Have you ever had to give up one of your kitties?

I have never had to rehome, but when I moved from Toronto (my Moms house) to NB I couldn’t bring my Doggy due to severe arthritis and age (she stayed with my Mom). It killed me. I remember saying goodbye to my family and crying, when it came to say goodbye to Silver (my German Shepherd) I was inconsolable, I had to run to the bathroom and calm down for 20min before we could leave. If I acted that way for my situation, I can’t even imagine if I had to actually rehome one of my furbabies.

When I volunteered at the SPCA on a regular basis (2-5 days a week) I would always see stupid reasons for people giving up the animals. Sometimes I would just get so mad at how stupid the reasons were. I think it was one of the reasons I stopped volunteering so much, my heart couldn’t take it.

I would live of beans on toast or cereal to make sure my 3 stayed with me.

I bonded with them on contact so theres no way i'd give them up for anything

I hear what you are saying. When i see people have given up their animals due to "financial reasons" I can't help but wonder if they still have cable on in their house? It makes me furious. But than I also think, "ok, maybe they are in REALLY bad straits and REALLY are heartbroken to have to give the animals up." But I know unfortunately it's probably not the case. It especially floors me when it is a hard to adopt animal, like an older or infirm animal that they have had all their lives. I really don't get that.

I actually made a sort of kitty will just in case something happens to me and my sister (who said she would take them) is unable to keep them for whatever circumstances she finds herself in. But I fully trust she will take them as she was my roomate when we got them all and she absolutely adores them and couldn't bare to think about who would have them if not us. Anyway, it is a detailed account of who they are and what they like and their little annoying habits so people KNOW who they are getting and won't abandon them for finding out they have an issue they dont want to deal with. I want people to KNOW that these cats were ADORED and deserve the same sort of home again. You all here give me faith that they would find a loving home again.

I had to rehome one of my kitties. I had two cats, neutered male Utu and a whole male Kuura, when I decided to get a third. I got another whole male (for breeding purpose) which was same age as my other cats, and I was prepared for the situation that the males might not get along and agreed with my best friend that she can take the other one if needed.

Well, the introduction went fine and the cats seemed to get along. The unneutered males actually had somekind of romance going on and they liked each other. But it was the neutered male that decided that he will not tolerate this newcomer and started to hiss and growl at him. I had never heard him do that before and thought it will get better when they get used to each others.. I was wrong. Utu started attacking the new kitty, and it got worse over time.
Utu is THE cat of my life. He is my everything and there is nothing I love more than him, so the new cat was the one moving in with my friend. Most of the people who plan on breeding (or are doing it) would propably have rehomed the neutered one, but I couldn't do that.
I felt horrible, quilty and a bad cat owner.

When I went to see the new kitty, I noticed that he was a lot happier living as an only cat. He was more relaxed and not so shy anymore. Before I bought him he was living in a smallish room with lots of other males and was very shy (and later I found out that the breeder I bought him from is a liar and I don't want to be in any touch with her. I'm glad that she was only the owner of the cat and not his breeder).
He also quit marking his territory. He did it quite a lot when he lived with me (propably trying to impress my other male who he had romance with), but not even once at my friend's place. It cleared my conscience to see that it was the right decision to let him live with my friend, he was like a different cat! I still miss him a lot, he was so sweet and handsome boy. But I know he's in good hands. I'm still his official owner and pay for his breeding related medical expences and when he gets neutered, my friend will get the ownership of the cat so I guess everyone wins here.

I don't know how bad of a situation people have to be in to rehome their pets. I have an "emergency plan" in case of job loss/homelessness. Buy a camper shell for my truck and live in there. I'm not even joking. I can eat on a few dollars a day.

There are so many ways I can save $15/month to be able to feed my cat. I get angry at the craigslisters with the real lame excuses for giving up their pets.

My situation was a bit different but I worked at some stables and lived in in a mobile home/trailer for 2 and a half years. Already resident in there was the most gorgeous cat called Toby.

He was my little buddy and would come round to the yard to get me at 5pm when I finished work

Long story short, due to a breakdown between myself and my 2 bosses I left rather suddenly.

