Undercutting the competition

This morning on the three first pages of 'free to a good home" on Kijiji there are eighty kittens and a dozen adult cats being advertised. Of those eighty kittens .... only two are advertised as being neutered and spayed. Two .... so there are seventy eight others who have been born because someone was to careless or cheap or just too unaware of the consequences of their actions.

How many of those cats will actually find good homes? The 'free to a good home' ads appeal to those who are unwilling to pay for the adoption fees from rescue. To the best of my knowledge, cat adoption fees around the province range from fifty to a hundred and fifty.

Regular readers are already familiar with the saga of Oscar and Dora and know that by the time they were tested, wormed and vaccinated and Dora was spayed, I came very close to spending five hundred dollars. I only got off that easily because Oscar was already neutered before he was dumped and Dora qualified for a small discount on her spay from a local TNR group.

Its easy to understand how rescue groups need the adoption fees. Not only are they looking to recoup some of their rescue costs, but after working so hard to save each and every good pet, they want to make sure that each pet will be properly cared for in his or her new home.

That sounds like a recipe for success .... but as a cook I can promise you that the proof of the pudding lies in how well the recipe turns out when we actually use it.

How's that working so far? With eighty free kittens ready to launch into the HRM at the beginning of "kitten season" .... I would say we need to rework the recipe.

Over the years, I have learned that sometimes the problem with a recipe isn't the ingredients nor their proportions. At the risk of tooting my own horn, I developed a very good reputation over the years as a baker because I understood how important the method was. In many cases, simply changing the mixing instructions changed an unsuccessful recipe into one that won raves.

There is an old adage that if we want to keep getting the same results, all we have to do is continue doing the same thing. If we want to change the future so that these 78 kittens on Kijiji today do not become the parents of future litters advertised there, we need to rework the recipe.

All the ingredients are already there .... the animal lovers, the hardworking volunteers and the enthusiasm in the rescue community for a bold new path. So what do we need to change about the method?

I get that rescue resources are limited and that nobody has very deep pockets. As a middle aged granny living on a little military pension I really understand that. I am not so rich that I could be nonchalant about the cost of 'doing it right' for Dora and Oscar. But ... because I'm part of the 'choir', I understood the cost of NOT doing it right.

I also get that as an empty nester who is long past having a mortgage, it was a much more achievable objective for me than a student, or someone with young kids.

We will never get to No Kill Nova Scotia until we acknowledge that not every person who gets a pet is going to be the person who can afford to 'do it right' That is why I go on .... like a stuck record .... about the need for some flexibility in cat adoption fees.

Every altered cat adopted from rescue will not add to the river of cats. They will not produce multiple litters of kittens to be 'free to a good home' nor will they be abandoned out on country roads when they become pregnant.

Even better ..... every cat that is adopted from rescue is an ambassador for responsible pet ownership. The adoption process isn't just about compassion and teaching children good values. Pet adopters tend to become supporters and sometimes even volunteers for the rescue they adopt from.

What time is it? Its time improve on the recipe by 'undercutting the competition' of the 'free to a good home'.