Category: cat adoption

cat adoption, Feline Overlords, human servants, shelter cats

Broken-Hearted After Losing His Cat, Man Goes To Shelter And Finds His Lost Feline

Theron wasn’t exuberant like most people who walk through the door of the Bangor Humane Society looking to adopt a new pet.

The Maine man told shelter staff he’d resigned himself to adopting a new cat after his Cutie Pie, a gray-and-white medium hair kitty, went missing. He told the staff he hoped bringing home a new feline friend would help “heal his heart.”

Staffers showed him to the section where they housed the adoptable cats so he could browse at his leisure.

“As he perused the kennels, he stopped to examine one of our friends a little more closely and when the cat turned to face him, Theron erupted with joy. THIS WAS HIS CUTIE PIE!!” the shelter’s staff wrote in a Facebook post on Friday.

The staff had no reason to doubt him, but even if they did, Theron had ample proof: Like any human who loves his or her cat, Theron’s smartphone was a virtual gallery of photos of the little guy.

“Theron’s camera roll was full of pictures of Cutie Pie,” shelter staff wrote, “leaving no question that this reunion was the real deal!”

For his part, Cutie Pie must have had quite the ordeal and couldn’t wait to go back to his real home with his human.

“Let me just say I’ve honestly never seen a cat so eager to be in a cat carrier!” shelter staff wrote on Facebook. “He was SO ready to go home!”

I really don’t like to think of the possibility of Bud going missing, but if he did and we found ourselves in a situation similar to the one Theron and Cutie Pie found themselves in, the reunion wouldn’t be nearly as happy or tear-inducing.

“Oh my God! It’s Buddy! Buddy, it’s really you! I’m so glad I found you!”

“Get me out of this cage this very instant! These people are crazy! Do you realize they have not fed me turkey once since I’ve been here?!? Not once! And these accommodations! A bathroom and a food bowl within five feet of each other. Unthinkable! They’ve put me in with the riff-raff, as if I’m a common cat and not a king! I demand to speak with the manager! Actually, nevermind…I demand you take me home this very instant, feed me turkey, give me a massage, and then summon the manager so I can give her a piece of my mind! You’re going to have to make this up to me, you know. I expect the treat cabinet to be restocked with all manner of yums, including Temptations. I had to sleep on a pad. A pad! I tried to tell them, I said ‘I only sleep on top of my Big Buddy!’ And they wouldn’t listen. These people are torturous! I swear, when I get home…”

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Buddy, cat adoption, cat humor

Buddy’s PSA: Dudes, You Can Adopt Cats Too!

Big Buddy: [The Human] Somehow people got this ridiculous idea that cats are exclusively pets for women…

Little Buddy: [The Cat] …which is absurd because we’re basically small tigers. I mean, look at me. Who wouldn’t run in terror if they found themselves on the wrong side of these claws?

Big Buddy: We’re here to dispel the idea that cats are for women, and tell you that caring for a cat is a manly thing to do.

Little Buddy: That’s right! Extremely manly.

Big Buddy: We do manly stuff around here.

Little Buddy: That’s right! We watch football, we drive around in a rugged pick-up truck and we grunt a lot.

Big Buddy: We don’t actually do any of those things.

Little Buddy: But we would, if we cared about football and trucks.

Big Buddy: We’re into other manly stuff, like baseball, basketball, huge starship battles and fight club. We funkatize entire galaxies, facilitate the spread of interstellar funk and blast funky bass lines from black holes.

Little Buddy: We don’t talk about fight club.

Big Buddy: And besides, the most badass canine is a wolf…

Little Buddy: …but the most badass feline is a tiger!

Big Buddy: That’s not even a contest. A tiger is clearly more badass than a wolf.

Little Buddy: Significantly more badass! A veritable fount of badassery. More badass by several orders of magnitude.

Big Buddy: I think they get it, little dude.

Little Buddy: I was just making sure.

Big Buddy: So if you’re a dude thinking about adopting a cat, don’t let dumbasses tell you cats are “feminine” pets…

Little Buddy: …cause then you’d be missing out on having your very own little tiger buddy. RAWR!!!

Big Buddy: Maybe we could do without the roar. You sound like Elmo singing in falsetto.

Little Buddy: I do not! I sound like a terrifying jungle cat.

Big Buddy: Okay, Elmo.

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Not Elmo.

cat adoption, pop culture, shelter cats

Dennis Quaid The Actor Adopts Dennis Quaid The Cat

“Hello, Lynchburg Humane Society, how may I assist you?”

“Hi, This is Dennis Quaid. Is Dennis Quaid the cat still available?”

…CLICK!…

“Hello, Lynchburg Humane Society, how may I assist you?”

“Yeah, hi, this is Dennis Quaid again. I think we got disconn–“

“We’re a very busy shelter, sir, and we don’t have time for prank phone calls…”

“No, seriously, this is Dennis Quaid. I’m Dennis Quaid!”

“If you’re really Dennis Quaid, then which film is your greatest regret as an actor?”

“Oh that’s easy: Jaws 3D.”

“I’m sorry we doubted you, Mr. Quaid. Now how can we help you?”

That’s how we imagine the initial call went when Dennis Quaid — the actor — saw photos of Dennis Quiad — the cat — and called the shelter, whose staff were initially suspicious, adoption manager Danielle Ulmer said.

“I was like there is no way this is real, like, someone is pranking us,” Ulmer told WSLS, the local ABC affiliate.

