get a more local rescue to do the homework check? I'm sure the current rescue know and trust other rescues.
It may be a case of not having enough time to do it again but worth a try?

Also I know the feeling, fell in love with a gorgeous kitten at the rescue centre and also have an amazing photo of her and dd cuddling in the centre,
They wouldn't let us have him as we were too close to the road 😥 wish they'd mentioned that at the start!

Thanks - I've written them an email to nicely ask if I can try and arrange a local cat charity to do a home check. We'll see what they say but I'm expecting a no. Or we'll get a home check but they'll find another reason to say no, like the fact that we have a ten yr old cat (neutered) or because we have teenage boys with SEND. Just - sometimes I despair at how unreasonable other people can be.

It sounds like your friend got muddled when signing the cats over rather than the charity doing something wrong.

I've honestly never heard of someone signing their animals away and still having a say over who gets to adopt them in future

Once animals are in the care of the RSPCA, it's down to them where they go next, not the previous owner.

No because my friend verified that she'd discussed the kittens agreed owners with the charity owner who'd asked where we both lived - they were on speakerphone so my friends were both on the call. She was told where we lived, that it wasn't on a main road, and the charity owner had said 'lovely'. If they have such a job rehoming cats why on earth would they deny a previous arrangement unless they had other plans for them to go to one of their own friends. Why would they be so oppositional against finding a solution for them to go to a neighbouring town. It's not like it's 80 miles away! Anyway, regardless, I sent a really nice email setting everything out and asking nicely if it would be a solution to ask a nearer cat charity to do the home check. Funnily enough, I've not had a reply yet. I've half a mind to write to the charity commission because it definitely goes against their policy on Facebook to rehome cats. There's no logical reason to deny us and they've been really sneaky to take some cats that already had agreed homes to go to.

At the end of the day, your friend has no say over what happens to the cats once they've been signed over to the charity - they're no longer hers.

Maybe the charity owner just said what she thought your friend would want to hear, or maybe there's something more dodgy going on - either way, once the cats were signed over, it was up to the charity to decide where they were re-homed, not anyone else.

I think you need to let these ones go and look at charities closer to you. There are plenty of kittens needing a good home. Last week our local CP centre has 100 cats and 97 kittens waiting for a new home, nevermind the local rspca or other cat charities. That's 197 in one place. Give your local one a call.

Yeah, I've resigned myself to that already, I think. Blimey though, @LittleGreenDragons is that in a city? My local one seems to have 12, none of which would be suitable to live with another cat or autistic teenagers. But I shall look again, we're not as remote as that sounds!

The cp adoption centre is near a city but it services several market towns as well. We are in the East Midlands and there was an article about the numbers in the local newspaper but this centre has been swamped for several years. The local rescues are also full. I keep finding very skinny and unchipped cats in my garden and as soon as I find somewhere to take it in (four months is standard) another unneutured, very skinny, unchipped cat wanders in. This last one was particularly very skinny, skeleton on legs 😢

Anyway, good luck in finding another kitten to complete your home ❤

This is not the rescues fault , it’s your friends . You cannot ask a charity to take on your mess and then expect to put conditions on it . Hopefully they will allow the local home check , alternatively would they take a recommendation from your vet ?

At least the cats are finally safe and will be properly cared for at last.

Your friend has massively let down her own cat, firstly by not keeping her safe by not spaying her and enabling her to become pregnant, and then somehow enabling an aggressive cat into the house where she had little kittens, and then, rather than providing a safe and secure home for mum cat and the kittens she turned them over to a rescue to sort the problem.

Yes, exactly.

I'm not entirely surprised the charity didn't trust her to find the kittens suitable homes, in all honesty.

Thanks ladies - all good points, but in a defence of my friend, the mother cat was a stray who had chosen to live with them while she was pregnant, so it wasn't her fault the cat had kittens. The tom who attacked them had climbed through the bedroom window, apparently, but I'm not sure why she'd not been able to prevent him from coming in again - she did already have two other cats, both neutered, so I'm assuming it was because they needed to come and go at will. She took them to the charity because she couldn't keep this other cat away - she tried to find it's owner, but her neighbour wouldn't tell her who it belonged to. Well, it's all done now. Unsurprisingly, the charity hasn't replied to my polite email asking if they'd accept a home check by a nearer charity or vet, so I still think they're arseholes, to be honest. If you'd lined up adoptive parents for a child, and the parents signed them over to social services, I'd like to think that social services would see the sense in continuing with the match. But there's no reasoning with stupid people, clearly. I offered so many solutions and none of them were accepted, so there was clearly something amiss going on.

This is a sad situation. Could it be that the rescue centre would prefer to rehome mum and kittens together?

Why didn’t your friend just give the cats directly to you?

I know, right? I've no idea! They could have called and we'd have gone and collected them! <sigh> well, 'tis done now, so that's that! I hope the mum does get homed with her kitties - we could have taken two, but not three of them!