Good animal rescues and bad animal rescues

I wouldn't call being confined to a cage a life. If the person you're referring to is doing that, he or she is a hoarder and needs help. If they won't accept help, the animals need to be helped.

We have a situation here with a hoarder. It is just so sad. She's spayed and neutered but used other people's names to take advantage of low-cost state progams (basically fraud).

She has way to many animals and is literally begging places for food. She had to be reported. Turns out she'd done the same thing (only animals died) in the next county over and had moved here to start over again.

Bottom line, hoarders cannot take proper care of the animals in their charge.

Hoarders and rescues are two very different things, and I know very few rescues that house more than a few cats in their own home (most have a network of fosters) - the ones that do basically are hoarders, but the ones in homes, it is extremely rare to see caged.

I would class all the rescues/shelters in my city as good rescues but they are all very different

The city owned shelter is not no-kill but they will always try to place with the other shelters. They do have cages, and all animals get some time out of their cage each day. They have videos on their website of them out playing. I know that they use the vets in the city, but am not sure how often they see a vet - they do have a vet tech on staff. Animals get a free vet visit with any vet in the city on adoption (the adopter can choose the vet and take them themselves)

The private (but large) shelter, all animals spend 5 days at the vet before ever going into the shelter building, they are held for advertising and then speutered / vaccinated etc and brought over to the shelter. There a vet visits each week and checks over every animal, and anything that happens in between, the animal is sent to one of the vets in the city (usually the one where it was held when it came in). They are also caged but get time out each day.

The other rescue is a foster network, they have limited funds so animals are seen by a vet when they come in and then only if they get sick, but they do not have any long termers really (at least the people I know that foster for them, the longest they have had cats is 3 months before it was adopted). Those animals have free run (some people keep them in separate rooms, some integrate them with their pets) and are caged only when at Petsmart adoption days.

With all three, the animals do get human interaction, animal control probably less so as they do not have the volunteers the private shelter has and are not in home like the foster group.

I have never seen a cat at any of them who looked like it should have been seen by a vet and wasn't, all three have had sick animals on the premises but were on medication etc

The private shelter has had some long-termers, I can think of a few that were there over a year, those tend to become volunteer faves and get a lot of attention, the bigger cages but they do get adopted - its just a matter of finding the right home for them. Having spent a lot of time in shelters, I don't see a good one as being worse than euthanasia, but I have seen some disgusting bad ones that I would euthanise a stray rather than bring it to them

We regularly transfer mothers and small kittens to rescues. One in particular north of Dallas has takes three litters of mom and kittens and three groups of young orphans. They have a network of fosters. And you have to be a VERY dedicated foster to work with orphans.

Where are you in South Florida and someone may be able to help you, there are few national ones (the majority are SPCAs but each is run independently and differently) and I don't know of any national foster groups except purebred ones

If the shelter takes them, it's most likely that they'll all be put into a cage. Hopefully they can go to a foster home, but there's never usually enough...if you know any cat lovers, you could ask someone to foster the litter if it's not possible for you to take them in

You can go to petfinder.org and on the left put in your zip code searching for cats.... it will bring up a list of cats, who are placed on there by shelters and rescue groups. You can just go down the list and click on contact info and contact as many rescues as you can about your situation.

http://www.thecatnetwork.org/
This is a foster based rescue in your area, I don't know of it, but they test for Felv and FIV which is more than many do - and they don't necessarily euthanise for it, they have special needs cats on their list - I would start with them.
But it is getting to be the busier time for shelters with more kittens being born so I would ask ASAP before they all get full. They may not be able to help, but will probably know which rescues to avoid

My cut line between hoarders and rescues (or for that matter people who just have a lot of cats) is whether the animals "live long and prosper." Are they fed well, vetted when they need it, and is the population controlled (i.e. adopt/take in strays vs. allow them to breed like mad) and proportionate to the space? If so, that's not hoarding; if hoarders took that kind of care of their animals, they wouldn't be a problem. On the other hand, if the animals are generally sickly (I don't mean medical issues because they lived long enough to be senior cats, or low percentages that could happen to anyone, or that being the kind of cat they take in; I mean things like unchecked URI epidemics or undernourishment or cats that are covered in ringworm) or "exponential cats" or dying and getting stacked up behind the couch, that's hoarding.

Basically, what it comes down to is "Would a reasonably intelligent cat choose to live here?"

URI (even checked and managed) is a huge issue for even the good shelters Its hard to tell by just looking at a shelter if it is managed and vet checked

I'd just like to add in here - where I volunteer we are county impound. We often have cats who look like they are starved, as it takes them months to regain their weight sometimes. We also very frequently have one room that is quarantined for ringworm (or coccidia or giardia). So you have to be careful how you judge things - as we have to sit on ringworm cats for 6 weeks of treatment. We've had entire rooms full of sneezing cats, as a URI takes over (and it takes 5 days or so for anti-biotics to really kick in).

I used to be pretty horrified when I saw cats sneezing and/or oozing snot in adoption centers. Well, I still am if I see them with snotty snouts in Petsmart cages and know the that rescue actually has a shelter too...

Then I talked to some of the workers in biggers shelters, and they said it is just absolutely impossible to keep all the sneezers out of the general population especially certain times - and all the sneezers don't necessary have URI. They most likely are stressed. In one particular place it was probably more important for those guys not to be quarantineed with the sick ones but work through their (initial) stress with other cats and shelter (because in that place the cats luckily got to roam pretty free unless they were sick or aggressive).

On the other hand, I am not so sure if it's always best policy from shelter to put a cat out for adoption right away when they are recovering from certain wounds. Sometimes, you see those cats ending up on the lists forever and you wonder if their initial entry tarnished their chances because they had a nasty looking thing going on. You'd hope some shelters had time to let the poor babies heal a bit more.

Yes, they should never be sent out to adoption events with URI, and in fact Petsmart here would send them back to us if they sneezed

It looks like I left a few subtleties out of my off-the-cuff definition of the difference between having a lot of cats and having too many cats. I really did mean that these kinds of things would be figured in; I guess it's hard to explain all at once. I do hope that everyone had a sense of what I was getting at and no one thought I meant to unfavorably label people or groups for doing the best anyone could do for a non-ideal situation that they didn't create.
I'd go off of the vet records, for that; I realize that of course there's going to be some, since it's like kids bringing colds to school, they are going to sneeze on each other.
I'd count that under "the kind of animal they take in," and figure in if the animals are, over time, mostly getting better as best as can be expected for their condition.

If the ASPCA is partnered with HS of Greater Miami, you can be pretty certain they're one of the good guys. The "A" can't risk their reputation on anything but a good shelter or rescue. And just like you did the first time, if your gut says something is wrong, it probably is and you need to go elsewhere.

Rebecca Poling
Dallas Animal Rescue Examiner

SPCA Humane Societies can be just as bad as regular ones, both of the local SPCA related shelters here are under investigation

No shelter would take a kitten into the shelter before 8 weeks, they are too young for vaccinations and would be exposed to cats who could pass on disease to them