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Sometimes "how I got this cat / dog / alpaca" is just a matter of "I went to the shelter and picked one". But sometimes it's considerably more involved. Patches In 2010, the people in the ground-floor unit a few buildings down from me had two tuxedo cats. I'd often see the cats lounging on the porch, or coming in or going out. Then, at some point when I wasn't paying attention, those people moved away. "For rent" sign and everything. But there was still one tuxedo cat sitting on their porch all the time. Then I started seeing the tuxedo cat sitting on other people's porches too. Then I realized he was crying in front of a lot of different doors. I thought, "Maybe he's confused about where he lives now?" A week or so later, I noticed that he had a big infected wound on his flank. And I started to worry about him. But when I saw him again a few days later, it was clean. So I figured, okay, he does have someone taking care of him. The next day, I was talking to a neighbor who was watering his lawn. I mentioned "that big black and white cat who's crying in front of all the doors? Who does he belong to now? He had that big infected wound but it's clean now?" And the neighbor said: "Oh, that. Yeah, I saw that, and I felt sorry for him, so I took him inside, cleaned it, disinfected it, and then threw him out again." At that point, I decided, fuckit, nobody else is going to take care of this cat. I went to the pet store, bought a bag of kibble and a tub of litter, then went to the alley where I usually saw him (which was right next to his original home), picked him up, and brought him into my apartment. I named him "Patches", because on his back he was black with a few patches of white, and on his front he was white with a few patches of black. When I brought him to the vet, I had them check for a microchip - maybe his original people did bring him with them, but he escaped and found his way back to his old neighborhood? But he wasn't chipped, and although I kept an eye out for "lost cat" notices over the following months, I didn't see any. The vet estimated he was about 4 years old; I had him for a little under three years before his kidneys went. Anyone else have a story?
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Dec 28, 2024 15:43
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| # ? Nov 17, 2025 00:06 |
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Okay, sure. The Cat Distribution System In Action Molly and Chloe were littermates that I found under a hose reel behind my parents' house about 16 or 17 years ago. They'd been abandoned, they were only about two weeks old, and the only reason I found them at all was because Chloe was just mewling her little heart out, crying for help. They were wet, cold, and at first when I found them I thought Molly was dead. Took them to the vet and we were allowed to take Chloe home, but Molly had to stay behind because she was in such bad shape. We weren't even sure she'd survive the day, much less get through the night. But survive she did, which is how she got her name: from "the unsinkable Molly Brown". Not sure where Chloe's name came from, really. My parents came up with it. My mom, a recent retiree, was able to do the round-the-clock constant care and feeding that such tiny kittens require (which is also why my parents kept them even though I found them, but I had two cats of my own at the time anyway). Molly passed away just last year, but Chloe is still soaking up all the love and attention my parents heap on her.  Molly (RIP)  Chloe introducing herself to my beardie Elmore No One Was Home I have this theory that everyone has that one absolute best favorite pet that stands out above all the others, who you'll remember and miss forever, no matter how many other good boys and girls you have afterward. My best cat ever was a glorious void named Puck, and even though he died in 2015, I'll probably spend the rest of my life chasing him. When I got him as a kitten, I had just lost another cat a few months prior, and was finally at a place where I was ready for another. This was back when newspapers and classified sections were a thing, so I armed myself with a copy of the 'Free Pets' listings and went out one morning, determined that I wasn't going to come home without a kitten. The only problem was, every number I called, no one was home to answer (cell phones still hadn't made landlines completely obsolete in the early 2000s, either). So it was getting late in the day, I'd had no luck, and then I saw a listing from an animal rescue/foster group that was having an adopt-a-thon at a local pet store. So I went, and I got there just as they were packing things up for the day. The only thing I really knew was that I wanted a male kitten, and he was the last male kitten left. He was part of a litter of 3 that had been found at the base of a fence around an electrical substation, and his siblings were already adopted. I picked him up, he started purring, and that was that. I adopted him on the spot. Puck was not the name he came with (the rescue people had named him Alano -- yeah, I have no idea), but I didn't exactly "give" it to him, either. It's more like, that was always his name, and I just happened to figure it out. Or maybe he told me. But it suited him. Like a hockey puck, he was all black and never stopped moving. But also, he was mischievous like Puck in Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream", so it worked on two levels. His personality was so huge that when he died, it took two cats to fill the hole he left in my life (and I still miss him anyway). My biggest regret is that I didn't take very many photos of him, so I don't have one to put in this post, sadly. As a result, I wouldn't say I'm obsessive about taking bunches of photos of my pets now, but they do take up a big chunk of my photo library.
