|
If you are looking
for a moggy or non-pedigree cat, contact your
local animal shelter and check your vet clinic notice board
for "looking for home"
cards. Many stray and abandoned cats end up at vet
clinics before reaching an animal shelter. Vets
may have clients whose cats have had kittens or
who are looking for new homes for their own cats
due to changed circumstances. Some vets in some
countries take in and rehome unwanted cats and
dogs (strays or healthy animals taken for
euthanasia). If you know your pet shop to be
reputable, there may be a rehoming notice board there.
Sources
of Cats - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Beware of
newspaper/notice board adverts, people selling
kittens from a box in a shopping center, many pet
shops and markets/boot fairs. Though there are
many reputable pet shops, there are too many which
sell kitten farm kittens or unhealthy stock. Only
acquire cats and kittens from a pet shop where you
have already built up a good relationship and know
them to be reputable and caring. The very best pet
shops refuse to deal in live animals and will
refer you to a breeder, animal shelter or vet.
Side-of-the-road
vendors and kitten-farms (US: kitty-mills) are
concerned with quick sales and profits, not with
the health of the "product". The kitten
may have a hereditary condition, be malnourished,
wormy, sick and poorly socialized; some will never
have been handled and are virtually wild - their
docility when sold being due to fear or illness.
They will have lived in overcrowded conditions,
mixed with other litters from elsewhere in the
county or country and be harboring any number of
infectious diseases. The mother may be sick or
dying through excessive breeding and the kittens
are probably removed at too young an age; by
purchasing such a kitten you keep kitten farms in
business. If they are purebreds, they may come
with false pedigree papers and be unregisterable;
not be a concern if you don't plan to show or
breed, but they will still have been bred in poor
conditions. Their parents were probably acquired
with a neutering contract and the kitten farm will
have lied to the breeder saying that the cat has
been neutered or has died. Better sources for
purebreds are reputable breeders, breed rescue
societies, animal shelters and vet clinics.
|
