SacPaws.com

please imagine an orange-white cat, longhair, taking a nap among 3 stuffed animals, resting his chin on a Moose's leg.

"You probably think “what a cute cat taking a nap among some stuffed animals.” I was awakened by the camera flash but this is ok.

As a pure spectator, you don’t have any idea how good it feels to be able to take a nap again without having to worry about anything.

My life used to be like that, worry free. I lived with people who cared a lot about me. Then, all of a sudden, they moved and did not want to find a new home for me or could not find one. Who knows the reason. I ended up living on the street, right on the front porch where my food used to be. Nobody cared about me.

I was fortunate enough to find food in the neighborhood but I had to fight for it with the cats that lived there.

One morning in the rain, a familiar looking man came by to pet me on the porch. It felt so good. He picked me up and before I knew it, I was in a box and he dropped me off at the City Animal Shelter to find a new home for me.

I was very scared there. It is so different to be in a tiny cage surrounded by a lot of cats that all experienced a similar fate.

I got a cold, an upper respiratory infection. This is a cold like humans experience. It was a really bad cold with a clogged up head, no appetite, no energy.

It is common among shelter cats due to the stress and overcrowding in shelters.

I was very lucky. Despite my really bad cold I got adopted within a relatively short period of time.

I was on antibiotics for 10 days and slowly got my strength back. If not for the people that gave me a second chance, I might not be alive anymore.

I have always been a very nice family member. I have broken a few things that were in the way on the window sill but people break things too and I really did not do it on purpose.

It had nothing to do with my behavior that I got left behind. It happened because the people I thought loved me so much must have changed their mind and treated me poorer than their furniture. They took all their belongings, things, with when they moved. But not me.

A lot of people might think that “stray” cats are just cats that roam through the neighborhood without ever having had a home before. This is not true. A lot of us get left behind on a daily basis, some of us get lost and some of us end up at the shelter because people don’t like us anymore.

The ones that have never had a home are “feral” cats and they are not adoptable. These are the offspring of cats that were once lying on someone’s lap, warm and cared for. But their owner discarded part of their family on the street.

Unfortunately, there is no shortage of very nice animals for adoption at the City Animal Shelter but still only 17% of pet owning people adopt animals from an animal shelter. On any given day there are 60 cats and 30 dogs for adoption at the City Animal Shelter.

One reason people might not go to the shelter to adopt an animal is that they think it must be a horrible place. They are afraid of what they will see there. Or they may think that the animals at the shelter are ones no one would want. This is a very sad misconception.

The City Animal Shelter is much more than “the pound”, a dumping ground for unwanted animals. It is a shelter, a safe haven that saves thousands of animals every year. The City Animal Shelter is required by law to take in all animals that come through its doors. Because of this, they run out of space and must euthanize some animals waiting for new homes. Funding is also a problem because it fluctuates with the general fund and competes with other needed services that the City of Sacramento must provide.

If you are looking for a new family member and you look at the City Animal Shelter, you can be assured that all the cats and dogs you see there are very nice, very adoptable and deserve to have a home and new owners that will be responsible for them for the rest of their lives.

Adopting an animal should be a life-long commitment. It is a commitment that also includes love, food and water, a warm place to sleep, kindness and help with medical or behavior problems, should they arise.

We animals are very sensitive living beings, like humans, and therefore would love to be treated with fairness and respect, too. It’s not so much to ask for, is it?"