It broke my heart to leave him there because he would be alone again with no cuddles He was an outdoors cat used to roaming around the feilds and I`d moved to a crappy top floor flat in town and they wouldn`t have let me have him anyway

I went back after 2 weeks to pick up my things which they had dumped in a rat infested barn( Thats another story! ) and Toby came racing down the drive and did his usual race round to the door before me. It really broke my heart to leave him.

I`ll have to dig his photos out...

There were a few times I thought it would be best to rehome Maisie because of the problem between her and Kitty but I couldn`t go through with it.

Sooty wont be going anywere either.

I rescued all of mine from the streets with the express intention of rehoming them once they were sterilized and healthy. One went to a wonderful home, I couldn't have asked for a better one, another I had to go get back after a month, and he had been abused and neglected. His entire personality had changed, and he seemed to have lost iterest in life. He was constantly sick and six months later I had to have him PTS. That experience shook me to the core, and I got so picky about who they went to that none have left since.

I had to rehome a stray kitten my mil and I found. DH and I already had several cats. My mil and I went out to dinner at a local steakhouse. I had decided to take my scraps home to my dog. After we drove out of the parking lot, we saw this tiny black kitten standing right next to the busy four lane, crying. When the kitten saw us, it ran immediately under the door of this concrete building next to the road with a sign that read "High Voltage" on the door. I put pieces of steak out and the kitten was so hungry he stuck his little head out to eat. Then mil grabbed him by the neck! He was captured. I took him home, we had him vetted (he had a broken leg, but the break was too old to fix) and then DH went about finding him a new home. I wanted to keep him, but it just wasn't possible at the time. A man that did yard work around our house took him home to his family. They named him Tar Baby. The man even brought him back to visit me after he became a big cat. I still wish I could have kept him...

I've had several times I found a stray cat/kitten and I took them in to "foster" them and find a home for them instead of keeping them (couldn't keep them)... I've also had a few feral kittens I took in and bottlefed and then found homes for, and it is REALLY hard to give up a kitten you have bottlefed! For example the summer before I started high school a friend of mine brought me 3 feral kittens, a neighbor had found them under her garage and brought them to her, and she brought them to me because I was the resident "animal expert." They were about 2-3 weeks old, and they all had eye and ear infections and tons of fleas. My friend came over every day to help me with feeding and medicating them all, of course at night I was the one who had to get up and feed them... I wanted to keep my favorite Nala who was a lynx point but my mom wouldn't let me keep her. We had a cat at the time who hated other cats so it made sense but I really wanted to keep her. I ended up finding homes for them and Nala went to a friend/neighbor of mine whose dog I walked and who I petsat for so I got to see her a lot at least. I also found several other stray kittens/cats or feral kittens and my mom let me foster them to find them a home but would not let me keep them.

I did rehome a dog once, I had adopted him from a rescue on a trial basis (I was VERY unsure about whether I wanted to adopt him, but the shelter convinced me to take him home as a temporary foster). He turned out to have a very high prey drive and wanted nothing more than to chase/catch my cats. The trial/foster period was supposed to be a week but I asked the shelter if I could foster him longer so I could see if I could work with him to get him better with the cats, but I was not able to remove that intense interest he had in the cats. I ended up fostering him for a while and taking him to the shelter's adoption events to try to find him a home but then he started becoming reactive towards other dogs we would see on walks and at the events (no one wants to adopt a dog who is going nuts when they see other dogs!) so we decided it would be better for him to go back to the daycare/boarding kennel where the rescue houses their dogs, so that he could play in the daycare during the day and hopefully that would help with his issues. It did and he found a new home.

Yes I had to give up a kitten i fell in love with . It is a bit of a different circumstance becuase he wasnt our cat to begin with. One day a neighbor caught a kitten in their yard and they thought it was ours so they brought it over. It wasnt but it looked lost, skinny and scared so we took him in. We named him soccer, he had white socks adn was gray, so cute!! Well we took him to every house on our block adn no one owned him. Called the SPCA to see if anyone reported a missing kitten, nothing. Sooo after like 3 weeks we decided to just keep him, until one day we saw a missing kitten sign up by our street and it described soccer. So my parents forced me to take him to them and sure enough he was theirs, he was locked up in the garage (mind you its summer over 100 degrees out) and he got out. From what I could tell they really didnt care about the cat, with the way they treated him, but we had to give him up. They moved shortly after and i never saw soccer again . I was only like 9-10 years old, but i wish i would have stood up for the kitten and just kept him! I miss him still 10 years later and wonder if he is still alive.