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Quaid is co-founder of the podcast company Audio Up, which produces a cast called The Pet Show. Jimmy Jellinek, who hosts the show, worked with the shelter to set up a Zoom call so Quaid could meet his feline counterpart — and the shelter could see they weren’t dealing with an elaborate prank.

“It took us a while for them to actually believe us,” Jellinek said.

Jellinek is expected to fly to Virginia this weekend to pick up Dennis Quaid the Cat and bring him to his forever home in Los Angeles.

“It was really off the wall, but I just couldn’t resist. I had to,” Quaid told WSLS. “I’m out to save all the Dennis Quaids of the world.”

dennisquiadcat

 

cat adoption, Feline Ingenuity

Another Cat Proves We’ve Been Seriously Underestimating His Species’ Intelligence

Rabbit the stray seemed to know which humans would help him out.

The street-savvy cat would wait in front of a convenience store, sitting patiently on the sidewalk until he saw a person who would give him a smile or a pat on the head. Then, with Kitty Mind Control Mode enabled, he’d lead his new human minion into the store, guide them to the pet food aisle, and point to his favorite food.

Here’s video of Rabbit in action:

When I saw this, my reaction was sadness: From his familiarity with people to his preference for store-bought cat food, Rabbit was clearly someone’s pet, either lost or abandoned. He’d faced hardship. He was skinny, his snow white fur was dirty, and there was only a stump where his tail should have been.

Thankfully, this story has a happy ending.

Tania Lizbeth Santos Coy Tova, a 33-year-old teacher who lives in Mexico, had encountered Rabbit a few times before. She decided to ask about the cat.

“Every time he came to the store, we greeted each other and did the same, he guided me to the shelf and chose the food he wanted,” she said.

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Rabbit inside the store, pointing to the yums he wants.

From a story in UK’s Metro:

The managers of the store explained to Tania that the stray always did the same thing with customers. He understood specific hours and waited until a kind passerby would take pity on him and purchase some food.

Santos Coy Tova wanted to see if Rabbit had a home, so she and a friend followed the friendly cat after encountering him one day. When Santos Coy Tova saw the little guy return to an abandoned house, she decided he’d be coming home with her.

For those of us interested in animal intelligence — and feline smarts in particular — this story is fascinating.

Rabbit knew where cat food was purchased, was good enough at reading human body and facial language to reliably find friendly people who were willing to help, and he knew which package his favorite food came in. In addition, he knew that pointing to the package would draw a person’s attention to it.

He wouldn’t have been able to pull that off without the ability to plan ahead and think in the abstract. He also understood the food had to be purchased, or at least that a human had to get it for him. In the video he doesn’t just leap up at the package and take it, he points and looks back toward his person. That also shows he possesses theory of mind, that he understands humans and other animals have a subjective point of view.

This isn’t happening in a research lab environment, true, but it never could have. These are a unique set of circumstances showing cats understand more than they let on — a lot more.

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A much healthier-looking rabbit in his new home. Great job, little guy!

 

cat adoption, cat stories, shelter cats

Shelter Throws A Birthday Party For An Adoptable Cat, No One Shows Up

To our British readers,

Employees at a South London shelter threw a birthday party for a two-year-old cat who’s been in the shelter for 115 days, and not one of you jerks showed up.

Look at her. Just look at this beautiful tabby girl, hopeless and dejected because none of you soulless people could find it in your heart to drop by for a cuppa and kibble. Notice the sad little eyes, their accusatory glance seeming to say: “You’ve failed me, British people! I just wanted a forever home!”

I mean, we all know you guys can be cold, but who thought you’d be this heartless and cruel?

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Poor Monique had no one to celebrate with. Credit: Battersea Dogs and Cats

Has our guilt trip made you feel bad yet? 🙂

On a more serious note, this was actually a clever move by the shelter, Battersea Dogs and Cats. With tens of thousands of adoptable animals on sites like Petfinder and Craigslist, and every rescue contending for attention, shelter staff have to think creatively to break through the noise and help get their strays and abandoned pets into real homes.

In 2020, the cat who becomes a meme is rewarded with a home of her own, and the shelter also benefits with a bump in exposure and potential new donors.

In that sense, the birthday party didn’t fail at all: Monqiue the tabby will almost certainly find a real home soon thanks to follow-up articles and the attention they’ve brought to her story.

CATS GOING VIRAL

We’ve seen plenty of shelter stories go viral over the past year: There was Nevada, the sweet abandoned tabby who just wanted a hug, a surrender named Barsik who was dubbed “New York’s fattest cat” at a whopping 41 pounds, a fellow Chonkster named Bazooka whose dementia-inflicted former human fed him constantly, and Plankton, who proved good things come to those who wait when he finally found a home after 2,432 days at a New York shelter.

Perhaps the best example of clever cat marketing was a North Carolina rescue’s adoption ad for the “world’s worst cat.” The scowling black-and-white Perdita was a “jerk,” according to Mitchell County Animal Shelter’s sarcastic and highly amusing ad.

The listing worked, quickly going viral on Facebook and prompting more than 50 local applications within 24 hours.

perdita
Perdita quickly found a forever home thanks to her viral post. Credit: Mitchell County Animal Shelter

Monique has tested positive for Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, according to the shelter, and undoubtedly her bad luck can be chalked up to fewer adopters willing to take a cat with FIV. Despite that, Monique is expected to live a long and full life.

Here’s to hoping she finds her very own humans soon.

All photos courtesy of Battersea Dog and Cats. Click the thumbnails for larger versions: