I was at work today when a man came through the door carrying a small animal carrier. We thought a small dog or a pup. No it was a cat. He and the wife had been feeding the cat for 3 months and they let it sleep in the utility room with their own cats. Well we told them we are a home for dogs. He seemed happy enough to take the number of a local place that would take a cat and away he went....
A couple of minutes later he was back. Could he use our phone to ring to make sure they are open. He does and they are but won't take the cat. He pleaded with us again.We said no..even if we wanted to there was no place to put it. He asked could we put it in one of the kennels. We said no we are FULL....He left...a THIRD time he came back....PLEASE will you take this cat. My wife wont let the cat back into the car..We said no. He was away.
I had to move my car and in the car park I see the car at the entrance to the car park with the man talking into the window. He spies me and pleads again...I said I'd be happy to take you round the kennels to see there is no where to put it. He says but my wife won't let ME in the car unless you do. I said sorry we are a Dogs home. We take his registration number in case he tries to leave it with us and drive off.
I am walking back up to the kennels and the wife comes storming out of the car..(With Kids in the back) Yelling how we should take this cat in and put it somewhere. I said the cat is not our responsibility...and since you have been feeding it for months it is now hers. Well she grabbed that cat and carrier out of hubby's hand and plonked it over our gates and started to leave. I told her I had her registration number and would report her to the police...she said well you'll have to because the cat isn't getting back into the car.....A HUGE shouting match (her not me) ensued with her cursing f'ing and blinding...telling us we dont care about cats and how we only like dogs etc...
Her hubby is scared to death....And he lifts the cat she runs back to the driver side and locks him out of the car and tries to drive off. He finally gets in and she sped out in front of another car on very snowy and icy roads..the other guy nearly in the ditch. Then pushing the brakes all the way down the road with the other car behind.
Most of the time we would have taken the cat and called the dog warden but we literally had no where to put it..and many of the staff have taken on hard to re-home dogs and can't have a cat about.
Imagine looking after the thing for so long then turfing it out on Christmas Eve.....and being so nasty about it. Then driving off with out hubby and her kid watching Mummy doing all that. Yelling at Daddy leaving him at the side of the road....Over a Cat who probably would have gone home in the first place had she not fed it and let it into the house.....It was so unreal...I didn't know people could be so vicious. I feel really sorry for that man having to live with her. In the 6 years I've been there she is only the second such person who has shown so much aggression we were considering phoning the police...

Anyway...thanks for getting this far...Had to rant...Feel slightly better.

that poor cat. what a strange woman... dont really know what else to say. feel a bit sorry for the husband too.... what a nutter!

Poor cat. She sounds a bit eratic . Wonder if the cats going to have kittens and she didnt want to be bothered with them
Jean

It was a Tom cat...she claims her two cats were frightened of it. But she had it for over 3 months. We asked why all of a sudden she had to be rid of it and couldn't wait for either the dog warden or the general rescues to open again but she had no answer.

But some people....she just seemed to be a crabbid woman who thought she could bully us into giving her what she wanted, as she seemed to have hubby well and truly under the thumb.
When he first came in he looked a bit ill....we joked he must have started Christmas early with a tipple or two....but after seeing her we realised it was a deer in the headlights look and he was very much feared!!....

I just hope that poor cat doesn't end up turffed out somewhere on the way home :-(

Thats my thought too, let it out on a main road in an area it doesn't know.   I think I would've taken it in, room or no room if she is so unpredictable.  Poor animal.

