Craigslist pets :( (warning, pet lovers may be icked out)

[Ginger G]

Last year I fostered a litter of 3 kittens for a local feral rescue group. The friendliest one got adopted on his very first adoption day, the female shortly thereafter, and I decided to adopt the shy (but very sweet) kitten. About two months later, the lady who ran the rescue agency called me. She was persuing the pets on Craigslist, and saw an ad selling a kitten that sounded familiar. Turns out the lady who adopted friendly male decided she didn't want him anymore for some dumb reasons. Of course it's in the contract when you adopt a kitten from the agency that you must return the cat to them if you are unable or unwilling to keept it. Long story short, she got the cat back and I offered to foster him again. After a few weeks, we figured he had come back to us for a reason so we decided to make our 3-cat household a 4-cat household.

[ralerin]

Years ago, when my parents had their first beagles, they bought the pair of them to work. The dogs were left outside and my parents were working when suddenly Josephine started freaking out. Mom went outside to see 3 scruffy men bundling Napoleon into their car. The dogs were tied up outside and the rope Napoleon was attached to had been cut. Napoleon was also a purebred, from breeder stock.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH MY DOG?"

"SORRY! Sorry! Did not know it was yours!"

Mom kept the dogs inside after that.

[ShadowBall]

From what I've heard, a cat often serves as the carrot dangled in front of a fighting dog while it's being trained and, if the dog does well, he gets to have the cat.

Some people are a little more sneaky about snagging free animals to do whatever they please with and some are more brazen like the twits in ralerin's story who will just walk up and steal someone's leashed dog. It sucks all kinds of ass trying to re-home pets - if you offer them for free to whoever shows up, you have no idea if the animal is going to a good home or if they're going to be experimented on or fed to other animals. But if you charge money for them, no one will buy them because people are cheap and you'll never re-home the animals.

I think many people are just of the mindset of, "I can't have another (pet). I'm too lazy to take it to the shelter and would feel guilty throwing it outside, so I'll just give it away to whoever to get it out of here." However, lazily giving an animal to the first person who shows up could easily mean giving a new victim to the local nutcase that likes to torture animals.

[raw456]

I'd like to see Abby - cos hell having a dog I can call "Abs" would be cute. Assuming she was a good mix.

....

Our dog (see my avatar) is called Abbey and we do call her Abs for short. Also dofus, Dogbert and Shnufflehound She is Boxer cross Staffy and looks kinda like an AT-AT (long legs, round body, small head )

[fireheart]

When my manx cat had babies, there was a guy that called and said oh I want all four. No questions, what they look like or anything. Of course, I turned him down, he just creeped me out over the phone. He claimed I couldn't turn him down it. Whatever. I think he must have been a breeder or something, the reason there were two males and two females. They were all manxs so u can't in good judgement bred two manxs together.

Just out of curiosity, did any of them actually have a tail? Some manx cats ARE born with tails (my bet is that the genetic mutation which causes the lack of tail was missing) and they are sought after by breeders. There is a reason for this: If you try and breed two manx cats together, because of that genetic mutation, not all cats make it to full-term. So usually a part-tailed cat (might have a few vertebrae at the end or has a very short tail) or a long-tailed manx are introduced into the program.

[PepperElf]

Our dog (see my avatar) is called Abbey and we do call her Abs for short. Also dofus, Dogbert and Shnufflehound She is Boxer cross Staffy and looks kinda like an AT-AT (long legs, round body, small head )

Do you have a Gibbs too?

[Sapphire Silk]

Just out of curiosity, did any of them actually have a tail? Some manx cats ARE born with tails (my bet is that the genetic mutation which causes the lack of tail was missing) and they are sought after by breeders. There is a reason for this: If you try and breed two manx cats together, because of that genetic mutation, not all cats make it to full-term. So usually a part-tailed cat (might have a few vertebrae at the end or has a very short tail) or a long-tailed manx are introduced into the program.

Some people (sick jerks) will de-tail a cat to make it look like a "manx", since to the untrained eye manx cats look like tail-less mackerel tabbies.

[Seshat]

*growl*

Only valid reasons I can think of to de-tail an animal are medical. (Yes, I do count 'happy tail' in dogs as medical. I've seen photographs, and it looks awful.)