after a very event-filled weekend i'm feeling drained and sleepy. it doesn't help that i lost an hour of sleep due to this stinkin' time change. i'll be thankful for it at the end of the day when i get to leave at 4:30 and it feels like 3:30 - there's the upside at least.
we went to animart on saturday to check out their kittens. animart is where we got igby (our short-lived puppy) from and we had heard good things about their cats. i had a friend who took a stray cat there who had lived through some abuse. the story was that animart footed the vet bills for the poor cat and then adopted it out. we had quite a different experience there...
they had several beautiful cats - some a bit younger than others. we're keeping our eyes open for a little boy kitten to join our family and we found a very handsome orange and white tabby named tony. after giving him a good look over we noticed that, unforunately - he was declawed. seeing as how our two kitties at home are still rocking their stickers we thought it best that the next kitty we get also have some built-in defense mechanisms. sorry, tony. we put him back in his cage with a little pat on the head and a "better luck next time."
but wait, the story doesn't end there. bryans sister jillian is also keeping her eyes open for another cat. there was a beautiful siamese mix with bright blue eyes. she was younger and was skin and bones - probably another rescue. jillian got her out of her cage for a bit and noticed she was pretty squirmy. as we stood waiting for the cat-giver to return we noticed one of the cats still in the cage was limping. she wasn't putting any weight on her front paw. we looked around for the stupid kid who had now been gone for over 10 minutes.
as we waited the siamese mix jilly was holding became even more wirey . we needed to get her back in her cage - and fast. i took her from jillian and went up to the cashier to ask for help giving her back. i was immediately greeted with, "what's all over your jacket??" i looked down and noticed i was covered in blood - and not just a little. it was alllllll over my jacket. i'm not talking carrie-style or anything - but there was a significant amount. we located the problem. it was her paw - she had just recently been declawed and she was bleeding pretty badly.
here's my first problem: if she'd just recently been declawed, they shouldn't be giving her out for people to hold. and not just for my clothings sake - she's in enough pain from them ripping the nails out of her joints, she doesn't need to be man-handled too. as i peeled my blood-covered jacket off - i asked, "do you declaw ALL your cats or something?" and sure enough! this so-called "animal-rescue" pet store declaws every cat that comes through! i was really upset. "OH and you might want to check the kitty on the top left - she's limping!" i told the guy, angrily. i then grumbled and groaned about how un-necessary it is to declaw cats. it's ONE thing to declaw a cat as a very last resort if you feel you have to. that's up to the owner - and i still think it's wrong. but it's just horrible for a pet store to be declawing every cat they have.
i wasn't upset about my jacket - that's the chance you take when you hold an unfamiliar animal. you never know what bodily fluid is going to come out of them. i was more upset at the fact that they even let us hold her since she'd just had the surgery. horrible, horrible, horrible. no wonder she was so squirmy.
i will never shop there again. i'm callin' for a boycott!
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