Hopefully, tomorrow will be the day . . .

. . . we bring home our new cat from the shelter.

I'm taking the whole family (wife and 3 boys) to pick out a male, grown cat that is somewhat warm and friendly to us at the shelter and looks like a good fit for our family.

From what I'm hearing it's best to place him in an enclosed room with a door (for a few days?) where he has food, water and a litter box to get accustomed to his new situation. From there we'll open the door and let him wander around.

The trick is going to get my kids (ages 16, 12, 6) to leave the new cat alone so it becomes accustomed to us and its new home.

Any other advice?

Just be aware - some shelters do not do same day adoptions. Here we have people fill out an adoption application & it takes us a few days to process it.

I suggest you ask/check it out with this shelter before getting the family (especially the kids) hope up that you're bringing home a kitty tomorrow.

Everytime we adopted a pet from the we had to wait a few days.
My sister adopted from Petsmart and she got to take Legolas home the same day.

I wouldn't just be looking at males, look at the personality of each cat not the sex.

Our shelter does same day adoptions. I adopted through Petsmart, but nonetheless it was still the shelters process. I also visited the shelter on Saturday and they were doing same day adoptions with dogs as well.

Leslie

Originally Posted by missymotus

I wouldn't just be looking at males, look at the personality of each cat not the sex.

Click to expand...

I agree... I said this somewhere else in one of these threads.... to GENERALIZE - males tend to be more even-tempered. But there are lots of sweet, playful girl kitties, too! Go with gut and personality. Maybe let the son who this cat is really for take the lead.

And good luck! You may not find your kitty soul-mate on the first try.

I agree the nicest cat I ever had is my Coco and she is a girl.
I would see what cat comes to you and is friendly.
My Meeko us very nice also and she is a girl.

I'm not sure what area your in (I'm from UT to) but when I got Mai Sai from the shelter it was a same day adoption. In fact I really lucked out and got the shelter to stay open past their closing time to bring back the cash (they didn't take checks, or cards). This might be because he was 5 months old and not old enough to be fixed. I think the rule I run across the most is if they have been fixed already you can take them home the same day, or if they are to young to be fixed. But that was in southern Utah...

The shelter I adopted Mackerel from seems fairly lax now... we just went in and picked out a kitten. We didn't have to go through any interviews or anything, and we took her home as soon as we'd done the paperwork. We took the time to make sure that Mack was a good fit for us, and that she was happy and healthy, but the shelter... didn't. Hmn.