I would never ever give up one of my animals for any reason unless it was for their benefit and it was a good home. Its sad that i will take care of my horses, dog adn cats before i take care of myself adn i spend all my money on them and never myself!! I guess its love!

Yes there has been a situation where I had to give up my cats, once when I was younger and we owned over 13 cats..sometimes it's just to much, responsibility is one of those massive things that can cause complications. Taking care of so many cats is VERY hard,especially once you've become attached to them and even have names..it can be hard.

so yes I have had to give up cats before..and it's hard, what matters is not being controlled or overpowered by the responsibility or having to many cats

Nope - no way, no how. I've spent fortunes in vet bills, dealt with spraying & out & out cat aggression (resulting in stitches in another kitty many times).

We just had a kitty surrendered after 6 years "we just don't want him". That's it.

I have rehomed rescues before, having saved them with no intent of keeping them.
Awhile back things got so bad financially that I thought we were going to be homeless, and I was going to have to take them to a friend down in SC that works in a cat sanctuary. I was devastated. We managed to keep our house, cut back everything that was not necessary, cable, internet, cell phones, parked our second car, sold some stuff and kept our little family together. Thank God!

I have rehomed rescues over the years. But I rehomed a kitten that my family and I planned on keeping. When I was 15 my mom took in a pregnant stray she found at work. We cared for her and four kittens. We decided to keep one kitten which was a male and rehome the others. A week after the mother and three other kittens were rehomed. We rescued an older male kitten who was around five months old and been neutered.

We searched for owners but after a few weeks we gave up and decided to keep the kitten. He was affectionate towards people and like sleeping with me at night and would climb on my lap if was on the computer or watching tv. But he couldn't not get along with the younger kitten and our two older cats. He was hostile towards them. We did our best to integrate them all but the male kitten wouldn't change. After he bit one of the older cats on the tail my parents and I made the hard decision to rehome him. For about three weeks we kept him isolated in a guest room and tried to find homes for him. But a lot of friends and relatives had other pets. One of my friends told me that her dad had lost his cat to cancer a year before. Her dad lived four hours away and he agreed to take the kitten. He told us he was the type of person who only liked having one pet. He came and picked up the kitten two weeks after agreeing to adopt him. My friend said he did well with her dad. I lost contact with this friend after high school because she joined the military. I do hope the cat whose name was Petey is alive and happy somewhere. He would be 8.

I have known several people who have rehomed for behavioral purposes. Sometimes rehome because other things in their lives would prevent for caring for a pet. I had a coworker three years ago whose teenage son became a quadriplegic after car accident. She had two cats and a dog which she decided to rehome because her son would eventually come from rehab and the house and everything would be changed. The two cats were rehomed with her sister and the dog stayed with a cousin of hers. The dog died five months after being rehomed.

It's hard to sometimes judge people for rehoming pets.

I gave up my cats years ago because I was married to an abusive turd that hated them.
So, for their own saftey I got them out of there.
It was a year later that I was able to ferret away enough money to get me out of there.

I had to give up Rose, Cammy's friend. She got a URI and I didn't want my other outside kitties to get sick. It was too late though, they all got URIs and so did Cammy. It's not easy giving antibiotics to seven cats. I also had to give up Maggie, but that was a good thing. She went to a new indoor home. Still, they were both so hard. I cried all the way to the humane society and back with Rose.

