Our current kids from shelters:
Caruso, a yellow and white tabby, who came with my SO. My SO got him from a shelter in Michigan; he had been declawed, and then his people decided they didn't want him anyway.
Kitter, who is apricot and white, and is now our oldest. She also came with my SO, from a Michigan shelter.
Zen and Tao, the Orange Meanies. They are very devoted brothers who came from a puppy/kitten mill in Arkansas that was closed because of cruelty. Many of the cats from that mill died in the first year; they had been fed poor quality food, and many died from cardiomyopathy. Our boys' hearts still appear to be fine, although Tao has seasonal allergies.
We adopted Toby because when Eli, our first chocolate lab, died, Jack wouldn't move or eat. We were afraid he would die, so I got on Petfinder to find another chocolate lab. (We thought it might help Jack more if we got someone who looked somewhat like Eli.) I ended up making a six hour round trip three days running before I finally was able to bring Toby home.
Tascha is our young Great Pyrenees, who we adopted because we missed Sophie, my first Pyr, so much. Tascha, our snow princess, is not a replacement for Sophie; we adopted her as a tribute to Sophie.
Jack and our other 16 cats weren't adopted from shelters - they're "direct" rescues.
Also adopted from shelters: Paco, a yellow crowned Amazon, who's blind in his right eye. That eye is also prone to infections. The veterinary opthamologist we took him to said it was because of a blunt force trauma to his head. Paco had been a breeder bird; when his mate died, he wouldn't mate with anyone else, so his owner "surrendered" him.
Bert, an orange wing Amazon, lived with an old man for twenty odd years. When the man developed Alzheimer's, his daughter agreed to take care of him, but didn't want to take the bird.
Ziggy, a blue and gold macaw, also lived with an old man. When he was hospitalized for the last time, his children wanted nothing to do with the bird, of whom they were afraid.
We made a ten hour round trip last year to pick up Finnegan (cockatiel) when Belle, the parakeet who was Frisco's (cockatiel) companion, died suddenly. I had purchased Frisco about 25 years ago from a Woolworth's. His cage was so filthy, and he was such a bedraggled mess, that I couldn't leave him there, even though I didn't want to encourage Woolworth's sale of animals. Finnegan had walked up to a young woman in a Quick Trip parking lot; she brought her to the shelter. They tried hard to find Finnegan's family, with no luck.
At Thanksgiving, we'll be adding three more shelter cats to our household. When my SO's youngest son came home from Iraq, he and his fiancée (now wife) lived with us while he wet to school. She was lonely; she's from Puerto Rico, and has no family of her own here, so she and I visited a couple of shelters so that she could have a cat of her own. Well, we came home with three; she was having such a hard time deciding between them, I just paid the adoption fee for all of them. She has since developed allergies, has a baby she's nursing, and can't take meds because they end up in her breast milk. So, Sylvester, Santos and Sara will be living with us again, this time permanently.
The story that's making me happiest at the moment is the fact that all nine of the dumped cats that we took in this year have integrated well into the household. They're all content, healthy, and just generally thriving.
What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents. RFK
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Originally Posted by pajamajes