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Dec 29, 2024 15:42
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Three of my cats came from a fourth cat who was a pregnant stray that my sister in law had asked us to watch for a bit until she could drive them up to her house as fosters for this agency she does that with... my Mother being a cat lady basically stole the foster which caused a lot of headache for my sister in law... and then there were babies which she thought were all females so she gave them female names, Skylar, River, Willow... All three of course turned out to be boys.
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Jan 1, 2025 23:24
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Kiska came from the animal shelter in Taos, New Mexico. Inspired by the double whammy of the YOSPOS cat thread and taking care of my sister's cats for a summer, I realized that it was high time I got one myself. I had originally gone to look at a raggedy-looking tom called Bobby, but when I got there Kiska (then called Amanda) came up to me, flopped down directly on my feet the moment I was standing still, and didn't move till I rubbed her belly. I fell in love immediately and ended up with her. I also paid all Bobby's fees for whoever adopted him in the future because I felt terribly guilty about being seduced by belly rubs. 
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Jan 7, 2025 05:06
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We had a client who was an elderly lady with a really cute dapple dachshund named Olivia. She often jokingly told me I could have her because she was costing her too much money (allergies leading to secondary infections, and the start of some back issues). We got a call one day from her daughter asking us if we would be willing to euthanize Olivia, because her mom had passed and she didn't think anyone would adopt Olivia from a shelter because of her health issues, age, and the fact that she didn't get along with other dogs (which is why none of her children could take her). I asked if they'd be willing to rehome her if I took her, and they were thrilled (it sounds like they were being callous wanting to put her down, but they genuinely didn't know what to do with her). I got her health issues under control within a couple of weeks, and she's been doing great with us for the past 5 years. 
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Jan 8, 2025 21:16
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I have 4 ferrets. 3 of them were acquired through the normal method of "I have money, you have ferrets. Give me one." The 4th came into my possession through a different route. I was taking a night-time walk with my father down the country back roads, using a thermal spotter to look for the local wildlife. I spot something in the road, initially thinking it's a rabbit, but it moves differently. We get closer, and shine a torch on it. To our surprise, it's a very small jill (female) ferret. She didn't run away, so my father says "Pick her up, she won't hurt you". So I do. She immediately goes to town on my hand. Ferrets will typically bite once, then latch on. Not this one. She bites me again and again, while I eventually get her in a proper grip. By this time, my hand is dripping blood from at least 40 puncture wounds. I'm now holding her firmly behind the neck in a grip where she can't add extra perforations to my hand, but I'm dripping blood and can't relax my grip in case she escapes or decides to go for round 2. The walk home was 3/4 of a mile, dripping blood all the way, at which point I put my new ferret into a spare cage for the night. By this point, her fur was a pretty solid red. The next morning had me visiting the local hospital for a tetanus shot and a course of preventative antibiotics. She rather quickly settled down to be the most easily handleable of all my ferrets, so I'm putting the finger food blender incident down to her being terrified. I'm assuming she was dumped, since nobody ever claimed her. Not that I'm complaining (at least after the bites healed).
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Jun 18, 2025 22:02
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Valentine, my first cat: Shelter cat, did the whole rigamarole, but he was also my first and the very first cat in the shelter to headbutt us in the face. That sealed the deal. He was also an adult cat who'd been in the shelter for weeks so was probably on death row had we not gotten him. This was 2010. Nothing too unusual, tho. Peppercorn "Boopy" Banshee, our 2nd cat. We picked this girl up, as a kitten, from my wife's friend. Apparently our friend was out cultivating isopods (bred them for fun and different color variations) when she heard a mewling on one side of her yard, and then not seconds later, the growl of a coyote. She quickly got between the coyote and kitten, and there's your cat distribution in action. She already has 4-5 cats in her house, so it was too much for her. It didn't take much for my wife to convince me to get the kitten, she was too loving cute. Mr. Creme Brulée Covington, our 3rd cat: A random orange tabby that suddenly appeared in my neighborhood, he would always hang out by the stairs in front of my apartment begging for food or pets. He was VERY friendly to anyone who'd walk by. Well we lived right by the stairs, we would give him snacks and pets, and he eventually knew where we lived, and would wait for us in the morning to open the door or follow us back to our door when we'd be returning home from work or other outings. We'd test the waters, too, by leaving the door open so he could meet the other 2, and he would ALWAYS hiss at them. Well you'd think he'd stop trying after that, but he was determined to get to know us. One day we took a nap after coming back from shopping, front door closed but unlocked, and we hear our door bust open. Well, ol mr Covington knew how to turn latch doorknobs! HE LET HIMSELF IN! We woke up startled, and there he was, doing his one "meow" at us over and over again at the threshold then hissing at the other 2, then looking up at us to meow again. He was a dumb and smart silly boy. Well after that, though it did take some deliberation, we