Kitty Karnival

 

Is that a face to love or what?
The local PetSmart sponsored a pet adoption event this weekend.  
So wonderful to see all the kitties...and so hard at the same time. 

Huge event tents were hoisted up in the shopping center parking lot and each massive tent was then filled with kenneled dogs and caged kitties hoping to find a "forever" home.

 Bernie and I walked through the cat tent as the cats were being set into the weekend quarters.

You could tell this was hard on a lot of them.
Cats don't appreciate change.
As much as my heart wanted to swoop each of the cats up and hug them and tell them it would all be just fine...that would have made the cats feel even more nervous.
The best we could do was just look at the nervous animals and say a prayer that someone would decide to give them a home.

I chatted with the foster mom of this little guy. She said he arrived at their shelter so tiny and so sick he was slated to be put down.
She nursed him to health and pleaded that he be given a reprieve from the needle.
He is now a healthy sweet boy, still small for his age and ready to be adopted.
If he doesn't get adopted...sadly, the never ending flow of abandoned cats mandates that his time would be up and he would be put down.
The woman explained that her daughter made "bio" cards with pictures for all the kitties in the shelter.
By the time the Kitty Karnival came around, she had to tell her that more than a few of those kitties were no more....
Being a shelter volunteer is not an easy job.

Bernie and I joked that perhaps we could adopt this Persian and just release it into our son's house with his two Persians....maybe he wouldn't notice one more mouth to feed?

Twin kittens with identical spots atop their heads wrestled with each other, not old enough to care that their surroundings had changed.

I hoped the twins remembered to give this kind of look to the people who will come seeking the perfect kitten to adopt.

I hoped that someone would want a neat little girl kitty who knew how to fold her paws just so....

Some of the cats were so calm they just took a nap as the set up teams were bustling all about.

A cage full of black kittens that climbed about like tiny monkeys.
The shelter folks said at their last adoption event they ran out of baby kittens so this time they brought all they had.

I hoped there would be lots of families that had always wanted to adopt a black kitten...or two. The shelter staff say black kittens are the hardest to place.

I hoped that children would laugh to see the kittens nimbly climbing about and think that was so funny they would want such a kitten for their own. 

Maybe because we are older we tend to have an extra soft spot for the older cats hoping to be adopted.
All to often they have been released because their elderly owner had needed to be placed in a nursing home...or died...
Or because a family had been sent overseas...
Those cases are hard and I feel for both the cats and the owners.

I really miss my calico Tidbit...she who had a bit of every color a cat can have.

A muted calico...so soft, so sweet would be so welcomed in our home if we were not already at our limit.

Please, I thought...let someone see how much love this kitten could purr into their life...and save its life by bring it home.

I wanted to imagine a family with twin red haired boys adopting the twin orange kitties.

Someone who loved getting a massage would have done well to adopt this guy...he never stopped purring and kneading his cage mate the whole time I was there.
The striped tabby seemed to know he was getting a great massage.

The staff enjoyed giving the kittens "kennel" names...and were quick to point out that the kittens of course could be re-named after they were adopted.

Frankly I thought Westen was a great name for this little guy...

It was hot in the tent and fans and cooler were placed about trying to cool the place down.  Several of the cats were panting in the heat, and the various shelters kept arriving with more and more cats.
I was thankful that the nearby dog tents had not yet been populated; the endless barking would have been an extra layer of stress that no one needed during set up.

The orange female brought back memories of the year when we searched and searched for an orange female for our red headed young daughter.
Seeing all the orange cats brought back memories of our search for an orange cat in Houston...a search that turned up not a single orange cat for months until one "no kill" volunteer said they did have one orange male...a guy they considered unadoptable because he wouldn't be held, wouldn't make eye contact and generally was not a very good cat.
We took him anyway.
That cat...over time...came out of his shell
and became 
Tiggie 
our Good and Faithful Orange Cat.

No...we didn't adopt any of the cats we saw at the Kitty Karnival this time.
We knew we couldn't add another cat to our "clowder" of cats at  home.
While our almost now fully grown little ones would probably do fine with a new friend, another cat would make our elderly Hart even more miserable and bossy Madam Frenchie...well, she can be pretty grumpy when young cats invade her space.

 I really hope that this Monday morning all the cats and kittens we saw are now settled into their new home.
I can't bear to think about the ones who didn't get adopted, and who didn't happened to have found shelter in a no kill shelter.
Salt Lake is working hard to become an all No Kill Shelter city.
We are getting close; several area shelters have been able to reach that goal.
I hope...I really hope that someday that goal will become a reality and visiting a Kitty Carnival will then always be a 100% joyful experience.