Meet the Boosh
I have another foster cat. Her provisional name is “the Tiny Boosh” (her silly shelter name is “Babooska [sic],” which obviously could not stand), but “La Bouche” is equally appropriate, as girlfriend weighed only 5 lbs. when she got picked up by Animal Control, and she is snacky. For example, I found out she likes garlic bagels when I turned my back on one for all of four seconds this morning.
This is actually working out awesomely because she keeps eating her own meals and Little Joe’s, so I’m fattening her up and putting him on a diet at the same time. But she can’t stay here forever, even though she’s super-cuddly and sweet. Three cats is too many.
More details on the Boosh after the jump.
She’s a domestic shorthair, about 7 years old, spayed, fully vetted. She’s on some doxycyline right now; it’s unclear for what, but it’s nothing contagious (she’s got some mangy action happening on her ears and nose, probably from living outside for awhile, so that’s probably the issue).
She’s a tabby; you can’t see it so well in these pics, but she is stripey on her legs and tail. Said tail is sort of hilarious, because when she gets mad, not all of it fluffs up; the end stays flat, so it looks like a fir tree. Aw.
No idea where she came from; Elana at SI Feral Initiative thinks someone just curbed her, same as Nikolai. She’s obviously acclimated to humans, because she hopped out of her carrier and immediately started weaving around my legs. The Boosh doesn’t enjoy getting picked up, but will get right up on your lap, sleep next to your legs, and so on.
She appears to have most of her teeth, and she is not declawed. I am told she’s cat-friendly, though there’s been no shortage of hissing around here since Friday afternoon. No actual fights, but she’s not afraid to wave the paw at Joe (Hobey hides from her) (he’s twice her size) (hee).
Any questions? Interested in adopting her? She may get picked up at next week’s pet fair in Brooklyn, so you should act fast. Post here or email me directly with any inquiries.
Tags: beige cats feline fun times friends photo essay the Boosh
What is it with you and the orange tabbys? Which of course look so cute that I want to run all the way to Brooklyn and take them home. Good luck with La Bouche. :)
Aww… She looks sweet. If I didn’t already have a 7 lbs. diva and a 13 lbs. needy boy (and yes, the 7 lbs. diva can definitely dish it out like nobody’s business), didn’t live halfway across the country, didn’t have a husband who said “no more cats”… you get the idea. I’m not a cat lady, I just play one on TV. =P
I bet that either though here or the adoption event, she’ll have a home soon. And boo to people who abandon their pets, even if times are tough all over. I’d rather go hungry than give up on my kittens. :(
… she’s ADORABLE.
My excuse: oh hi, I’m in Australia.
But she looks like a character. That face!
(Also, if there has been no actual bloodshed, I call that Cat Friendly.)
Good luck. She looks adorable. But I have my full complement of kitties at the moment.
Note to self: get an apartment where the landlord allows pets.
I’m in love with Tiny Boosh. Some loving person, please adopt her and give her snuggles. Sars, you rule for taking her in.
The Underground Catomato Railroad lives again! I wish I was allowed to have pets, because The Boosh looks like a wonderful cat (maybe a distant cousin of Nikolai?).
If the Boosh was sidewalked, could she be a victim of the bad economy by an owner who couldn’t keep her? Not that there’s an excuse for abandoning a pet, but if one can’t afford to keep one, is there a safe haven in NYC for someone who can’t afford their cat anymore?
If I had a steady job and income, weren’t allergic to cats, and lived closer to New York, I’d be all over that little critter. She’s gorgeous. I wish I could snuggle her right now. I’ll just have to settle for cooing at her from a distance.
@Cij: Apparently there is, and they call it “my apartment.” Sigh. And I have difficulty believing that anyone who can make their NYC rent can’t also afford to feed a healthy cat. It costs me probably three bucks a day to feed these three; they get pricey food, too, and that’s also counting the Boosh eating her little head off because she was down to five damn pounds when she got picked up. One cat, eating Meow Mix? Plus litter, amortized? Come on. Cut out Starbucks and get the cat food at Costco, you’re ahead on the month.
There are a few safe havens outside the city, for ferals that can’t be habituated, but even that’s a whole process; it’s not like newborns, where you can just drop them off on some church steps.
