Meet “Hope”

*****UPDATE: Thank you everyone who was willing to open their home to beautiful Hope. I think we’ve been lucky enough to find her purrfect match with Bertha Brock. We are going to take Hope to her new home in Bakersfield first thing next week. Hope will be happiest in a home without other cats – and with someone who wants to sleep with her every night – Bertha is going to be her best friend.

Meet “Hope”.  Hope has been let down by her previous elderly owner’s relative and the San Diego Humane Society. So we’ve stepped in to find some hope for the sweet, sweet girl. She is located in San Diego, California, but we would be happy to fly her to just about anywhere in the United States at no cost to the adopter.

She is extremely sweet (she won’t eat if I’m not in the room petting her) but hasn’t proven to be super excited about other cats yet. Dogs unknown but we can do some more testing.

Like most of our adult cats that we’ve found FurrEver homes for, Hope’s story is a little sad. But hopefully, she like so many of our other special adult kitties can find someone who will give her the love she deserves – and desperately craves.

Now Hope’s story is going to become a little more upsetting and controversial… we apologize to all of the good people who volunteer at the Humane Society because they love animals, but the bureaucracy of the SD Humane Society failed Hope, and it is now our privately funded rescue’s job to try to find her a happy ending.

We were called to pick Hope up at the Oceanside Humane Society late on a Friday afternoon by a friend of a friend who had received our information. Hope had been found twice in one week by different members of a neighborhood in Carlsbad – and she was so friendly they just knew she had to be someone’s beloved cat. Both neighbors (not knowing that the other had already tried) took her to a vet to see if she was microchipped (she wasn’t). The first neighbor let her back outside assuming she would find her way home – but he put up posters asking if someone was missing a cat. When “Hope” walked into the second neighbor’s yard and sat down and begged for love – that neighbor too took her to find a chip. Between the posters and the neighborhood being tight-knit, they found each other and then found her “owner”.

It was a new owner – a relative or son of an elderly person who had passed away or was no longer able to care for their beloved cat. The relative didn’t like cats, so he just opened the front door and said “adios”.

The second neighbor kept her for a week – checked with her vet to see if she had been spayed (she had NOT been spayed). It was recommended that she was so friendly the best course of action would be to take her to the San Diego Humane Society.

We’ve all heard the stories circulating about how the Humane Society through their TNR program has been spaying and neutering perfectly adoptable cats and putting them back out on the street (https://www.kpbs.org/news/2021/may/19/san-diego-humane-society-releasing-more-stray-cats/). We personally didn’t believe the stories until we picked Hope up after she had been spayed and had the top of her ear cut-off to forever mark her as a “feral” cat (or as the SD Humane Society likes to say now for PC reasons “community cat”).

Even though the young woman who gave her to me immediately stated: “Hope is exceptionally sweet!” …The Humane Society’s plan was for me to just to release her back out on the street.

Freshly spayed and with the top of her ear missing – disfiguring/marking her as “not friendly”, but at least not reproducing.

When I asked the young woman why the Humane Society who receives tons of monetary charity donations wouldn’t have kept her and re-homed her as she deserves … she said that answer was above her pay grade.

When I probed, she told me if Hope had been wearing a collar or microchipped and the owner didn’t respond or the number was old – then the Humane Society would have had to keep her and adopt her out.

At Joanne’s Furry Friends, we’ve used the TNR at the Humane Society a handful of times. The outcome for those VERY feral cats to be released back to their neighborhood is the right choice. (Side note however: every time we’ve worked with the Humane Society they’ve had one ridiculous bureaucratic tsk tsk to slap our hands with each time).  But what they do for actual ferals to control the cat population is in the long run helpful.

But next time the Humane Society calls and asks you for a donation, please tell them you can’t because you don’t know that money is actually being used for the right reasons. Site this story and ask why they are releasing friendly cats back on the streets. If we all speak up, things might change. Small rescues can’t continue to carry the Humane Society’s weight.

They want to keep their status as a no-kill shelter and they are currently overrun with cats and kittens because they suspended their Spay and Neuter Program  during COVID. All though none of the rest of use rescues had that luxury. So all of our other much less funded rescue programs did the work for them as best they could and at a high financial cost. Our Vet Hospital worked double time day and night trying to help us spay and neuter cats and kittens.

Hope is rumored to be around 5 years old. She has been spayed, the tip of her cut off, she’s had her FVRCP vaccine and she is up on flea meds.

All adoption fees will be waived and we are willing to arrange transport to the right home in US at no cost to the adopter.