About Adoption

I love adoption... i'm particularly excited tonight, because i got the go ahead from one of the shelters that i'd love to support financially and by adding them to my website ( When Scardee cats cat nanny gets off the ground). That shelter is Ingrids Haven.( http://www.ingridshaven.net.au/). I found out about Ingrid, 2 or 3 years ago and i'd like to share that story with you.

Sooo about 4 years ago, my friend Claire called me and told me she had millions of stray cats all breeding in her tiny back yard and a litter had moved inside, through the cat flap, to the back room. Claire had moved from the Yarra Valley to the Westies and she wanted to know if i could help her. I knew that we couldn't do it on our own, so i approached my craziest cat friends Mat and Paula to help me. We got a cat trap from somewhere, one morning we all got in the car including my son Scott (who was about 4 at the time) and we went off to "herd cats", OMG.

We arrived at Claires and there was an eerie silence, like a million cats had scattered at the sound of us pulling up, they had scattered into the bushes and they were hiding... sizing us up....dinner perhaps. Claire greeted us at the front door and immediately introduced us to her appropriately named bird "Cocky" who happens to be cocky and is a Cocky. After that she led us to the room of feline scatterbugs, she reminded us "that all though this room was small it actually had more furniture in it than any other rooms" so in we went.

Initially it was like an out of control game of "reverse whack a mole" where the humans got whacked and the moles didn't. After a beating, we took our "thinking caps" off and put our "thinking cats" on. We connected to our cat senses and created a tunnel out of furniture and curtains to funnel the unexpected guests into. Eventually we had them all, except for Wiley mum. She was never going to funnel down a tunnel, Way to smart for us mere mortals. (uummmm i think she still lives there, as Queen of the Manor)

It was decided that the kits were independant enough to leave mum, they were old enough to stick up for their rights (we had the scratches to prove it). So we agreed to take them back to a LARGE shelter closer to us, (not Ingrids and not one that will be on my site). We were feeling pretty pleased about what we'd done and we all got out of the car at the shelter, with smiley faces as we approached the shelter. We all left with sad faces, we were drilled by the Sargent at arms of this particular shelter... she definitely didn't want these kittens from the Westies, she only wanted to be inundated by kits from the yarra valley, these kittens were the problem of the council...all the way over the other side of town........, not our council, O.K. so she may of had a vaguley, red tape, correct point of view, but we still didn't like it.

For 2 more years Claire struggled with population control at her house, but she was lucky enough to find the wonderful Ingrid (http://www.ingridshaven.net.au/) who helped her trap these cats, take them to her shelter. She provided all the veterinary care they needed (vaccination, desexing, microchipping) as well as feeding them, keeping them warm and nurturing them to accept human contact, then re homing them. Ingrid did all of that without whinging once about the cost of taking cats from the Westies to her Northern suburbs shelter that is funded by donations from private subscribers.

So can all my cat lovers, donate to her shelter to help reduce the cost of all she does, if you live close enough you could volunteer and if you simply can't do anything, like her on facey and share her posts. Sorry this post is so long but adoption is soooooo important to me.

Thanks for reading

Sam