At any given time, you can come across local social media posts about lost pets or pets needing a new home.
Sometimes, those posts are for dogs and puppies – but the sad reality is that most of the ones I come across are for cats and kittens.
And while I don’t know all the numerical statistics for the booming feline population, I know one thing that is for sure – spaying and neutering pets is by far the preferable option to euthanizing them.
I always try to point those in need in the right direction to our local nonprofit friends at ‘For the Love of Animals’ that have a low-cost to no-cost spay/neuter program.
It’s great because those program forms are even available online or at the Bay City Public
Library.
Outside of that, it seems that unwanted, abandoned or other
wise overcrowded cats and kittens are making the rounds.
Several of my friends have been adopted by stray felines that are far from feral or aggressive.
I’m also proud of these friends that invest the time and money into making sure these furry freeloaders are healthy, up to date on their shots and otherwise fixed when they come of age.
As I’ve written about it before, we at the Reddell house have been victims of the “Cat Distribution System” over the years – and we were also recently chosen by the Great Oz to save another kitten.
Now, if you’re not too pop culture or internet savvy, the “Cat Distribution System” is largely a humorous online concept that describes how cats seemingly choose their victims - er, human caretakers - rather than the other way around.
At the moment, no one exactly knows who came up with the concept, but I can say that it makes perfect sense given how many kittens I’ve personally rescued at home and how their strange little personalities seem to fit with our household.
I wish there was a similar concept that would help me win the lottery and spend the rest of my days just writing novels – hey, a girl can dream!
Unfortunately, the Cat Distribution System doesn’t work that way and instead had mom plucking a crying orange tabby kitten out of her flowerpots one early Friday morning over a month ago.
Since we’ve done this before, I made short work of getting it bathed, fed, and in its own little quarantine space until we could get it to a vet the following week.
Mom immediately wanted me to find a home for it with someone I trusted, but Facebook is inundated with “Free Kitten” posts and the people looking for kittens are super picky about what they want.
I mean, I had no idea about the little guy’s personality or if he could tolerate dogs or other cats yet.
As it stands, he’s still in the quarantine room due to a ringworm infection and having to wait for his rabies shot.
In the meantime, my sister Ashlee has taken to buying him toys and spoiling him when she visits and I do take him out of the room to meet the other animals and people who live here.
But, overall, it seems that I’m raising another orphan kitten – I’ve brought three others into adulthood already!
In keeping with our family tradition, I provided the kitten with several nerdy pop culture names to choose from and called him by several before he answered to “Jack.”
Jack has so many references but mostly we’ve narrowed it down to Jack-Jack like the baby from Pixar’s “The Incredibles” movie and if you’ve seen the movie, you have an idea of this little guy’s personality.