I think I would've taken it in, room or no room

Fair enough if we had facilities for cats..which we don't. Plus we have about 40 dogs and the poor cat would have been terrified . And in all likely hood the cat wasn't stray but their own ( based on the fact hubby and her were telling different stories)...we have enough to look after with out taking on the responsibility of some rude obnoxious woman having a temper tantrum bulling us and trying to make us feel guilty because we couldn't (not wouldn't)take this cat. Had she been more like her husband and remained civil...we could have provided her with contacts to ring or other suggestions of where she may find help. But as it was she wanted rid of then and there that instant on Christmas Eve....what on earth did she expect?
I feel bad for the cat...but we don't have the facilities, space or time to take every thing on 4 legs. And whether we like it or not there is a time in EVERY rescues daily grind where we MUST say no. I don't like it and the others workers don't either but sometimes it has to be done. 

the husband sounds a bit weak

just as a side note, does your dog warden take cats?

as a cover warden myself, ive never heard of that before

What an impossible job you guys in rescue have! Especially with crazy people like that trying to blackmail you.That poor cat but at the end of the day its her responsibility,hope the other rescue place managed to take it.

:( Sometimes people just never fail to amaze you.

We run a boarding cattery and over the years, I've had quite a few people ring, wanting to off load cats.  Many of which, people have had for a long time but now they are sick/pregnant, it needs to be gone there and then.

People too have been very rude when I just tell them we only board them and are not a rescue facility. TBH I am surprised, we've never had any dumped on the doorstep.  My jaw has dropped on many an occassion as to the excuses that people make too. :(

As usual, its left to somebody who cares, to pick up the pieces. :(

i worked in rescue for years, we always had people telling us they couldnt wait, wasn't their animal, so on so forth.

to be honest, most people moaned and persisted, but grudgingly accepted.

twas rare you got a nutter like the one in this post. but i have experienced them.

we too literllly couldnt take the animal.
but to be honest, when someone like this is so crazy, you just know they are going to do something unpleasant to the animal.
so if those rare cases, we always opted to take the animal in, no matter how obnoxious the person was toward us or what impossible a position it put us in.

even if it meant sticking it in a cage or such like stop gap, until something better could be worked out in the near future.
which was probably not ideal, but more ideal than the alternative.

Hello free..

did you see my earlier question?
i was curious regarding your arrangements re your local dog warden and taking cats.
how does that work?

many thanks

Our dog warden is usually very good. He has other contacts that we don't. And although he wont Usually take a cat he would on occasion if he knows of someone looking for one. He also knows of some local ladies who run a sort of unofficial rescue who sometimes foster strays for him.

ah!

that makes sense.

i thought it odd a dog warden picks up stray cats!

What a dreadful story, & so unfair of the woman to put you in this position when you cannot take in anymore animals, shame on her. Did the hubby finally get back in the car with the cat?

      

Yes he did...we could hear her yelling at him halfway down the road. She cut off another car..just pulled out and the roads were dead slippy so she got lucky with the kids in the car. She also kept applying the brakes which I'm sure didn't please the other road users. She must hae been yelling at him all the way down the road.

Can I just say in her defence we don't know what happens behind closed doors!

When my Kids were little my husband left me for someone else. We had just taken on a huge mortgage and he cleared our bank account. At the time I felt like I just couldn't cope with our beloved dog. Fortunately my sister looked after her for a couple of months until I felt better.

I adore my dogs so much now I can't believei that I allowed this to happen but we don't know this lady's mental state. I know I did a lot of screaming at my ex at the time!

Still does not excuse her behavior towards other people. She didn't even start off nice. As far as I am concerned....we all have problems of one kind or another and I won't even begin to try to guess or compare mine with others....however when in company of others there is no excuse for bad manners or for being mean to other people....and no matter what that lady's problems were I and my co-workers didn't deserve the nasty things she said....

Absolutely...like you said...if they had been more civil then you would have offered a little more help in the form of phone contacts etc.....there is just no excuse for this womans behaviour & also driving like a lunatic could have seriously injured her kids or another 3rd party.       

I wonder why the cat owner wanted the cat to go so quickly?

That is what we asked her and she had no answer apart from her cats were scared of it. But she had it for 3 or 4 months you'd think if her own cats were that important she wouldn't have started feeding it or letting it into her house. There is definitely more to the story than meets the eye.

Maybe it had started messing in the house and it had to go!