I know times are tough, but I suspect that people who tend to view their cats as decor are more likely to do stupid panic math instead of realizing they could economize elsewhere to greater effect.
I don’t see any kind of hardship as an excuse to dump a pet. Period. You take on a cat (or a dog, or…), you take RESPONSIBILITY for that animal FOR LIFE. If you’re not down with that, don’t get a pet.
(Just ask Rita Mae Brown, who went through a stage in life where she had to go without food to feed her cat, on the basis that she could handle it, whereas the kitty was innocent and less able to do so. I’ve never had to do that, but I have gone without other things to pay for things like vet bills.)
I keep returning to this post because I am kind of in love with the Tiny Boosh. She’s so beautiful, and I can’t get past her expression in the first photo. She looks like a cat with opinions, and I love those.
People, if I were to take her on, she’d have to be shipped around the world, which would probably suck, and spend six months minimum in Quarantine, which would DEFINITELY suck. (When my family immigrated to Australia, we left a much-beloved cat with friends because it wouldn’t be fair to subject him to that kind of horror, and we were bereaved to lose him, despite knowing he was in a loving home.) Think how awful that would be.
Someone needs to take her and love her and preferably send me more pictures of her, stat.
Oh, she has opinions. They’re all about Little Joe, and they’re all negative. Hee.
Awww – the Boosh looks alot like my own Mr. Yoda. He’s one of five. But then, I have a whole townhouse for colonising! (I occasionally foster cats for the local shelter in my guestroom, which causes no end of consternation amonst the fam, so I know what you’re talking about.)
Mr. Yoda is teeny because his jaw is all wonky, so he can’t eat like the others.
I can’t imagine abandoning any of my herd under any circumstances. Good lord, go to the shelter! Geez.
Hope the Tiny Boosh finds her forever home soon.
I live near UNT and the college kids dump all their pets around January. I’ve taken in more than 15 cats (I had seven in the apartment at one point, but thankfully only just for a weekend), but my landlord’s mom is an angel: she has a huuuuuge farm and takes in strays. She’s taken in about 7 over the course of 15 years. 3 I kept, my sisters took the rest. Most were kittens, one was spraypainted pink, and there was another kitten I found run over in the driveway by drunk students.
I do wish people were more compassionate to animals, and smarter about caring for them. It was actually all the hilarious cat stories that led me here (cat people are awesome). I hope you can find a good home for her, she’s such a pretty cat. And good for you for taking her in- a lot of people wouldn’t.
I love that she went for your bagel. Mine stole a huge chunk of super-good baklava *right out of my hand* the other day. So add that to the list of foods he’ll climb my leg for – which list also includes fresh coconut, bread of any kind, cucumbers, peanut butter, and pretty much anything else you could name.
La Boosh is so cute. She totally looks like a younger sibling of The Incredible Mr. Duzy Batz, all pale loveliness in dilute orange. I love that she’s bossing her way to the food!
I demand that we have the heads and entrails of all cat-abandoners. We can put ’em in a blender and make a nice puree of perpetrator to feed the kitties.
My household stands full at 4 cats, but I wish you the best of luck in finding a permanent home for the cat. As it is, she’s so lucky to be with you right now.
I’m in DC, so if we were to get another cat, we’d get a local, but good luck to La Bouche! My Elwood will eat any sort of starch, especially cornbread. That’s Mommy’s cornbread! Get your own!
An old family friend found a black kitten left in a carrier by the port-o-johns in a local park a few years ago. She’s the kind of person who likes other people’s cats, but was so angry someone left the little guy like that. She adopted Billy, and now the two of us have a fake rock band with Elwood on drums and Billy on keyboards and vocals. Yeah, I know.
People who abandon their pets deserve to be incarcerated in a little box by the port-o-johns.
“Boosh! Boosh! Stronger than a moose! Don’t lock the door or she’ll come through the roof!” Good luck finding her a good forever home, ideally where she can wave the paw at everyone and Get Results.
When I adopted cat number 3 (“The Beast”, a play on his name, which is actually Beasty), he did a good deal of hissing and then went and climbed up on my kitchen cabinets. Then he went up to my two other cats and slapped at whatever they were sitting on. (My tiny, skinny, hyperthyroid grey lady chased him – ha! – while my blind male cat just stood there like “The hell?” and then went back to sleep.)