I recently actually had to rehome one of my cats, Sidney. I miss her terribly, she was such a "little mommy" to me lol (she would bring me things, like toys, constantly. It's like she thought it was her job ). However, the home that I had was not conducive to her wellbeing. I believe that she was over-stimulated by having 3 other cats in the house along with her. I tried for a very long time to help her, but I just couldn't provide her with the type of home she needed (this is one of those things that you have no way of knowing when you adopt a cat unfortunately). She needed a very active home, with kids that could play with her and constantly entertain her, with only one other cat for companionship. And that's what I found for her- I know for a fact that where she is now, she is constantly "kept on her toes" lol. And she loves it. In my house, she just got so overwhelmed with all the other cats (she has a very STRONG mothering instinct, don't know why exactly ). And when she got overwhelmed, she would seem to act out. Not to get back at me or anything, but she didn't know what to do with herself. She has destroyed my recliner and my couch, leaving me with nothing but pulled out stuffing and rags over a frame pretty much. She'd also knock EVERYTHING off of everywhere- if I had a box of fruit snacks sitting on the counter, she'd destroy the box and rip up all the bags. I tried training her not to and working with her, but it was useless because she was I think unhappy deep down. So, that's when I decided to find her a new home. She is still one of my babies though and I miss her something fierce . But, I had to do what was best for her, not me. I have a deal with the family that if something happens, whatever it may be no questions asked, I would be more than happy to take her back.

Man, talking about Sidney just makes me kinda sad... it sucks to have to give up something that you cherish so dearly!

Twenty five years ago we had a lovable male who had aggression problems - Cujo - and we gave him to the vet, who loved him. (We did, too, but he fought the other 2 cats).

We drove him to the vet in an enclosed carrier, dropped him off sadly, and the vet drove him home in the same type of carrier. Total trip about 10 miles.

One month later he showed up on our doorstep. The vet swore he hadn't dropped him off; Cujo wanted to be with us that bad!

Needless to say, we kept him with us after that.

Thankfully, no. I love my kitties (even if my adult cat is a crab!), and I think I might die if I had to give one of them up.

I hear you Nekochan, it's really hard to give up a bottle kitten. Especially the first time. I've been a foster home for 3 bottle kittens from the time they were 2 weeks old to the moment they were 17 weeks old. It's been a year and I still think about them all the time. I'm glad I got to choose their new family and I am sure they are happy where they are now.

Marilou

We gave up our beloved 4 soon after our daughter was born because we didn't want to stress the cats out or neglect them from the attention and care they deserved. We also didn't want to stress the newborn baby.

I have, once, but not because I wanted to. I was 13, almost 14, and my grandmother refused to keep my cat (that I had for nearly 4 years) because the cat did NOT like her. It was the most heart breaking thing. I've had cats run away (2) and 1 that had to be PTS, but I'd never give up one if I could help it.

Never ever. I would euthanize before I would "rehome" any of my cats. There is no one who would provide them with the level of specialized care they get with me. Tolly and Mazy would starve to death within a week without me. I have no doubt about it.

As for advertising a beloved pet on craigslist...people are just too stupid for words. That's where the sickos go, to find cats to torture and do unspeakable things to. They look for cats advertised to "free to good home".

I could never live with myself if I took my home away from one of my cats, spending the rest of my life wondering if they were being well treated and feeling sick that they wondered what happened to their mother. I've seen the way they grieve when they lose a cat companion, I can't even imagine what they would go through to lose their home, me and other cat companions all at once.

The only way, the ONLY way to guarantee that they will not end up on the streets, abused or moldering in a shelter is to keep them with me. And when I die, they will be coming with me. It's already arranged.

<edit> rescue/foster care is a different thing altogether. I am not cut out for that kind of work, but I honor those of you who do it.

I never have and I'd like to say that I never would. My kitties are a huge part of my family and I love them more than I love most people.

That said, I've never faced homelessness or life threatening illness and I could see cases where I'd have to rehome temporarily, though they would go to family and no one else.

I stopped going to Craigslist because it is too sad and frustrating.

I would never rehome Annie. I've only had her for a good two weeks now, but I've worked at a shelter for the past 2 years and know that I would never be able to give one of my animals up. When we took her, we promised her a home for life.

Luckily, right now she is my only cat, however I do have to plan ahead for her brother. My parents are older and I know that my father gets sick or something happens at my parents' house, Mosby will become mine. I have to be planning as though I have one more cat than I actually have, because I have to save Mosby a place with me.

You're a great person to keep all four after something like that!