Struggling with local rescue centres
Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2021 12:49 pm
We're looking for a pair of young cats / kittens to adopt into our family home, and have decided to go down the rescue route rather than go to a breeder, as it feels like the right and responsible thing to do...however...
- We can't get through to our closest branch of a very-well-known national chain, as they've only got a mobile # published which never gets answered (7 or 8x over 4 weeks, 2 voicemails left, neither returned). A 'complaint' has been made to head-office who've said they can't take it any further as the person with that mobile is the only one who can investigate complaints at that branch!
- We're being told by the next closest one of those chains that we can only view cats in a separate introduction room, which was unfamiliar to the cats, so the pair we saw yesterday were timid and distant (apparently not like them, but how do we know when we're not allowed to see them in their 'home' environment), and when I tried to follow-up to see what we could do instead got a very blunt, unsigned e-mail back. They also hardly ever answer the phone. In fairness, the people at the sharp-end there are lovely, helpful and generous with their time...
- ...and then with a local charity we saw a lovely pair of kittens (at a fosterers about 40 minutes drive from our home, visited at short-notice to fit in with them), asked for a day to think about it (there were a couple of question marks over the kittens' health I wanted to check up on, which we weren't told about until we were there and our young son was falling in love with them!!!), then barely 36 hours later we call them back, only to find out they've already been reserved for someone else without bothering to chase us up. And they don't see anything wrong with that, and the fosterer was telling me that our vet was wrong...
Has anyone else had similar experiences? I get that most people involved are volunteers, and that (I guess) the cats come first, but surely you want to be encouraging wannabe-adopters and working with them, not treating them as if they don't matter...
- We can't get through to our closest branch of a very-well-known national chain, as they've only got a mobile # published which never gets answered (7 or 8x over 4 weeks, 2 voicemails left, neither returned). A 'complaint' has been made to head-office who've said they can't take it any further as the person with that mobile is the only one who can investigate complaints at that branch!
- We're being told by the next closest one of those chains that we can only view cats in a separate introduction room, which was unfamiliar to the cats, so the pair we saw yesterday were timid and distant (apparently not like them, but how do we know when we're not allowed to see them in their 'home' environment), and when I tried to follow-up to see what we could do instead got a very blunt, unsigned e-mail back. They also hardly ever answer the phone. In fairness, the people at the sharp-end there are lovely, helpful and generous with their time...
- ...and then with a local charity we saw a lovely pair of kittens (at a fosterers about 40 minutes drive from our home, visited at short-notice to fit in with them), asked for a day to think about it (there were a couple of question marks over the kittens' health I wanted to check up on, which we weren't told about until we were there and our young son was falling in love with them!!!), then barely 36 hours later we call them back, only to find out they've already been reserved for someone else without bothering to chase us up. And they don't see anything wrong with that, and the fosterer was telling me that our vet was wrong...
Has anyone else had similar experiences? I get that most people involved are volunteers, and that (I guess) the cats come first, but surely you want to be encouraging wannabe-adopters and working with them, not treating them as if they don't matter...