When it finally dawned on him that my first two cats had no interest in bothering him, he went out of his way to make friends with them. Now peace resides – and it only took two weeks! LOL :)
Aw, so cute. Now if I could convince our rescue, Ziva, that we are not going to eat her and she could actually come out and be seen during the day instead of waiting until everyone goes home to come out to eat and use her box…
What a cutie! Like you, I already have two kitties and three will just tip the balance a little too much in their favor. As if I am not outnumbered already…so afraid I will come home and find the locks changed and my stuff on the curb. *Sigh*
My parents raised us with the understanding that when you take on an animal, you take it for the duration of the animal’s (hopefully natural) life. I sometimes joke about giving my cats away, and I often directly threaten them with being stuffed, turned into bathmats, and sent to a shelter. They, however, don’t even bother so much as opening an eye when I do so because they don’t believe me, and with good reason; I can’t imagine not having one of the three of them. They each have such individual personalities, they’re all hellbent on destroying my apartment, and they all greet me at the door when I come home (usually demanding food). I’d have a lot more money if I didn’t have them, but if I didn’t have them I’d come home and talk to myself.
I think it’s healthier this way in the long run. :)
Oh, La Boosh is adorable! Someone told me once that orange girl kitties are very magical and special. We had one (she died a little over three years ago and I still miss her), and I can attest that they are.
I wish I could take in Boosh, but our Lizzie is all that will fit in our tiny apartment and I’m in Minnesota anyway. But I’m a winning Powerball ticket away from adopting all the kitties.
We may have a match! Stay tuned!
@RJ – totally healthier. Although I’m constantly threatening to turn my monster into fur slippers for tap-dancing on my head at 3am, she knows I’m full of crap ‘cos if I haven’t tossed her out & closed the door, she’ll take the movement as an opportunity to crawl under the covers to snuggle with me (probably the objective all along, sneaky beastie). So while I’m often sleep-deprived, I also have lower blood pressure & haven’t been hospitalized for talking to the walls & imagining that they’re talking back.
Also, word to those who say that there are choices you can make to economize and still keep your pet. I have worked <7 months of the last 12, have a mortgage & condo fees, and the cat eats a special easy-on-the-digestion food for seniors that costs a freakin bundle from the vet. My so-far effective choice for economizing? Going cold turkey on the shopping habit: no new clothes, books or DVDs. The library is my best friend…and my kitty is still around to keep me sane & de-stressed. Frankly, I can’t understand how people believe it’s optional to permanently care for the beings they took into their lives; would you give back a kid you adopted? And if I were those people’s parents, I’d be worried – if they depend on their pet-abandoning kids for help when they’re old, they might be SOL.
I agree with the “economize and keep your pet” advice, and I agree with the hate for anyone who’d curb a cat (dog, bird, lizard, whatever).
BUT I had this discussion with my parents recently, when they adopted a(nother) shelter dog and my dad was foaming at the mouth about the “worthless lying lowlifes” who make up stories about not being able to keep their pet because of the economy (which was the story behind their adoptee, Barney).
In most cases that *I* know of, it’s not a question of “I can’t afford to feed the dog” or “the vet visits are too expensive.” It’s *USUALLY* something more along the lines of, “I lost my house/have to move to a cheaper place, and the very few people who accept pets require a non-refundable $500+ deposit and charge extra on the rent.”
I personally had to rehome a dog and a cat after a mostly-surprise divorce announcement left me scrambling to find a new place to live and only two weeks to work with (government housing, and he’d already told the Housing office that he wouldn’t be needing quarters any longer before he told ME, so I was screwed). The only places that accepted pets, I couldn’t afford the rent or the deposit – and because my dog was a full-size collie who weighed over 20 pounds, I couldn’t find many places willing to accept him at ALL. It broke my heart – I cried more over the pets than the husband – but I had to find them new homes; it wasn’t just about paying for kibble and shots, it was about literally not having a place to live. Fortunately I was able to find people who I knew would be good caregivers and in the case of the collie, I was able to stay in touch and still visit from time to time (for a while).
