My Nonprofit Reviews

My wife and I have adopted 3 cats from ARL Dedham.

Our first cat together (my first cat ever) was Chewie (formerly Cilo). She has been the greatest cat we could ever hope for. She was so shy, and we spent an hour at the shelter quietly trying to get her out of her enclosure. She finally did, and she has been by my side ever since.

Our second cat was Pepper (Asia). We thought Chewie needed a friend, and so we went to look for another cat. I saw Pepper, who was a beautiful Bengal. I fell in love and asked about her. She was already being boxed up for another family. I had talked with the staff that day about Chewie, and about how I loved Pepper; they were very friendly and easy to talk to. Fast forward a few weeks, I get a call from the staff at the Dedham office and they told me that the family that took home Pepper brought her back in because she was throwing up. They remembered that I fell in love with her and asked if I wanted to come and get her. I came in with my wife that night and picked her up. We had Pepper for a little over a year before she passed from heart failure. She wasn't really a friendly cat, and she certainly was annoying, but we realized how much we missed her when there was no noisy orange cat greeting us at the door after work.

We decided to wait before we adopted again. We waited 2 months or so, and the first time we visited ARL again we saw a tiny little orange kitten in the office. We didn't see any other cats that were a good fit for us from the selection they had that day, and decided to chat with the staff and told them about Pepper, etc. They told us that the little kitten was also returned because he was "needy" and "annoying". They let us go to the office to play with him, and again, we fell in love. We stayed for a while and decided this was right for us, and they agreed to hold him until he got some other shots. We picked him up a couple of days later and he has been our "little one" for the last 2 years. Rupert (Logan) is super annoying, but we love him so much. The staff at ARL has been amazing since day 1 and I would recommend them to anybody and everybody.