Cats Are Truly Special aka C.A.T.S.

I adopted my cats from C.A.T.S. in 2001. I couldn’t rate them any higher. I originally wanted 1 kitten so they helped me choose a cat that didn’t need or want to be around other cats. They do require a home visit which seemed over the top at the time, but mostly because I know myself to be a pet lover. There are many who neglect or subject pets to rough kids so I agree this is probably a very good practice. They also require proof that you can own a cat per your rental or condo agreement. Everything they do is to ensure that the pet, once adopted, will be taken care of and likely to remain with the original owner.
My first kitten (Kitty) had some diarrhea. They notified me and offered to keep her until it cleared up. The willingness to provide extra care they gave to my Kitty even though the deal was completed went a long way for me.
About 6 months later I decided I wanted one more cat and went back to adopt Joey. This time they didn’t require a home visit but were just as easy to work with.
It makes me feel good that I helped 2 cats from this organization who clearly cares so much about protecting cats.

Cats Are Truly Special places the needs of the cats above the needs of the pet owners as Amy L already explained in her review. As a rescue organization that is what they are supposed to do. They are very choosy as to whom they adopt to, but they do wonderful work and they have saved hundreds of lives. Their cats are all healthy unlike some of the cats you get from some of the local organizations and they come with their health records. I have friends who adopted from rescue groups and could never get a health records for the animals they got. C.A.T.S will take their animals back at a moments notice, no questions asked. Anyone who writes a less then complimentary review is someone who obviously got turned down by them. That happens often, but that is because these people put in so much money and energy into these cats and they look for the best possible home.

Ok. so I do agree that the ladies are a bit over the edge. BUT we adopted a 3 month old kitten from them 11 years ago and are happy as can be, and I have heard and seen of other places who will only adopt 2 kittens at a time if the have been together so I don’t think it was «bully» tactics at all.
I do think they should of just taken the feral kitten back. But again these ladies were a bit odd with their mass questions to answer. They never came back to check on us at all like they said. I would go back and get another cat from them. You just have to know what your getting into.

Cats Are Truly Special (C.A.T.S.) is one of those well-​intentioned cat rescue groups that winds up doing more harm than good because they place the needs of their cats above the needs of pet owners. It should be renamed, «Catpeople Are Truly Scary».
I think we can all agree that it’s important to try to help cats find good homes rather than sit in shelters where they might wind up being euthanized. But it’s important to find a good fit between humans and animals when placing pets in the home. The 2 women who run CATS are so insanely fixated on the well-​being of their cats, they actually wind up making it harder to place the cats. And they wear cat shirts. You know what I’m talking about.
This is my experience with them: They have cats/​kittens available for adoption at PetSmart in Daly City. My husband and I fell in love with a kitten. We already have two happy, well-​adjusted cats at home and had been considering adopting a third.
Then it was explained to us that we couldn’t adopt the kitten we wanted, unless we adopted the other kitten in the same cage with it, because they were «bonded orphans». This is a b.s. tactic: these kittens were not siblings, but the women who run CATS wanted to make us believe that it would be a horrible thing for these animals for them to be separated. But when I adopted each of my other cats, they experienced no hardships from being separated from their actual siblings. CATS was simply trying to force people to adopt more than one cat at a time. I noticed that this was the case with all of their kittens. Obviously they’d figured out that since people always want kittens, this way they could force people adopt 2 at a time. This is not a good policy, because it means asking a potential pet owner to make a bigger commitment than originally intended. That’s just irresponsible.
But we considered it anyway — This was a big mistake on our parts.
The CATS ladies arranged to come visit our home — they had no intention of bringing the cats to us yet, they just wanted to do a rigorous examination of our surroundings. It was awkward, uncomfortable to have these strangers in our home, judging us. But we passed.
We signed the ridiculous 5 page contract (don’t even get me started on the crazy stuff they wanted us to commit to, like letting them inspect our home throughout the cats’ lives!), paid the fees, and brought the kittens home. We quarantined them in the bathroom so that we could slowly introduce them to our other cats and home. But then we noticed that one of the kittens was feral (not the one we’d originally wanted to adopt): once relaxed in her new surroundings, she was very destructive, vocal in the way that only feral cats are vocal, and didn’t want human contact. As we tried to introduce her to our cats, she wouldn’t stand down from our cats and tried to fight with them. She had no interest in us at all, and was basically a wild animal being kept indoors.
The other kitten, ie the one we’d originally wanted to adopt, on the other hand, was loving, adorable, active, and really fit our household. But we knew they were a package, so we wound up taking them both back to CATS. We implored the ladies to tell potential new owners that that one kitten was feral, but they blew us off. That’s sad, since I’d imagine they continued to have problems placing that kitten (and b/​c of their policies, both).
For the record, these kittens showed no signs of being bonded: they didn’t sleep cuddled up, didn’t groom each other, and didn’t interact with each other any more than any other unrelated cats. What CATS pulled was a b.s. tactic to try to adopt out a kitten that would no doubt provide potential owners with a lot of grief, the way she did to us.
CATS did us a disservice by not telling us that one of these kittens was feral. Taking on a feral kitten or cat is a lot of extra work, and can be very difficult. No wonder they only wanted to let us adopt both of them! It backfired though: we wound up having to bring back both of them, even though one was totally adoptable.
My advice to you in adopting a cat is to beware of these self-​righteous, self-​proclaimed «cat experts». Neither of these women are vets or animal behavior experts. So, I would strongly advise against taking any sort of cat advice from them. Don’t let them bully you, and read that contract carefully. But better yet, adopt from a more reputable source like the SPCA or a vet hospital. CATS and similar cat rescue groups should be regulated by the state and forced to get licenses and regular inspections, if they’re going to put themselves in charge of animal welfare. We learned our lesson and will avoid this group in the future. When we do get another cat for our household, we’ll do it either through the SPCA or a vet hospital!