Mildly frustrated with my experiences at the Arlington and Alexandria animal shelters (emphasis on mildly), I did a Google search for cat rescue organizations in the area. It came back with Fancy Cats and King Street Cats, two organizations I’ve heard of. A friend had adopted two adorable cats from Fancy Cats a while back. A neighbor has volunteered with King Street Cats, located just down the road from me. (There’s also Tails High, which I found from a pet rescue website; and FOHA, Friends of Homeless Animals, which someone recently mentioned.)
I looked through Fancy Cats and found a few cats I might be interested in. When I emailed them asking about seeing some cats, they replied that I should fill out their online application form. So I did. I then received an email asking to elaborate on a few of my responses, mainly having to do with why I’d surrender a cat, but also how my current cat would respond. I replied once again, only to get a damn phone from them this afternoon, expressing even more reservations. These had to do with Shadow and his litter habits. They decided (sight unseen) that Shadow didn’t like to share his litter box and that a new cat would smell his outside-the-box mess and mess there, too.
What the hell? Forget that I have more than one litter box, so Shadow wouldn’t have to share. Forget that I’d cleaned and scrubbed the poop-spots with Ajax and Resolve specifically to get rid of the smell. Or that cats generally prefer the litter box to elsewhere. Or that the veterinarian said Shadow likely had a food allergy, which might have contributed to the problem. Apparently they know better than the vet.
Since they were being such shits, I told them to just tear up my application. The young woman responded (surprisingly cheerily) “Ok.”
No wonder this organization has thirty-nine fucking pages of adoptable cats. At 10 cats per page, that’s 390 cats! Maybe if they weren’t so persnickety they wouldn’t have so many cats. By comparison, King Street Cats has 48 available cats, Arlington shelter has 27, Alexandria shelter has about 25. And while FOHA has whopping 91 cats available, it’s 76% less than 390!
This may be the universe’s way of telling me not to adopt. I’m listening, but not very attentively. I did visit King Street Cats this afternoon, although I didn’t come home with a cat. Some of the cats I’m interested in weren’t there, a few others had health issues that need to be cleared up first. But I am going to volunteer with them, so I should be able to get an inside track.
Stream of Conscience 
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