Railroad
Routinely Derailed
I miss my favorite lady's cat, Gizmo. He loves me and I love him. Whenever I get resettled in a new residence, one of my priorities is to find someone like Gizmo to share my home and my life. And I may even name my adopted kitty "Gizmo."
These are hard times for a lot of people. Adopting pets responsibly is becoming a problem because of the up-front expenses discussed in this thread. And if the option is to not adopt at all, what happens to the animals which aren't adopted? I don't want to even think about it. I've adopted pets for whom all the right procedures have been done, paid the fees, etc., and I've done it the other way, just bringing them home "as-is." In both situations there is a level of responsibility, of husbandry, to protect and, frankly, control the situations which can and do happen to these pets, including reproduction and diseases. Only once, when I wasn't around to keep a female cat in the house, did we have an unwanted pregnancy and litter. I found homes for all her offspring when I returned home.
When I was a teen, I found a feral kitten who was dying of distemper. She had four white paws, and the rest of her was a grey-and-blue tiger stripe. I named her "Boots," and kept her in a shoebox while nursing her back to health. She was wonderful, so grateful to be alive, and actually afraid of going back outside. The family dog, a klutz, stepped on her neck by accident and broke it one afternoon, and she passed, of course. I never forgave the dog, and I still miss Bootsie.
So is there a good answer to this issue? I think not.
These are hard times for a lot of people. Adopting pets responsibly is becoming a problem because of the up-front expenses discussed in this thread. And if the option is to not adopt at all, what happens to the animals which aren't adopted? I don't want to even think about it. I've adopted pets for whom all the right procedures have been done, paid the fees, etc., and I've done it the other way, just bringing them home "as-is." In both situations there is a level of responsibility, of husbandry, to protect and, frankly, control the situations which can and do happen to these pets, including reproduction and diseases. Only once, when I wasn't around to keep a female cat in the house, did we have an unwanted pregnancy and litter. I found homes for all her offspring when I returned home.
When I was a teen, I found a feral kitten who was dying of distemper. She had four white paws, and the rest of her was a grey-and-blue tiger stripe. I named her "Boots," and kept her in a shoebox while nursing her back to health. She was wonderful, so grateful to be alive, and actually afraid of going back outside. The family dog, a klutz, stepped on her neck by accident and broke it one afternoon, and she passed, of course. I never forgave the dog, and I still miss Bootsie.
So is there a good answer to this issue? I think not.
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