That does not in ANY WAY excuse or justify people abandoning their pets, just dumping them; I’m just saying, sometimes giving up a pet really *is* the only viable option.
Where I live, the no-kill shelters have not been accepting animals from individuals for more than two years, no matter what the situation, so if you’re in that position, you have no choice but to take it to the pound, and hope one of the no-kills will rescue it. Some people might think their pet has a better chance of being taken in by someone passing by on the street. Again, I DO NOT by any stretch of the imagination support or condone it; just, they might have thought they were choosing the best of several bad options.
@cayenne, yep, there are plenty of monsters in the world who give back their adopted kids. But enough of that.
Booshikins is teh cutest, and if I didn’t live in Seattle, and had a more understanding husband who would put up with a third cat, and a plane ticket…but I will keep an eye on the posts for the matchup!
So, I really want someone to start a blog about the Underground Cat-road that runs though NYC and Jersey, because every time a beige kitty, orange kitty, or gray/white tabby kitty is saved, it just makes my whole week!
I can’t wait for the update on the beige kitty!
She is SO CUTE! I just love her.
But, the usual – I’m 2600 miles away – my cat is very against the idea of a feline companion. Here’s hoping you find someone to adopt her soon. But, you know how these things happen… first it’s temporary… then you can’t part with them. Good luck. :)
I keep coming back to look at her and how cute she is doing the “loaf” in the second picture.
I’m one of those people who goes to the petsmart and tells the rescue kitties that I would take them if I could, but I know that someone will love them soon. then I cry.
OMG, SO! CUTE! I love her. If I were not in Miami, I would give her the lovingest home ever!
Oh, she looks like such a sweetheart! It’s terrible that she was dumped but at least you’re working hard to give her a good home (and I know she’ll find one being in your capable hands). One of my cats loves to eat tomatoes (Go figure. At least he has good taste–our other cat prefers plastic grocery bags) and will go bananas whenever I am preparing anything tomato related. He’s available if you need a mascot for the tomato nation/cat-tomato underground RR (since Little Joe is probably busy eating or begging for food and Hobey is hiding under the bed).
E: I hear you loud and clear. I have friends in the Northern VA area who rented their apartment out as “pet friendly” for $500 over the going monthly rate and a large deposit (they’re poor students…but also routhless capitalists). I have other friends who lie and break the lease to keep their little friends. It can be a tough world out there, and I think that it behooves everyone to realize they can’t completely understand what someone else’s situation is.
My own wonderful landlord is a definite “no pets” man, or I’d be tempted to take the lovely Boosh. I hope her match works out.
Aw, she’s lovely, and I’m a sucker for an opinionated cat. If I were local, I’d think about trying the allergy shots…
Since I can’t take her, I’ll make a donation to my local animal rescue peeps. At least that might help another Boosh find a stable home…
Sometimes I feel like the only dog person reading Tomato Nation. (Meaning that I prefer dogs to cats, not that I am some dog/person hybrid.)
Jon’s story makes me sad.
I did a project on homelessness over fifteen years ago in college and was a little shocked to find that even in affluent Orange County, a majority of families were two paychecks away from homeless. There are people out there who made responsible, forward-thinking decisions to adopt animals who also did not have crystal balls to see the job loss, divorce, or catastrophic medical bills that were going to change things forever. Not everyone who take a pet to a shelter is an irresponsible piece of shit.
Frankly, for people who have already cut their budgets to the bone and still have to decide between feeding kids and feeding pets, I’d applaud them for taking the animals to a shelter rather than dumping them in the street.
“There are people out there who made responsible, forward-thinking decisions to adopt animals who also did not have crystal balls to see the job loss, divorce, or catastrophic medical bills that were going to change things forever.”
I’m sure we can all come up with a half dozen Sophie’s-choice scenarios in which it’s okay or forgivable to turf a pet — deathly allergic kids, had to move out of an abusive situation in a hurry, whatever it is. I’m not going to debate whether it’s morally permissible not to have put savings aside when other creatures rely on you for their basic needs; I didn’t do that either.