decided to bring him in. Interestingly enough, he was already chipped, when we took him to the vet. We called the number and the person denied having the cat, so we tried to get the chip moved to our name. That process took over a year, mostly from in action, but summer of 23 we called home away, and had to dispute with them via medical records that we indeed had him and he is sick with heart disease. It wasn't until fall when it was finally resolved, the original owner said we were mistaken because they had their orange cat, but I guess our records with his chip number proved otherwise. I wonder what happened, there, did Mr Covington escape, never found, and the original order did a switcheroo and fooled another family member, who knows, but he is ours for sure now Lil Black Beans, So Full o Beans, our 4th cat: Another cat distribution system, another stray that yet appeared in front of our apartments, although suspiciously she appeared after a building burned down in our complex. Anyways I was kinda dickish about the whole thing this time, i could not handle the idea of having a 4th cat! Despite my wife's wishes, we set up Beans with her bestie who lives several states away, who was visiting at the time we found her and she kinda fell in love with her. We decided she should take her in, so about a month later my wife flew up with Beans to transfer the care. Only she didn't gel well with her cats, was about a year and then we decided to take her in after all, so a year later she's with us again, and she could not be happier (both my wife and Beans).
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Jun 26, 2025 22:25
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I adopted my cats from a place on Vancouver Island, but they originally came from California. The agency has a deal where they drive down to Cat House on King a few times a year with a van full of crates. In exchange for taking a load of kittens, they are allowed to leave behind an unadoptable cat. Snowlflake and Ethics are two of those kittens. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3cQCjCQWIc
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Aug 18, 2025 18:19
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My childhood cat Bud was gotten from the shelter after being thrown out of a car. My other childhood cat Bubba was found as part of an abandoned litter in someone's backyard. Those two always got along pretty well. My first adulthood cat Hanako was from some family friends who kept her in their basement because their dogs hated cats. They were her second owners, the first one gave her to them when she moved into a senior facility. When they went on vacation they had my mom take Hanako to her house to look over, and I had to come over in an emergency "extract this hollering cat from under the chair" rescue one day. Next day I came back and convinced this cat I was Good People and got her snuggling in my lap. Convinced her owners that my apartment would be a better place for her and they agreed. She was about 10 at the time, I had her for another 6-7 years after.  Lina is a standard "I have money, give me cat" from a local rescue, though I specifically applied for every one-eyed or three legged cat they had at the place because I wanted a refurbished model. I've had her for 10 years at this point and she's the smartest dang cat I've ever owned.  Trashcat (legal name Lucky) was found in the road gutter by the same people I got Hanako from, they thought he was a trash bag until he moved. The vet originally estimated him to be 6 months old due to his size, but he was drastically underweight and turned out to be about 2 years old instead. The people were gonna again keep him in their basement or garage due to the dogs, so my mom felt bad for him and took him in instead. He was part of my inheritance when she passed, I've owned him for 3 years now but known him for 11. His personality is still a bit trashy (he's a biter) but he doesn't attack me on sight like he used to. 
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Sep 5, 2025 21:57
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C.C. We found him out in the country, emaciated, covered in fleas and ticks, his whiskers burnt off. He was maybe 6 weeks old? We didn't think he would survive. At the time i was volunteering at my local vet. Good thing too. The vets told me how to care for him and threw in some free care too. He was so starved that they were worried about refeeding syndrome killing him. So I got a very strict feeding schedule for him. I was hand feeding him a nibble of food at a time for about a week just to make sure his body didn't become overwhelmed. He became enormously codependent toward me. So much so that i safely took him camping on multiple occasions. He just came with me everywhere i went. If i ever was out of sight he'd yodel in distress until he'd find me again. He even came to college with me. I loved that cat so much. Loved him enough that I rented an apartment and lived off campus so I could have him with me. He only lived 14 years and it's been over 20 years since he died and I still miss the hell out of him. I've had many wonderful pets since him but he's still the one that grabbed my whole heart up with his claws and kept it for himself. He loosens his grip enough for me to love other pets, but he still keeps most of my heart for himself. C.C. for country cat. My mom told me I wasn't allowed to give him a real name until we could be sure he'd live. By the time it was clear he was going to survive C.C. just stuck as his proper name. I now volunteer at an animal shelter and gladly. Animal shelters are often strapped for cash, over crowded and under staffed. But they help so many animals in need. The shelter i volunteer at once gave an injured kitten 3 surgeries before he was well enough to adopt out. And that's just the 1 I know about during my 3 years of volunteering with them. Most of the staff there also volunteer as foster families for animals that are too old for us to find homes for. Consider volunteering. I've never had such a heart warming volunteer experience as volunteering at the animal shelter. I adore the staff and the other volunteers and it feels good to help the critters.
