My Nonprofit Reviews

This “rescue” is the most unprofessional and haphazardly ran excuse for an organization we have ever had the misfortune to deal with. Apologize in advance for my anger and lengthy rant but we’ve I’ve been “dealing” with this Karen for over a week and she’s tested my last nerve calling into question how we care for our own animals.

From the moment we sent an inquiry about adopting a kitten we were immediately rebuffed. The email we received from Karen was so dismissive. She immediately attacked the fact that we fed our cats primarily wet food and occasionally let them go outside supervised in our enclosed backyard. We were lectured about proper diet and the dangers of outdoors. All information we knew and considered when making decisions for our animals.

Karen treats all cats and potential adopters like there’s a one size fits all approach when that not realistic. All cats have different play and dietary needs as well as different attitudes and reactions to stimuli.

We contacted her after seeing a kitten we absolutely fell in love with, our aim was to find a playmate for our 1 year old ragdoll. We explained that we only let him go outside, supervised, to give him a more enriched and full life and mental exercise. But from the get go Karen deemed us unfit because of this.

Her first email told us to go adopt a kitten from a city shelter as if they would be less discerning.

Through numerous emails, photos and information provided to her about our home life, finances, how we treat our animals (like royalty btw) and countless assurances that our cats are in fact indoor cats who occasionally are let out completely supervised in a very secure and structured manner, nothing would appease her.

One would think that if a potential adopter had shown that they were responsible, financially stable, owned their own home, and fed their animals premium food, had regular vet visits and all the amenities they could ever want, fountains, litter robot, cat trees, scratchers and oh so many toys, that they would not have to jump through the hoops Karen put us through. But no, nothing we ever said was good enough for her. She insisted that for us to even be considered we’d have to buy a catio. Which we reluctantly agreed to, I say reluctantly because at this point we had never met the kitten and had no idea of her temperament or how she’d act in any given situation. It wasn’t even a certainty that we’d even let her outside at all. We also told Karen that this might make it so our other young cat wouldn’t go out because he’d finally have a playmate inside to satisfy his play needs.

But no, even offering to buy a $200 catio wasn’t good enough because the ones I showed her weren’t to her standards. She wanted us to build a permanent structure onto our house. I told her that was a possibility in the future when we had saved up enough to build the larger type of catio we’d want. But I felt it wasn’t fair to spend a couple hundred on a temporary structure we weren’t even sure we’d need as it wasn’t a for sure that this new kitten would ever go outside.

Every email we got from Karen was dismissive, accusatory and downright insulting. As if no one but her could possibly know anything about cats and their proper care and safety. I’ve own cats for over 30 years, I have seen them through strokes, cancer and chronic kidney disease. My last cat Angel I had for nearly 20 years, and the last couple years of his life I spent giving him subcutaneous fluids every night, a ever changing diet of prescription food, meds and supplements as recommended by our vet and at the very end changing his diapers and carrying him everywhere as he could no longer walk. Every bit of this done out of love, concern and always assured by the. Vet that he wasn’t suffering and he’d let us know when it was time, which he did.

I explained all of this to Karen, reliving all that heartache in hopes she would see how devoted we are to our animals and that their well being was first and foremost in our hearts. Hoping she’d see through her bias against us that we weren’t clueless pet owners who carelessly let our animals run free, but instead took the time to get to know the needs of our animals and give them everything we could to ensure they lived a long and happy life.

Still it wasn’t enough. I honestly don’t even think she read half of what I wrote to her, she just focused on one issue never responding to all my assurances to ALL her concerns, questions and requests. We bent over backward to be honest and accommodating and all she did was give us the run around, allowing us to finally fill out an application and offer to donate on top of the adoption fee, only to immediately jump on any inconsistencies she felt she found. The main one being we said our cats were indoors which they are. But when I spoke to her on the phone she brought it up like “but they aren’t really…” as if to say we were lying and just saying whatever to get what we wanted.

We were totally transparent with Karen and she was nothing but negative, rude and judgmental.

We told her, we understood that as a rescue she wants to find the best home for these animals, but in all her judgment she forgot the entire point of her organization, to find forever homes for animals in need. Not be so damn nit picky that you deny perfectly good applicants because you have a personal, unfounded and uneducated bias against people you’ve never met.

We’ve seen photos of Karen’s home, nearly every room is filled with cages stacked on top of each other, surrounded by trash and mess everywhere. It honestly looks like a cross between hoarders and a puppy mill. I’m not going to assume her job taking care of these animals is an easy one and one would expect there to be a bit of chaos in her home but damn, compared to our four bedroom where one is actually a full on cat room, filtered water fountains, premium wet food and treats, every toy under the sun and an automatic self cleaning litter box, as well as regular vet visits, constant love and attention, after all that and her cage factory of a home was deemed the preferable option? Seriously!? Maybe someone should look into her non profit status as she seems to care more about donations, the tax write offs and the social media clout of being a “Animal Rescuer” than actually finding these animals a good home.

We bent over backwards to show Karen how badly we wanted to adopt this kitten, jumping through hoop after hoop trying to win her approval, hoping that even if she had a negative first impression that through our correspondence she’d see how much we were willing to do to be accommodating and reassuring against all her misconceptions.
And even if we had different philosophies on raising pets that she see parts that and recognize how well this kitten would be cared for, wanted and loved. She frankly, I feel, never gave us a chance. And her choice to cut off communication with us so abruptly after we were nothing but accommodating was completely unprofessional and rude.