Cats Are US

We had a pretty horrible experience at Petsmart in Clarksville today. We went in knowing Cats Are Us was there with kittens today. Hoping to find us our very own kitten. Well, we actually found one kitten out of the many they had. We did not loiter and look at others indecisively. As we are being explained the process of adopting, the younger girl with shorter red hair was being very snotty. Then once they mentioned the $ 100 adoption fee my husband asked what all was included. His question verbatim was this. «What all is included in the $ 100 adoption fee? Is it things like a certificate for spay or neutering, declawing, or all shots?» The woman we were speaking to still being really nice, and continued to explain the process while the younger red head decided to run over to the I’m assuming main Cats-​Are-​Us manage, and talk poorly about our family. She was saying things like they have 3 kids, and one of my bottle fed babies doesn’t belong in a home with 3 kids. She was also making childish noises, and stomping her foot. Once I overheard her conversation which was not in a low tone by any means I paused the conversation with the one lady that I was having, and said ok then handed the nice lady the kitten, and proceeded to let the red head know I could hear her. I said excuse me it is extremely rude and unprofessional to talk about people, and judge their animal nurturing abilities based on the number of kids they have. She said I will not adopt out of my babies to a family who wants to declaw. So I informed her that declawing was never our intention, it was a simple statement my husband had made prior. She proceeded to raise her voice at me, and I decided to be the bigger person walk away, and inform the manager of Petsmart of her unprofessional actions.
Just because you have the kittens does not mean you have the right to be extremely picky about whom they go to. Especially considering how overpopulated this area is with strays any family who wants one should be given the opportunity. Your closed minded self just made my children feel bad for thinking it’s their fault we cannot get one as well as showed them how ignorant some people are.

Several years I adopted cat my Alex, my baby boy. beautiful and full of himself. I also adopted two semi feral cats, they have turned into love bugs !

I have to give some props to Cats Are Us for what they’re trying to do. Cats are undervalued compared to dogs and there are not many other options for stray or surrendered cats in Clarksville that don’t involve a near certain death sentence. Cats are Us is a no-​kill shelter that is run through volunteer efforts.
And that’s where the sad/​bad part comes in. It’s all-​volunteer, and they seem quite underfunded and without sufficient help to maintain the conditions of the shelter or the health of the cats who are now trapped inside.
I’ve been inside the shelter a couple of times in the last few months to drop off donations of cat litter. The shelter building is run down. You’ll notice the smell before you even get inside, and inside the building it’s almost unbearable from the amount of ammonia in the air. Cats run wild in the front rooms. They’re sharing fleas and upper respiratory illnesses. There aren’t enough litter boxes for the number of cats present in the room. I saw roaches crawling in each room I entered.
It must be impossible for the volunteers to keep up with everything that needs to be done, and fundraising to boot. I’ve heard they want to build a new shelter and I would agree it is desperately needed. In the meantime there are something like hundreds of cats who are stuck in this current situation, getting sick and becoming unadoptable.

I understand that their main goal is to protect cats from the gas chamber and euthanization… but at some point you have to ask «at what cost?»
I found a cat I really wanted to save at a Petsmart kitten adoption show they had going, and she really was adorable. I should have known to ask if she was on drugs because she was sleeping a lot… but I couldn’t get over how malnourished she was and how simply beautiful she was. I wanted her!
I set up an appointment to pick her up, and for some reason the person who set up the apointment (she must have been 17, really young) did not mention that they do their adoptions out of a vet clinic so I showed up at the location that they keep their cats at on Providence.
Walking up to the building in which they house these poor kitties you can smell the amonia from the cat urine and feces from all the way down the driveway. It was really gross, and I got a terrible feeling. I knocked on the door and I saw through the window that someone was in the back room and it looked like she was hiding from me. Now she completely ignored me. She didn’t even come to the front door to tell me that the adoption transactions are done at a local animal clinic called «all God’s creatures». So I was really upset, trying to call the young girl on her cell phone and she wasn’t answering. I was pretty upset and I had to take my son home with no kitten.
About an hour later the girl calls me up to pick up the cat at the vet clinic, ok! so I thought «no harm no foul» and I adopted the kitty. Long story short: the cat was feral, she hid in my closet the whole time I had her and attacked me every time I tried to touch her. She wouldn’t even come out of the closet. Then she ran away. because she hated me.
This cat was NOT adoptable. This is the kind of cat that truly may not have been rehabilitated, and I think they KNEW that. They told me she wasn’t on any kind of drugs and that she was happy and relaxed all the time. This was a lie. I think they lied to me because they wanted me to adopt a cat, but this isn’t how you find good homes for unwanted animals.
The goal should be to find FOREVER homes by conducting an honest organization in which customers should be able to adopt an animal under honest circumstances. They should not be adopting out wild cats who try to assasinate anyone who comes near them in the first place!