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Sep 7, 2025 04:37
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| # ? Nov 17, 2025 00:06 |
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Ginger: We adopted Ginger (our third cat, she is a big dilute calico) from our local shelter, but she was technically in foster care at the time. She was around five when we adopted her and her name used to be Angel - as for how she came to the shelter, she was apparently bitten by another animal while outside (likely near her butt, as she is still a bit sensitive about that area) and her owner brought her into the shelter for low-cost medical care. When her owner was told that she would need to keep Ginger inside for six months for bite quarantine (or was told the cost of the treatment), she asked to have Ginger euthanized. Seeing a perfectly good cat, the shelter offered to let her surrender Ginger in exchange for treatment, which her previous owner accepted. Being a middle-aged cat and needing bite quarantine, Ginger then stayed with a foster for roughly about five months before we adopted her. My spouse and I had just lost our first cat together (Cocoa) and our second cat (BB, who I will describe below) was looking all throughout the house for her friend and definitely wanted feline companionship. We fell in love with Ginger pretty quickly, as she shared just enough of Cocoa's personality to feel instantly familiar, but had her own spiciness/attitude that she wasn't afraid to express. We tried calling her Angel. She never responded. We then thought to call her Ginger because she was equally sweet and spicy. She responded as if that had been her name her entire life. BB: BB (our second cat, she is a smaller dilute tuxedo tortoisehell calico) was also a shelter pet, but she was staying in the shelter itself in a cat condo as opposed to being with a foster. She's one of the younger cats that we adopted (she was around 1.5 years old when we adopted her), but she definitely has the saddest story. BB came to the shelter from a severe cat-hoarding situation and they rescued her just in the nick of time. She was a little over six months old when they took her in, was pregnant with five kittens, had a severe upper respiratory infection with conjunctivitis, and weighed all of about five, maybe five and a half pounds. Despite 'living' in a house and nominally being taken care of by humans, she was more or less feral to boot. They didn't tell us what they did about her pregnancy, but I imagine they aborted her fetuses (she was in no condition to actually have healthy kittens, let alone be able to give birth to them successfully) and placed her in quarantine so they could begin treating all of the issues that she had. Unfortunately, they were not able to save one of her eyes so they did enucleate the bad eye (our vet insists they could have saved it if they had been able to give her the proper care, which we imagine is extremely difficult in a shelter environment considering how resource-constrained they are). After a six-month quarantine post-enucleation, they put BB in the general population. The thing was, she was still semi-feral since she had very limited exposure to people even during her quarantine so they shelter had to give her extra attention to try and get her up to speed. They probably put her up for adoption because they didn't want her anywhere near her old home, and despite being semi-feral she still did have some cute social instincts that probably made them feel confident in being able to socialize her. I saw her on the website, and I immediately fell in love with her - she is a very cute cat! As it turns out, my former employer was about to do a day of service and one of their options was to help out the local shelter where she was staying. However, up until this point my spouse and I only had a single cat and she was still on the fence about a second cat. So I hatched a plan - I would use the day of service as an opportunity to scout BB out and get to know her, then I would convince my spouse to come with me to the shelter just to check out BB. Naturally I was still quite smitten with her after meeting her during the day of service, so I brought my wife to the shelter. She was still really on the fence about BB, but then they let us spend time alone with her in a separate room outside of her cat condo. That's when BB's cute instincts turned on - while she was generally nice to us, at one point she decided to dash under my spouse's skirt for security and hide there. It was very cute, and it was what helped convince my wife that she was a cat worth keeping. Introducing her to our other cat was fairly uneventful, and it was very clear that despite keeping her distance (BB is very secretive about expressing her affections to people/animals), BB appreciated having a feline companion (even if our other cat, Cocoa, was cool to her). Despite having only one eye, BB is by far and away the best jumper in the entire house. She is both precise and accurate with her jumps, never over-jumping and only very, very rarely under-jumping. I believe she stretches herself out and uses her body to measure the height of objects, and once she gets a good feel for the height she can consistently jump on it every time. Eve: Eve is our fourth cat (a black and white tuxedo), and her story is simple. She came from the alley behind our house (specifically one of our neighbors at the end of the alley). The house she came from is unfortunately one where the owners do not believe in fixing their cats, and every year they turn out at least one of their