Welcome to the Vancouver Cat Adoption Blog

Welcome to the Vancouver Cat Adoption Blog.

Who am I and what is this blog about? Well, I'm your average Vancouver guy (ok, not so average. How about slightly about average?) who lives in an apartment downtown and has embarked on doing some community service. Which service am I referring to?

I'm helping one of the local Vancouver cat rescue groups help get their kittens and cats adopted to forever homes. That means homes that will take an animal and treat it like one of the family for the entire life of the cat, no matter what happens (the rescue group in this case, btw is VOKRA (www.orphankittenrescue.com).

More specifically, I am fostering cats, that is, I'm giving them a short term temporary home for a few weeks, until they are adopted into forever homes?

Why do this, aside from contributing to the community? Because there is a great need. In Vancouver, and in fact, in many cities all over the world, there are scores of stray, abandoned and feral cats living without the care of people, in streets, warehouses, neighborhoods. And cats are very fertile, a young kitten, less than a year old can already have up to two litters of more kittens. And of course, these kittens can have more kittens. Next thing you know, it's cats everywhere. And who takes care of them? No one, they fend for themselves.

If they are feral and don't trust humans, they are the ones you hear fighting at night and running away from you when you surprise them. Stray and abandoned cats soon learn this behaviour as well, then the reality of life on the streets hits them (like a bored fat kid with a big stick). Now, fortunately, many cats are caught by the SPCA and other groups and are adopted out. But for many more cats (and dogs, hamsters, rabbits) they are euthanized, i.e. they are killed because there is no space for them. They are especially killed if they are injured or diseased, as they are harder to adopt out.

So, following this tangent, if you have an animal, please spay or neuter (or speuter, ha!) it, unless you can be responsible for her offspring, intentional or not. You will save many cat lives and thus take a load off the already stress service of stray cat management.

At any rate, so what I am doing is taking care of kittens and cats for VOKRA as there are so many that are in their database that need to be adopted, that they can't possibly put them all into one place. So my role is to watch them, take care of them, and if need be, train them so that they are good little kittens, so that they can be adopted out easily. Possibly by you.

Thus is the reason why this blog exists. I will be posting news and updates about the animals I get, including pictures and video, as well as my experiences with the cats, so that you can get a sense of their personality and what it means to care for one and hopefully want to adopt the ones I have.

Happy reading!