I Need to Rehome a Cat

The calls are endless:

  • “I have a cat I was feeding all winter and she just had kittens under my porch.”
  • “I found an abandoned kitten.”
  • “My cat had kittens and I can’t keep them because I can’t afford the cat I have already.”
  • “I love cats but can’t keep this kitten my husband found at work.”
  • “I need to get rid of the cat I’ve had for 10 years because my new baby is allergic.”

Many folks find themselves making such calls these days. Often they are sent from rescue to rescue to do nothing but spin their wheels because nobody seems to want to give it to them straight. But we will.

It really doesn’t matter how the cat came to be in your possession. What matters is that it needs to leave your home.  So if that’s the case, this is our advice.

Cat overpopulation is a serious problem.  We are fortunate in Kent County that we have a wonderful Humane Society and Animal Shelter that use a humane lethal injection euthanization method versus the alternative inhumane methods – carbon monoxide gas and “heart sticking, ” (unlike some shelters in our state).  However, these two Kent County facilities will kill some 8,000 cats and kittens this year.

There are an estimated 6-8,000 free roaming cats in the greater Grand Rapids area. Our focus is to trap-neuter-return every one of those cats. The purpose of Carol’s Ferals is not to take surrendered cats in for adoption. We do sometimes take cats from the streets but like all other rescues, we are at maximum capacity.

The people we talk to want us to give them the contact information of someone who will take the cat off their hands.   Many times they are shuffled from rescue to rescue.  We would rather tell it to you straight.   The problem is that there are not enough homes.  For every cat in the United States to have a home,  each household would have to keep 49 cats. This is why our focus is on fixing every single cat we can get our hands on to reduce the cat overpopulation and reduce the amount of homes needed in this county.

We are glad that there are people who want to help stray cats.  We are glad that the cat you found under your deck, picked up in a Wal-Mart parking lot, or have  to give up because Junior is allergic,  has someone who wants it to have a better life.  But the truth is that nobody is a better advocate for that cat than the person holding it in their hands at that moment.

While we can’t take that cat from you, we can do a lot for you and for the cat:

  • We can providing medical care at significantly reduced rate and supply medication at cost
  • We can fix any cat that is brought to us either for free,  a donation,  or at low cost depending on where you live
  • We can treat cats for fleas, earmites and worms free of charge
  • We can offer vaccines and testing for feline leukemia & FIV at greatly reduced
  • We can counsel you on getting the cat fixed through a number of other area low-cost spay/neuter clinics like the Spay Neuter Express or C-SNIP
  • We can help you find low-cost spay/neuter clinics anywhere in the county or state on our website.
  • We can suggest methods of rehoming. We can tell you the peril animals offered for free by discussing our No More Free Kittens campaign.
  • We can teach you how to expand your search for adopters using email and Social Media like Facebook to find potential adopters.

But we can’t  take the cat or kittens off your hands. Our focus is TNR.  We have no room in our adoption program for every friendly cat we encounter.

That means the cat you want to rehome will have to be rehomed by you.

But we won’t leave you in the weeds either.  We will help you be successful in finding the cat or kitten a home by offering our Rehoming Assistance Program aka RAP.

Here is the link:  http://www.carolsferals.org/rap/

  • Loaning you any equipment you will need
  • Offering you spay/neuter services at low cost or donation based when funds are available to offset our costs.
  • Offer you low cost vaccines and medical service
  • Help you create your own flier like this one made by a woman who was in your situation and successfully rehomed every single kitten on her own.  You can also use this Pet Flyer Maker, an easy to use online tool that will create a flyer including a photo and description of an animal that is up for adoption, has been lost or found.
  • Give you strategies for finding homes, like hanging fliers at your work, emailing all your friends and asking them to do the same, and posting an ad on your Facebook page.
  • Listing the cats you have fixed through RAP on our special RAP Cats Petfinder page.

The successful folks don’t simply pass out the kittens as if they are chips at a party, they do the right thing…start to finish.

If you’re finding yourself in such a situation, you need to do the same thing.

If you can’t find the time or energy to devote to such a project then you must face up to the inevitable, the cats and kittens need to be taken to a qualified shelter or Humane Society.

As mentioned earlier, some facilities utilize humane methods of euthanasia like ours in Kent County. But other counties like Gratiot and Livingston still use carbon monoxide gas and have contracts with Class B Animal Dealers like R&R Research of Howard City.

We need to open our eyes to the situation in this country. We are nowhere near being a no-kill nation. To get there we have to employ practices including aggressive spay/neuter of owned animals, TNR of feral and stray cats and people need to take responsibility for the cats they have in their care.

If you can’t keep your cat, and you can’t find him a home on your own, than you will need to face the fact that the only humane decision you can make is to take him to a shelter. Many people with good intentions will place friendly cats outside thinking they will fend for themselves.  There is nothing further from the truth.  Domestic cats do not know how to take care of themselves and will starve or be hit by a car in no time – and those are the lucky ones.  Other friendly cats will fall into the hands of a hoarder or even worse, a buncher – someone who scours the streets for cats and dogs, either lost, stray, or offered up for free, then sells them to research laboratories.

The choice is yours -  do right by that cat or do the hard thing.  We know it can be done because we work with countless people every year who care about animals and work with us to get the cats caught up the necessary medical work and find them homes, from start to finish.  You can do it too.  Call us and we will help you help that cat!

If you need a printable version of this information, click here.