Resale Stores & Cat Shelters Have More In Common Than You'd Think

In preparing for our cross-country move, I’ve spent the last month evaluating our belongings -- sifting through 16 years of furniture and whatnots –deciding what to move and what to leave behind. Living in a large house, it was always easier to find a “place” for an obsolete desk or bookcase rather than removing it. Add to the mix -- the many antiques we kept from both the specialty retail stores we closed in 1997, and the country farmhouse we used as a cat retirement shelter until 2003 -- and it’s easy to see why unloading this house was daunting.

Nevertheless, we’ve succeeded. So our effort and planning was worth it. We first chose the furnishings to move and then the consignable antiques to sell. Once they were identified and set aside, our local second-hand store came out to select items for resale. After that, the Salvation Army came in and took most of the rest --so fortunately very little was trashed.

Still, this process was very humbling. Items you think are “treasures” are scrutinized for scratches, style and wear -- and, although they mean a lot to you – to the dealer they’re often damaged goods – difficult to sell and not worth their time to try. It really doesn’t matter who manufactured them or how much they cost. Their goal is to take only those items they think will fly out of the store. Dealers can’t be bothered with things that need a little mending or will take a long time to sell – it ties up valuable store space that could hold easier-to -move merchandise. To be profitable, they need a steady turnover, and so even when they do take items for sale --if they get damaged or shopworn – or don’t sell within a few months -- they’re trashed.

Once I understood this, I made another pass through the furnishings and kept a few more items we wouldn’t have moved otherwise – mostly special pieces of furniture with sentimental value. We had room for these things in our old house, and we’ll find room for them in our new house too. Or, at least, hold onto them until we find someone who’ll appreciate and care for them as we did.

All the while, the parallels between finding good dealers to sell our used furniture, and finding good shelters to take pet cats, kept haunting me. How many times had someone called us – thinking we were a shelter or rescue – and asked us to take their cat? They were moving or having a baby or the cat had stopped using a litter box – for whatever reason they didn’t want the cat any more. But, they didn’t want the cat to die either. They wanted the cat to go to a good shelter that would provide care and placement in a good home. They would go on and on about how nice the cat was and how well the cat got along with their children. Often they would proudly add the cat was already spayed or neutered and current on vaccinations. Sometimes they would offer to throw in a donation. As if any of that would make the cat more appealing to a shelter.

Cat shelters, like resale stores, focus on high turnover. That translates into very young and very friendly cats and kittens that are well socialized and healthy. Like resale stores, shelters base their admission on adoptability – they don’t want to tie up a cage with an adult cat but prefer to use the shelter space for very young cats and kittens that will fly out the door into new homes. And if the cat gets ill or takes too long to adopt out, they frequently euthanize them rather than treating them or housing them for an extended time.

What can you do if you have an adult cat you can’t or won’t keep but don’t want to see them killed? Not much. Your best strategy would be to work through the problem or at least home-foster your cats until you find a person to adopt directly from you. As sweet and loving as they are to you, to a shelter they will be slow to adopt and their cage space can be better used to place the many kittens born each year. So, until communities refocus their cat efforts from kitten adoptions to pro-active cat (and kitten) spay/neuter, orphaned adult cats will find little available shelter space for their slower-to-adopt needs.

Still, worrying about how to relinquish a pet cat is a flawed problem anyway. Doesn’t it seem reasonable that if we bring a cat into our home to live as a family member, that we make a similar commitment to them – to keep and care for them for life? If we make that commitment, then sheltering them later on will never be an issue.