Let me clarify right fast that I am not one of those raging hippie animal rights activists. I don’t attack people for wearing fur and I believe that meat is the best thing ever. So understand that what follows isn’t from the liberal “animals are people too” camp that makes as little sense as packing up a bunch of starry-eyed christian youths to go caroling in Mecca. “Mommy, why don’t they have the Christmas Spirit?”

That being said, we adopted a kitten recently. It’s an absolutely adorable mass of energetic tabby fluff that adores people. She’s situated herself mostly already, except a hierarchy battle between her and the previous “small” cat. But the point of this story is back at the shelter.

We walked into the local humane society, a place I hadn’t been before, and found they had two rooms filled with cats. Cats of all shape, all variety, and almost uniformly adult. Out of the maybe thirty cats this small shelter had between these two rooms, three of them were kittens. It makes sense, I suppose; hell, we went there because my wife wanted a kitten specifically. I can’t say we were really fixing much of the problem, but we already have two cats, this making a third. When we told the volunteers working there we found a cat we wanted, they told us that due to overpopulation in the shelter, adoption fees had been cut from $50 to $20 and that they were offering a two-for-one special on cats. They tried to convince us to take a second cat home, but four would be entirely too many.

I reflected back on this to a place I once lived; some kittens were rescued from a mountain ranch where there mother had vanished, presumably having become coyote food. The kittens were care for by my roommates who kept one. Some of them were adopted by a friend who I later dated, and who later moved in with us. When she and I separated, she was moving somewhere she couldn’t have cats and the original roommate and I were.

At this point, there were five total cats in the house; four very young females and one adult male. Of course, no where in any of this did anyone get the animals fixed. What eventually ensued was the four female cats having litters all at once. The final count I had was twenty cats in this house at some point in time. There was no way to afford getting them all fixed, even with local programs that would reduce the cost to $20 or $25 per cat. There was a reluctance, though, to taking them to the Humane Society, as there was a fear the kittens would be put down.

I can happily tell you that this would have been unlikely; kittens are adopted quickly. Further, the Humane Society gets the animals fixed as well as gets their initial vaccinations. If the original group of kittens had been taken to the humane society in the first place, they would have found homes after having been fixed and given the shots that we could never afford to give them. Instead, the cat population was greatly influence by our household. Given the population of cats that desparately needed somewhere to live anyway, it was affected negatively, needlessly.

The moral of this story; if you have a friend who’s pet produces a litter of other pets, unless you’re able to afford the costs of getting the animal fixed, think twice about taking in your friends pet. There’s people out there who are willing to pay what you cannot, and if you really do want a pet, many more who desperately need homes.