The Blog Pound

Saturday, February 04, 2006 , late evening

Adoption contracts

I’m feeling like a proud parent tonight, as the kittens spent their first day out of their cage, unsupervised, and they did great. They ate when they wanted to, they knew to use the litterbox when it was needed, and they were just good kids. I guess most people would have had the kittens completely on the loose by this age (7 and a half weeks), but I wasn’t comfortable doing it until now. As I wasn’t planning to care for these guys, and they arrived without much notice, I had to keep them in our spare room/office/storage area, and really, it’s full of junk. Before Christmas I had cleaned up most of the house and put all the extraneous stuff in the spare room, and lo and behold, suddenly I needed to use that room for something. It’s been full of empty shipping boxes, old computer parts, Christmas wrap, a treadmill, etc., and I was afraid that if I let the kittens loose in there, I’d never see them again! So, they lived in a Rubbermaid container, then a large cage, and now they’ve graduated to the room. They had supervised “out time” every day before this, but today was the first day they were masters of their domain.

Of course, they’ve managed to get into everything I’d hoped to keep them out of. If I put a box up on a shelf, the shelf was the first thing they learned to conquer. I figured they’d ignore a pile of padded envelopes, but no, they use the pile as a ramp to jump from. A floor lamp is like the centerpiece at a motor speedway, and the treadmill is where they quickly turn around to run back in the other direction. They’re utterly fearless, although the German shepherd still elicits a hiss.

On Wednesday, they’ll have their first vet appointments, shots, FIV/FLV tests, etc., and they’ll be microchipped if they’re big enough. While they’re old enough to be adopted out next week, I’d like to keep them for another couple of weeks to get another set of vaccinations into them, as well as to acclimate them more to “big house living”. I also want a few more days to figure out exactly how to proceed with the adoption process, because we’re obviously attached to them, and want to make sure they have the best lives they possibly can.

Regarding the “best lives” part, it’s been a confusing week. Since we first started to care for the kittens, we’ve had a couple of interested adopters in mind, and we had no doubt that the families would be a great match for our kittens. Perhaps I’m just being overly cautious, but this week was full of odd red flags about everyone we’d considered, and we found out a lot of things which surprised us. One person had been enthusiastic about the kittens since they were a week old, but when I called this week to find out if the adoption was still “a go”, I found out that the spouse didn’t know a thing about any kittens. “Kittens?” said the spouse. “You have kittens? Why do you have kittens? I wasn’t told anything about adopting kittens.” This doesn’t mean these folks aren’t still great people, and they take great care of their current pets, but there’s obviously been no planning involved. I don’t think the spouse was opposed to the kitten idea, but I didn’t detect enthusiasm, either.

A second person, who we’ve known for a couple of years on a casual basis, has been interested in adopting a kitten from us and we think person is responsible and reliable. If I had a business to run, I’d hire this person to manage it without a second thought. However, when we raised the kitten issue again this week, the person said, “I can definitely take a kitten now, as I just got rid of my dog”. Holy crap, what on earth does that mean? I was so shocked I didn’t even ask, I just sort of changed the subject as my mind was reeling. Flippy thinks perhaps the dog is being cared for by other family members, but I’m very uncomfortable with the wording “got rid of”.

The final red flag of the week was a chance meeting with old friends. We love these people, have spent a lot of time with them, and have seen them take diligent care of their current pets. I watched one lovingly hand-feeding a sick ferret in the weeks before the ferret died of old age, and they always get prompt vet care when any problem arises. They even took in a homeless stray cat, so I felt that they were people who “thought like me”. While we’d never discussed the idea of them adopting a kitten from us, in the back of my mind they seemed like the perfect family. We haven’t been in touch very often since they had a baby, but I figured they were still “animal people”. Given all that, imagine my surprise when we bumped into these folks at the vet this week, where they were planning to have one of their cats put to sleep rather than paying for its surgery. This isn’t an old cat, but it has an undiagnosed illness, and if the illness couldn’t be treated orally they didn’t want to pay for surgery because it was going to cost about $1000. If they were pinching pennies and on a tight budget, I’d understand, but they aren’t pinching pennies. Like us, they bleed money in dribs and drabs by eating out, buying new cars, paying for all the premium cable channels, having all the latest electronics, etc. At least we know that we do it, and we cut down on it when the need arises, and we’ve never not paid for a medical procedure simply because of cost. It’s none of my business how they budget their money, but they can’t tell me they can’t afford surgery, while telling me about their new television set five minutes later. I was horrified, and shocked, and sad, and it took all my willpower not to offer to take the cat from them so I could take over its care. Another cat wouldn’t be a good fit in our home right now, and I don’t think I have the physical ability to care for any more pets (the kittens have taken a real toll on me and my fibromyalgia), and I can’t save them all. But the conversation kept me awake at night, and it’s put a black cloud over the affection I had for these people. At what point, when you think you know people, do you honestly really know them?

All that is why the subject of this entry is adoption contracts. My innate personality is to keep quiet about things and to not rock the boat, but this past week has made me determined to have very detailed and obnoxious adoption contracts for the kittens. When we adopted Derek from Best Friends, we had to answer all sorts of information before we were cleared to adopt. What pets had we had in our lives? If we didn’t have those pets any longer, what had happened to them? If a pet needed vet care and we couldn’t afford it, what would we do? If we died, what plans had we made for our pets? Did we think it was acceptable to declaw a cat or let a cat roam outdoors? All those questions and more we had to answer in detail, and we also had to agree that if we were ever at a point where we couldn’t keep Derek, or couldn’t afford veterinary care for him, we had to return him to Best Friends. They even remained the “alternate contact” on his microchip. Frankly, I love all that, and that’s what I want to do with the kittens. They’ll be microchipped with their new family’s information and our information, and I’ll make it clear that if the new owners ever have to give up one of the cats, that it must be returned to us. I also want the option to pay for veterinary care if it’s a situation where the cat will otherwise be euthanized despite a treatable condition.

I know that’s taking on a lot of responsibility, but you know, these kittens deserve the very best life they can be given. I promised to care for them when they were a day old, and I won’t stop doing that when they leave our house. I’ll feel better knowing that if there’s a problem down the road, even if it’s 15 years from now, I’ll have the chance to look out for them again. As for who’s going to adopt them, well, I think we’re still a bit up in the air about that, but I guess we’ll see what sort of reaction we get to my adoption contract and go from there.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 02/04 at 10:37 PM
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