kittens that's grown into a cat out onto the streets if they weren't able to place it with a family. Eve, obviously, was one such cat. Until we took her in, we saw her in the alleys at least twice and on one of those occasions we saw her with two kittens. She had earned a reputation around the neighborhood as being a very friendly cat - one time, she strode into our next-door neighbor's house like she owned the place and took in all of the love and pets that she got. They did not keep her (fortunately for us, but unfortunately for them) once they found out that she technically belonged to another house on the street. At any rate, when both my spouse and I were kids we had a tuxedo cat in our houses that were much beloved. I had felt bad that the cat I grew up with - Winky - was now relegated to living in my mom and stepdad's boiler room where she was safe from the dogs, but starved for attention (and almost certainly good sunlight). We hadn't yet established ourselves well-enough as adults to be able to take her out of that situation, and by the time we were established Winky was quite elderly. I felt a lot of regret over not taking her in and giving her a few decent months/year of sunlight and no dogs. My spouse's tuxedo cat was beloved and well-cared for, but her parents seemed to start regarding the cat as background noise and didn't really interact with her beyond caring for her (although the cat, Midnight, did live to be 20). She'd also felt some regrets over not being able to give her more attention and love, so we jokingly told ourselves if we ever had a third cat, it would be a tuxedo cat. Eve must've heard me say that, somewhere... After we had seen her and interacted with her for the second time that summer, I told my spouse that if I saw the cat a third time I would take her right to the local shelter and help get her a home. After saying that though, we didn't see her around again for a few months. One day - a rainy Christmas Eve in 2020, the first year of the pandemic - my spouse was working in the kitchen and she heard a loud noise coming from the side of the house. She looked over at the window, and spread eagle on our window clinging to the mosquito netting like one of those windshield Garfields was Eve. My wife opened the side door, picked her up and brought her into the house (carrying her down to the basement where she would be separated from Ginger and BB, our two other cats). And then she never left! True to my promise though, I did take Eve to the local shelter that evening. But because we knew which house she came from, when the shelter questioned us they decided that since she wasn't technically a stray (I admitted to knowing which house she came from, but insisted that the owners had essentially turned her out onto the streets), they couldn't take her in and put her up for adoption. She was not microchipped though, so that did leave the window open for an informal adoption. So we decided to give her a home instead, and holy hell that was a process. We named her Eve because she came into our lives on Christmas Eve. We learned a lot about alley cats in those first two weeks. One, despite her friendliness and her overall familiarity and comfort with being in a home (getting her to use a litterbox was not a challenge), she was not fixed. So once she felt like she had food and shelter secured, she wanted to go back out onto those streets for... reasons. Luckily, our longtime vet cut us a discount on getting her fixed (and helped us get an appointment shortly after the new year) because we were doing a decent thing taking her off the streets. Second, we found out that her former family only had one bowl outside on the porch for feeding the cats they turned out onto the streets. There is also a small colony of fixed strays living in the area (in addition to roaming, unfixed cats), so naturally this means that there is competition over this free food source. As a result, Eve was extremely food-insecure (for the first six months after taking her in, we had to barricade ourselves in the kitchen when we were feeding the cats or else she would bust through and try to eat ALL the food) and had a burning hatred for other cats instilled in her (likely as a result of having to fight other cats for food nearly every single day). The former is easy to solve - time and consistency in feeding helped her to eventually feel food secure. The latter is a lot trickier, especially when at that moment BB and Ginger were considered other cats and thus deserving of her rage. So one trip to urgent care later (I foolishly tried to introduce Eve to the other cats after we did the very careful process of trying to introduce them, only to realize that it was going to end in failure as Eve became very aggressive and I decided to hold her back from going after BB - Eve instinctively redirected a full-force bite onto my hand), we took Eve to an animal behaviorist. After a lot of time, medication, and money - we finally got Eve to recognize the other cats as family and thus not deserving of her hatred! God forbid she smells or sees any other cat in the neighborhood outside, though - she instantly turns on the fury of a 1,000 undying suns and points it in their general direction. Eve is very lucky that she is extremely cute and incredibly charming towards people, though. Did she turn out to be a huge pain in the rear end? Absolutely. But she is also easily one of the most affectionate, loving cats I've ever had in my life.
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Oct 8, 2025 20:19
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