What are your views on No Kill Animal Shelters

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

Last Spring we adopted our kitten, Princess Aurora the Foo Foo Cat, from a no-kill shelter. It was harder than adopting a CHILD. I understand screening applicants to make sure the animal is going to a suitable home, but this place had almost 200 cats. None were caged, all seemed to be cared for fairly well, but I wonder how many they successfully adopt out with policies designed to deter adoption?

The application was 4 pages long. They have a "waiting period" after you complete the application, and we had to bring a copy of our pet addendum from our lease to prove we are allowed to HAVE a pet. After about a week they agreed to let us have the kitten, but MY GOSH! When we took her to the vet he was kind of laughing about their tactics saying almost NOBODY gets approved to adopt the animals. (He is actually the vet who works on all of the animals from the shelter - we decided to continue on with him.)

I understand the need to euthanize animals sometimes - there are just too many! The costs to care for them forever would be staggering! Shelters are non-profit and never seem to have adequate funding, so unfortunately there are difficult choices to make.

The shelter was furious that we wanted to declaw Aurora, but they let us adopt her anyway. We had her spay and declaw done in one surgery and she is fabulous. Maybe someday I will learn to post photos!

 

[Jennasis]

Jackskellingtonsgirl: a similar thing happened to us at a VERY well known no-kill shelter on Long Island. When I was a teen, my family went to adopt a puppy from them. We picked out a cutie and they let us bond with her for over an hour. Then they took my mom into an INTERROGATION room away from my dad and my sisters and I and grilled her for an hour...all about our home, our lifestyle, all of our previous pets and where they were now. We had a dog before but it had actually been stolen. They FREAKED OUT! They insisted we were negligent about letting the dog loose in our fenced yard (a neighbor saw someone drive up, get out of the car, reach over the fence, scoop up our terrier and drive away). They told us we were unfit to adopt one of THEIR puppies and showed us the door.

It has been alleged that they have an actual BLACKLIST of people who cannot adopt from them.

On to the OP's question. I like the notion of no-kill shelters. I just don't know how well they always work.