But FEEDING an animal does not have to be so expensive that it’s the difference between you and a homeless shelter of your own…and lots of times there is no good reason. Hobey got doorstepped at the SPCA as a teenager in a cardboard box with his entire litter, probably because they stopped being cute kittens. Ditto the dozen half-grown Dalmatians at Bide-a-Wee back in the day; kid saw the movie, begged for a Dalmatian puppy, the parents didn’t do their research, the puppy bit little Dylan and got given away.
The Boosh showed up at a firehouse weighing five pounds, so you can imagine how long she’d been on the street by that point — hungry and afraid and getting ear mange. And then she gets put on the euthanasia list. You turf an animal with even an inkling that that’s how it’s going to go, you’re going to have to get up pretty goddamn early in the morning to find a reason I’ll accept. If that sounds judgmental, so be it.
@ Cayenne – you’re not kidding! I mean, sometimes they chip away at my sanity (“No, you ARE not getting fed at 5 AM. When have you EVER gotten fed at 5 AM?” “Seriously? The box – sorry, BOXES, are clean, and yet you used my front hallway?” “When you have a hairball – and I understand that that’s something you need to do – could you, I don’t know, just maybe do it on the floor, and not on the couch or chair? I’m not demanding, I’m just asking if you could consider it.”). But I do love them, sneaky lil’ buggers tho they may be at times.
Regarding budget cutting, I am so with you. I clip coupons, and I live near a Super Stop & Shop in Flatbush, so I do get a lot of good sales. I will go without the more expensive things for myself (nothing serious – I eat very healthfully, I’m not starving or anything) but I’ll buy the more expensive cat food because that’s the kind my cats like. I have to have plenty of litter, because I have 3 cats, so I try to buy a big box for the most value.
Last year it looked like one of my boys might be in heart failure (turned out he has a very minor heart murmur which isn’t serious, but at the time he also had a bad cold, which presented some of the same symptoms of heart failure – thank goodness!). I had a little savings left that I wouldn’t spend on a plane ticket to a friend’s wedding, but which I forked over to a good vet in a heartbeat. $1000 later, we found out my cat was going to be fine. I joke about being the proud owner of the $1000 Cat, but it wasn’t really even a question that I would spend whatever money I could get together to make sure I did right by him.
I know things are really tough for a lot of families right now, so I don’t want to be judgmental either. But I’ve heard some horror stories (“The cat they had for 14 years was scratching the new leather couch, so they put it in a carrier and left it on the corner” – I’m still sick and enraged over that one) of some really cold-blooded behavior. I have a lot of respect for those animal owners like some here who “rehomed” beloved pets. You did the responsible thing and found them a good home – you didn’t just dump them like trash.
But the dumpers – I just really hate ’em!!!!
My dude has this friend who runs a no-kill shelter in Alberta. She periodically tells us tales of how the creatures came to their care and my heart breaks every time. And then comes the searing, burning rage.
A few folks near and dear to my heart have had the kinds of Sophie’s-choice moments Sars just listed above: sudden on-set divorce, fleeing an abuser, chemotherapy, job loss with no job prospects (me), and crippling debt, but through it all, we are all of us still pet owners. Well, in my case it’s more of a pet landlord/tenant situation…
Yes, orange girl kitties are very special–so special that when I first brought my Suzy to a new vet and told everyone she was female, the vet still checked because the office had never seen a female orange tabby (poor Suzy, almost 4 years old at that time, was rather traumatized at having her gender put into question). She was a loud-mouthed, opinionated little puffball who could swing between pissy and sweet at dizzying speeds, and I miss her terribly after having to put her down last summer. Sniff. Boosh is adorable.
“But FEEDING an animal does not have to be so expensive that it’s the difference between you and a homeless shelter of your own…”
Oh, agreed. I think we’re all expressing anger about different sides of the same issue. They’re all worth getting angry about.
I live in a land where people buy $22k cats while the regular variety get dumped in shelters or on the street. When you’re paying $50+ a month for cable TV, $3 a day for coffees, and $10 a day on lunches out because brown-bagging-it is too much work, you can -– and should — cut that before dumping your animals. I guess I just wondered if we were missing that some people’s situations really are exreme enough that re-homing a pet is the right choice (and when there are no loving homes in your circle, a shelter beats the street, at least. I hope.)
But then, this lady still has her dogs. I just hope she does not have to lock them in the car while she is at work.
