Animal shelter visit yesterday

[tokolosh]

Seeing as you cannot have a cat at this time and seeing as you are going to the shelter frequently, have you considered volunteering with the cats?

I have. It's been a constant impulse The other thing I've been considering seriously IF it turns out we're allowed one more cat is fostering instead of adopting - at least till we meet our own next special magical cat. This shelter is so intense about no-contact because they have to be. They have absolutely no isolation room left and they're desperate for foster homes where they can place anyone who is sick. So if I had a space and they thought I'd be okay for doing it, it would be a way of contributing instead of just taking from them. But that's moot anyway at this point.

My main issue with volunteering directly is being dependable - as in, same day same time for the same length of time every time. I'm not, but I don't really want to discuss the reasons in here. So I do this sort of half-assed compromise at the moment which I kludged up to fit my personal circumstances, and I usually go there to spend time on one particular cat who would be adopted in a heartbeat if she were just a little more used to interaction and a little more confident with people. At first I was going because I thought we'd be able to take her ourselves, but I don't have much hope of that now so I do it for other reasons.

[chocolatepuppy]

tokolosh, have you tried working on your landlord? All of the typing you do on here, maybe you could talk him into letting you have a cat. Perhaps explaining how you would have the cat 'fixed' and keep your place clean. Sort of like being your own reference. After all, you already had a cat he seems to have forgot about.

[tokolosh]

tokolosh, have you tried working on your landlord? All of the typing you do on here, maybe you could talk him into letting you have a cat. Perhaps explaining how you would have the cat 'fixed' and keep your place clean. Sort of like being your own reference. After all, you already had a cat he seems to have forgot about.

Yeah, I covered that base when we had the conversation. All of 'em , plus I painted a rending picture of us sitting and crying into our cornflakes until we can have another cat. It was just a week after Limpet had died. He's a nice guy who likes us and was sorry to have to refuse, but a tricky person to handle in this way. He's type who feels awful about saying no, but you have to be careful not to bully him. He's been bullied all his life, is my read on him. Perfectly nice, almost pathologically gentle man who takes fifteen minutes to tell you he has to come in and turn off the hot water for twenty seconds.

If you push it too hard with people like that they just lock down completely to protect themselves, and then you're out of the game. He was kind of swayed, I think, but he said he had to talk it through with his wife, which is perfectly fair as she's the actual one who said No Absolutely Not Never Again after trying to get cat smells out of the carpet from a prior tenant. I'm a coward about calling to find out what the verdict is, although in one way it doesn't matter since I don't think I am in 100% good-to-adopt-again mode yet emotionally, and I'm learning stuff here and at the shelter that's probably better in the long run. When all you've ever had is your own personal private cats who picked you as much as you ever picked them, there's a whole other world of factors you never get any experience with.