"Leo", for short.
He's 9 weeks old, and as feisty as a little lion:
We've wanted a kitten for a while now, but found it nearly impossible to find one with "no strings attached". Apparently in our area of Pennsylvania, the only place you can get a kitten is through a breeder or a rescue shelter. We ended up driving out of the area to a reputable, old-style pet shop.
The local chain pet stores only sold kittens from the rescue shelters. As I've mentioned in an earlier post, they require you to fill out an application, which asks for information that is, quite frankly, none of their business. For example:
Do you rent or own your home?
Name of landlord?
Name and phone number of a reference who does not live with you.
Do you allow (shelter name) to visit your home after adoption?
How many children and adults live in your home, and what are their ages?
Do you plan to declaw the cat (I know from someone who adopted one of these cats, they do not allow you to declaw anyway).
Please list all your current pets, and include age and sex of pet.
List all pets owned in the last 5 years.
There's more, but I think you get the idea. On top of that, the kittens come pre-named, and they reserve the right to remove the kitten from your household if they're not satisfied with their "inspection" of your house. As I said before, it feels like your "borrowing" their personal pet.
I realize there's a lot of arseholes out there that abandon cats, and this application process probably began as a means to weed out people who tend to do this. I really can sympathize with that. But in some cases, the list of requirements for kitten adoption is getting a bit weird.
As a side note, I read an interesting story about 2 weeks ago. An elderly couple was denied adopting a puppy.