@Sarah D. Bunting:
I agree with everything you’ve said. Anyone who dumps a pet of any kind rather than taking it to a shelter of some kind does not deserve any consideration of any kind. And yeah, I AM that judgemental.
I don’t care what your circumstance/emergency is–you do not dump your pet. You’ve got a family emergency, medical bills, foreclosure? Take Fluffy to the shelter, Humane Society or the pound. At least if they have to be euthanized, it will be in a kinder way than starving to death, being hit by a car or worse.
And if I didn’t live in Middle Tennesse, I would totally adopt the Boosh. I’ve been wanting a ginger tabby for ages and she just looks so sweet.
So, what’s the scoop?? Did Tiny Boosh find a home? I’m dying to know! I want someone to love her and that little smooshy, nommity face of hers!
There is a special place for the people who abandon animals.
I have been fortunate enough to participate in helping people when they were in terrible, no-fault situations that put their ability to keep their pets in jeopardy, and people, let me say that returning a pet to a family that has gotten back on their feet after 6 months – it is on the short list of things that send chills down my spine.
Generally, when folks go to a rescue organization, they won’t help with medical care and they won’t foster short term – you surrender your pet, gone forever, the end.
Sometimes people really do need 3 months or 6 months to get back on their feet, or they can take care of routine costs, but that $5k surgery the puppy needs to walk? they do not have $5k, and their credit isn’t going to qualify them for care credit or whatever. those animals get surrendered and the travesty of it is that the surrenderers? those people are often good people, who were good pet owners and who will go get another pet, when they are back on their feet. Meanwhile, their original pet is put down, or still not placed, or is not adapting well or whatever. Not helping them through, making it so black and white – it’s cruel. I still do rescue, and some of the best, kindest, most capable of rehabbing a truly damaged animal foster homes I know are people who out-placed their pets during crisis, and then got them back, or got help with completely unforeseeable totally unmanageable medical expenses and got to keep their animal. Those homes are truly excellent, btw, at evaluating aspiring adopters. Just excellent.
Also? Am dog person, in the manner of Erin W. above. All my dogs came from rescue and the pound. My cat came from the salvation army – he was dumped into a clothes dropbox, lived to be 22 and could pretty regularly be found in the hamper.
I, like Erin W. & Annie, am more of a dog person. My dog isn’t a rescue per se, but like the Obama kids’ dog, her original life plan didn’t work out (she was supposed to be a show dog, but her owners decided not to breed her because of genetic issues) so she came to live with us. I like cats fine, but can’t have one in my home due to allergy issues. Ziva came to be our shop cat after a particularly bad infestation of mice and my landlord (a vetrinarian) finding a semi-feral rescue who needed a home. She gets a warm place to sleep, all the kibble she wants and I get a mouse free place of business. A win all around!
@ Kat… Me too, me too. Aside for crying, I tell my husband how sad the PetSmart kitties make me when I go visit. He won’t budge though (well, our lease won’t permit it, but I know a few people who add cats or dogs over similarly stipulated limits, and while that’s not ethical, I can see how they might feel they have no choice when faced with a stray who came to them). He knows he alone can prevent my descent into “cat lady” status.
@E: See, the difference though is that you tried to find people who would house and feed your pets, even if that meant you were no longer entitled to call them yours. I understand that sometimes you have to do that, and I admire that, so long as you put your heart in the task, and leave no stone unturned. We (hubby and I) have a standing list of friends and family who would take our cats if we were to die (if we could no longer keep them, technically, the rescues who let us take them home would need to be notified… but said list works for that contingency too). Even if everyone on that list said no, I would probably try to move heaven and earth to find someone who would say yes. I’d call around to every rescue I could drive to in a day, and then do it.
But to leave a cat or dog on a street, thinking to yourself “you never know, maybe they’ll find someone else to feed them” is another thing entirely, IMHO. That’s being too cavalier about said creature’s ability to fend for him/her self. I know this won’t be a popular position, but I would rather leave said pet in a kill shelter if I had no other option left (i.e., denied myself food, and still did not have enough to feed kitty/doggy, absolutely found no one to take them in and had become homeless in the meanwhile). Worse came to worse, s/he would be fed and cared for before being euthanized humanely, rather than be slowly starving to death waiting for me to come back to get and feed him/her. You just don’t do that to a family member, whether human or four-legged.
