Saturday, April 11, 2009

PISSED OFF

so 2 months ago when we adopted our cat greg, we saw a stray cat on the side of the road on our way home. we stopped, picked him up and took him back to the shelter to get care and told the people running the shelter that if he survived we wanted to adopt him. well he survived, and weve been calling every week or so for 2 months to check up on him and see how hes doing. we called last weekend wanting to know if he was ready for adoption and were told he was having his last series of shots and wouldnt be ready for pickup until this weekend. so i call back today and was told that i could adopt him today but wouldnt be able to take him home until wednesday because he needed to be neutered. i asked if there was anything else that he needed done and again asked how he was doing and she said the cat was doing fine, that his skull fracture was pretty bad but hes doing very well now. ok first of all...SKULL FRACTURE?! 2 months of us calling to check on him and this is the FIRST time weve heard about a skull fracture! youd think that would be something they would think to mention! so i drive out there (the shelter is about 45 min from our house, so its not just a quick trip) to give her the adoption fee and see the cat for myself. im pissed as hell at this point, because we have not been informed that the cat we want to adopt had such a serious injury; we feel like weve been deliberately misled. so i get there and first thing ask to see the cat. i take him from the handler, and he is just limp in my arms. normally a cat will try to prop himself up or hold his head up, but he didnt do any of that. he was completely limp. i start to check for responses like my MIL had told me to (i called her on my way there) and he doesnt respond to anything i did. he kept moving his head back and forth, looking side to side, but i dont think he really noticed anything. you know how a cat will look all around but is usually focused on something? he didnt seem to be focusing on anything, just aimlessly looking around. i asked the woman running the place why we hadnt been informed of such a serious injury in the 2 months wed been calling. she told me "well you just called to see how he was doing, you didnt ask specifics." blink.gif excuse me?! so, im just supposed to know to ask about a skull fracture that i dont even know he has?!? i asked her how much brain damage there had been, what kind of special care he would need, and she looked at me and said, "well, he is what he is." i almost lost it at this point. then i asked her what kind of damage there had been and she said there had been a hole in his skull that went all the way to his brain; apparently it was pretty nasty. i handed the cat back to her and told her i couldnt adopt him right now, that id have to discuss it with my husband, and got out of there as fast as i could. i am so unbelievably pissed off, mostly because they essentially lied to us for 2 months. the fact that they kept delaying the pickup tells me that they were stalling, waiting to see if his condition would change at all. the shelter is a huge barn, and they keep most of the cats in cages, 2 to a cage, and put them in the hallways so people can walk in and see them. this cat was kept in a cage by himself in a stall, im assuming alone; i didnt see enough of it to see if there were any other cats in the stall with him. the point is, he was kept out of sight of people, which tells me that they KNEW he is essentially unadoptable. they knew we wanted to adopt him, and so they did what they could to keep his condition from us so we could take him off their hands. they wouldnt put him down because theyre a no-kill shelter, even though putting him down may, at this point, be the most humane thing. i cant believe they hid all this from us. and i feel awful, but we just dont have the resources to provide him with the kind of care he would need, being as brain-damaged as i think he is. we did everything we could for him, we did the right thing; picking him up off the street and getting him medical care. theres nothing more we can do for him. and im wondering, if hes this impaired, is he suffering? if he is, theyre not going to do anything about it because they wont put him down. id rather him not suffer but im not going to buy him just to put him down. my mom suggested calling the SPCA on monday and asking them if they know about this shelter, what they think of it, and describing to them this whole incident and seeing if theres anything they can do about it, at least something to help this poor cat. im upset and im pissed off and i am NEVER going back there to adopt, because frankly, i dont trust them anymore. theyre more concerned about getting animals adopted and making room for more animals than about telling people the truth. i dont trust them, and i am not going back there.

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