Before Adoption... Please Consider

As someone who has fallen victim to I Am A Cute Kitten Please Adopt Me syndrome (see: Natalie), I can understand why those adorable little paws and whiskers grab people's attention. It's easy to fall in love (KITTEN SNUGGLES!), and besides, adopting rescue cats is a wonderful thing anyways. But there are some serious commitments that come along with adopting a kitty, and serious repercussions for them if you decide to go back on your commitment.

I've seen first-hand how hard it is for a cat to readjust to life on display after being in a home for a significant amount of time. Especially for creatures of habit, who like forming routines and enjoy familiarity. Goodness, try to rearrange the living room and watch the cat go crazy investigating everything to make sure he's still in the same house.

So when they're placed in a home, it's highly stressful for them to be ripped away and then put on display once again. They go from having a place they know and feel comfortable in, to being put back into a place where hundreds of strangers wander up to their windows and gawk at them. And the worst part is: they don't understand why.

That's why I'm asking: please consider your life a year, five years, even ten years down the road before you consider adopting a cat. They live, on average, for 13-17 years depending on circumstances, but they can live upwards of 20 years in some cases. So please, consider these questions before going out and adopting that adorable kitten at your local shelter:

• Are you planning on starting a family in the future? What are you going to do with the cat once you do? This is the most common reason I've seen for putting a cat back up for adoption: "Well, he was really a great cat, but we're going to have a baby so we decided to bring him back..." If having children is a possibility within the next 15 years, and you don't foresee yourself keeping the cat when that happens, please do the cat a favor and pass so that he can find his forever home.
• Are you planning on moving at all? Are you prepared to look for a place that will allow you to have a cat if you're going to rent? Are you prepared to move the cat cross-country? Moving with a cat is difficult; I've done it x3 with 3 cats. But the commitment to give a cat a forever home is not one to take lightly, and sometimes it takes a little work to find the right circumstances that include kitty as well.
• Are you prepared for the work that can come with having a cat? Not just the normal commitments of scooping the litter box, but the occasions where sometimes kitty gets sick and uses your rug as a litter box instead. Sometimes they get things like fleas, earmites, or worms, and need medicine that can either be hard or painfully (and I mean that literally) difficult to give them. And yes, sometimes they go places you don't want them to go, and get into things you don't want them to get into.
• Can you currently afford the cost of adopting the cat in the first place? If you have to borrow money to pay down the fee in the first place, you should probably wait. Now, I'm not one to claim that one ought to have thousands stashed away on the off chance kitty needs to see the vet. I'm not one to point a finger of shame at people who started out in a good place but fell on hard times. But there's a difference between finding it difficult to pay thousands out of pocket for an emergency, and not being able to afford basic care of kitty. And there's a difference between falling on hard times after getting a cat, and getting a cat despite already struggling with the bills.

There are some legitimate reasons people will have to bring back a cat, things that couldn't really be foreseen at the time they adopted the cat. People fall on hard times. People have to move when they didn't plan on it. People get sick, injured, or die and it's not fair for the animals left behind to stay in that situation instead of being re-homed. It's tough, but it happens, and I'm not here to make anyone feel guilty for that.

But it's heartbreaking to see cats who thought they had found their forever homes come back, over circumstances that could have reasonably been considered at the time of adoption. It's no surprise that cats live more than a couple years, so when you're asking yourself, "Can this cat fit into my lifestyle now?" also ask yourself, "Can this cat fit into my lifestyle years down the road? Am I willing to make it work?"

How to Win Cats and Earn Cuddles

When a year passed and I was still getting growled at for minor infractions on a regular basis, I gave up hope of ever achieving the same level of trust that Felix had with my boyfriend.

Maybe it was something that had to be cultivated in kittenhood, which means I missed the boat by about four years. I would just have to accept that Felix would tolerate me and nothing more. At least he wasn't as touchy with me as he was with everyone else.

Felix had (who am I kidding, he still has) the reputation of being the Big Bad Mean Cat. Our home has access to the downstairs through a hydraulically-operated floor hatch. When we were discussing how to open it without catapulting an unsuspecting cat, someone joked, "Well, I don't know about Felix. I wouldn't mind catapulting him." It hurt a little- even being a joke- but I know how easy it is to become discouraged by an angry cat. But that's the thing: Felix doesn't necessarily react so much out of anger, as much as he does out of fear.

Realizing that a year ago is what made me decide to actually sit down and work with Felix instead of giving up and writing him off as a pissed-off feline with a chip forever on his shoulder. So I looked up ways to encourage trust between cat and owner, and over time I started to put those methods into action. A year later, Felix can still be touchy, but he is significantly more trusting and easier to please. These are some of my tips:

•  Start off with the basics. The very first thing you need to learn, before anything else, is how to speak their language. Though their vocalizations are pretty much variations on "meoooww" and "HISSSSSSIMGOINGTOCLAWTHEHELLOUTOFYOU", their body language says volumes. Fellow cat blogger, CatsnCo, wrote an entry on this very thing. You'll need to know what your cat is saying, so that you know when it's safe to proceed and when it's time to back off.

• Figure out where to start. If your cat comes up to you and accept pets, start out there. If he's a bit further behind, start there and then build up. The big thing with cats is "slowly". It's almost like you have to trick them into thinking that nothing's changing at all. But the point here is to show the cat that you're not going to go past his boundaries, which, in turn, instills trust. The more trust he has at whatever level you're at, the more you can push it a little.

• Stop before your cat gets angry. The big thing with teaching Felix was that I had to stop before he got angry. That's why you need a good sense of how your cat is feeling based off his body language, so you'll know when he's starting to get antsy. When you stop before he gets angry, it shows him that he doesn't have to get angry in order to get this behavior to stop. Again, it's about building up trust. If he can trust you to stop on your own, then he doesn't have to pull out the claws and sink them into your face.

• Build up to more and more exposure. So you know where the line is. You stop at the right time, and now he's okay with what you're doing. Up the ante a little-- start petting him for longer periods of time. Get closer while you're petting him. If he's fine with that, try encouraging him into your lap. Work up to having your arms around him. Work even further up to a hug. Eventually, he might be okay with cuddles. He might even be okay with being picked up.

• Sometimes, they're just not in the mood, and that's okay. People aren't "on" all the time, and cats certainly aren't either. If your cat is just having an off moment, let him be and respect his boundaries. If you work on his terms, it'll help maintain a trustful relationship between you and your cat.

• Enjoy your cat cuddles. Your mileage may vary, but you should end up with a cat that trusts you enough to accept pets and cuddles. Enjoy!