Like Sars says, I suspect that Boosh came from someone who rather thought of her as being an accessory for their apartment, and that cats are to be disposed when you move (whereas if you really care about your pets, you travel in a car for 1500 miles over several days, if you have to – been there before, will be there again soon). I think everyone can agree that it’s that person/people’s loss.
A bagel-eating Boosh? Adorable. Can’t wait to hear the update.
@ Sars – Thank you for being such a great advocate for cats and pet rights in general. I hope that orange girl finds her home soon but at least she’s in good hands until that happens.
@ Vicky Lee – which no-kill shelter in Alberta does your friend run? As a slight aside but on the same topic, for any readers looking to adopt a cat in Calgary, AB and the surrounding area check out the MEOW Foundation. They are an amazing no-kill, volunteer-based organization. They work very hard to make sure that every cat and kitten they take in finds not just a good home, but the right home, and that the cats are loved and cared for during their wait time in the shelter or foster care. I adopted my orange guy through them last fall and would adopt another through MEOW in a second if Dante the big tabby was not pretty committed to being an only cat.
I’m also in agreement with the person who commented above that there is a special place for people who abandon their pets. My guy was a victim of the classic “moving but can’t take the pet” scenario. They basically kicked him out the front door on their way out of town and he was fed by a kind neighbour who eventually contacted the rescue organization. All I can hope for his former owner is that the “karma is a bitch” theory proves true.
My mom and sister have a habit of taking in birds (exotic pet varieties, such as conures and parrots) who have been abused/neglected/abandoned by their douchebag owners. These animals were originally purchased because some toenail-biting halfwit thought it’d be kewl to have an exotic pet. Then the gits decide they can’t or won’t handle the vet fees for having the bird’s beak trimmed, because “It’s just a $25 bird”. So the animal starves to death, or very nearly, and suffers emotional trauma, and winds up at my mom’s house or my sister’s, being nursed back to health. One of their birds was kept in an outdoor utility room and fed when the mood struck the owner. Or if the mood struck the owner. I wish *I* could have struck the owner. (Stricken? That’s an adjective, though, right?)
People suck, so much of the time.
Awwwww. She is bee-yoooo-tiful. And she looks so content in those pics, like, “aahhh, the hard times are over now.”
All right, speaking of $5k puppy surgery, I’ll open a new can of worms…at what ridiculous amount of money do you just have to say, its an animal, put it down? And at what point do you say such and such extraordinary procedure is NOT in the best interest of the animal? Because vet costs and animal medicine are out of control, and quite frankly, my opinion of the veterinary profession is sinking fast.
Let me put this in context. Our big ball of cat love, whom I adore, and who adores me, became mysteriously ill. We rushed him to the emergency vet in the middle of the night and he stayed at the hospital 3 days. $1800 later we still didn’t even have a diagnosis. All they could tell us was that it was nuerological and essentially he felt like he was on a merry go round 24/7 with his world spinning around him. The vet was beginning to recommend ridiculous things-Cat ultrasound, cat BRAIN SURGERY to the tune of $6,000, he wasn’t drinking so she wanted to give him fluid subcutaneously on a daily basis, potentially forever…and none of this was anywhere near a guarantee he’d survive or have any quality of life. Now how is any of that in the best interest of the animal? The animal doesn’t understand why you are poking and prodding him-he’s terrified. Thankfully, Millenium recovered on his own and became once again a happy and healthy ball of fluff, but if he hadn’t? It was in his best interest and ours to let him have a peaceful, painless death, but that animal hospital had no interest in anything but soaking us for as much money as they could get.
A friend went to the same animal hospital after her year old dog was hit by a car-and they wanted several thousand dollars for surgery, which was absolutely out of the question for her. She begged them to put the animal down and out of its pain and they refused because “he’s only a puppy and it wouldn’t be ethical.” So, they hold pet owners hostage, while the animal suffers, refusing to help, but refusing to end the animal’s pain either, so they can make money. Fucking bastards.
Update: We’re awaiting sign-off from the rescue org, but a weekend re-homing for the Boosh looks likely.
…Juuuust as the hissing and spitting is starting to die down. Heh.