Our local no-kill cat shelter has a policy that one month before Christmas (and a couple of weeks after, am not sure exactly how long), they do not allow people to adopt cats.

It's because they know from long ago experience that people give these creatures away as cute little gifts to people who don't want them, or to satisfy the beggings of their kids and then a few months later.... who comes back to the shelter with the kittens? Yup, either the person who was gifted the cat and who never WANTED one, or the frustrated mother and father who is tired of clearing out the litter box.

I am interested to know if this a common practice amongst no-kill shelters all over the world or if this is more or less specific to the shelter I support.

I've never heard of that. I know our local shelter will not adopt out black cats a month before Halloween. I don't even want to know what that's all about. :(

I can understand the reasoning behind that policy. I don't know if I've actually heard of any shelters in my area doing that, though.

.I know our local shelter will not adopt out black cats a month before Halloween. (

Surely people would not take these cats for satanic purposes? I just hope it's the same reason that the shelter I mentioned won't let them adopt for Christmas, i.e. to avoid the "gimmick" side of gifting animals.

It makes sense, and I would hope that the would have the same policy with puppies. I'm sure they see a big increase in drop-offs a couple months after christmas when all the puppies start turning into dogs.

belovedtree: This shelter I speak of is a cat-shelter only. It is an incredible place. My son used to volunteer there as an official "cat-stroker". Because they are SO busy looking after the cats there (they just love them to bits) - and tending to their daily practical needs, that they don't have time to stroke them sufficiently. So when youngsters phone to ask what they can do to help, they are designated "official cat-strokers!!!!" This way, the half-wild cats slowly get used to human company and love and there is a possibility of them being adopted.

I used to go in on occasion too and stroke the cats!!! It was just incredible to see how starved they were of affection and how grateful they were just to be hugged and cuddled for a few minutes.

Some of the cats there are so wild though that they are untouchable. And even dangerous. The children are not allowed to go near them.

awww thats so sweet, it sounds like a wonderful place, most places won't take the time to rehab wild cats.

The group I work with doesn't have a special Christmas season animal policy, but I can understand why some shelters might. My group doesn't operate a shelter and all of our animals are in foster homes. We are very strict about who we'll adopt an animal to and we require a home visit for each adoption, so the fear of buying a cat/dog for a gift isn't as high with us.

Around Halloween, we try to bring in as many black cats as we can into our program so that bad things don't happen to them. People can be very cruel.

While not specific just for Christmas, the idea of no gift adoptions is fairly common. The dog rescue I volunteer for will not adopt out dogs as "gifts" at any time of year (of course, nor will they adopt out a dog if the intended caretaker is a child, among other things.) Nor will the ferret rescue up the road.
A couple rescues I know of do offer gift certificates, where the gift reciever comes in for an interview, goes through a screening process and then gets to choose their own animal.

Shelters also won't adopt out rabbits around Easter.

We've had quite a few Christmas puppies and kittens come in to work this past week. They're very cute, but it makes you wonder if their owners will still love them as much 6 months from now.

It sounds like a really good policy. I wish more shelters would do the same thing.

i think those types of policies are common. as far as i know, none of the shelters around here allow black cat adoptions around halloween. my local shelter here (which is not no-kill) doesn't allow rabbit adoptions around easter. i think this is at the request of the volunteers from the rabbit rescue organization that i adopted from.

what doesn't make sense about it, though, in the case of a kill shelter with limited room, is that they then don't have room for all of the rabbits and some end up being killed. how many people are really going to go to the shelter to adopt a cat/rabbit (for a high fee) to give to someone for christmas/easter? those people are just going to buy an animal, and if by chance they did go to the shelter first, they'd probably just go to a pet store when the shelter turned them away.