Online news media describe Sophie, a black tortoiseshell cat, as unlucky because she has been in and out of a rescue centre without finding a permanent home.
I don’t quite see it that way. I think this is about human failure and the inability to provide this cat with a suitable home. It is almost as if this cat is living in a world which she can’t fit into because she’s a cat.
We are told that she first arrived at Cats Protection in Halesowen in December 2017. She was there because her owner had died. She was there for a good reason, to be rehomed.
For an unknown reason it took almost a year for her to be adopted in January 2018. Black torties are generally pretty popular so I am surprised but that long wait was due to the human preference to largely choose cats on appearance, a superficial way to select cats. The first bit of “bad luck” then occurred. She didn’t get on with the resident cat at her new home so she was returned to the shelter.
Without wishing to be overly critical, that failure was a failure of the shelter in my view. It’s well-known that there is no guarantee that an incoming cat will get on with a resident cat. She might and she might not, you don’t know. There is quite a high percentage of failure in this regard. Might it not been a good idea to have adopted Sophie out to a home where there were no other cats? Perhaps that was impossible and if so perhaps she could have gone to her new home on a trial basis. That might be impractical but I think it’s a good idea.
Having, therefore, been returned to the shelter again she was adopted again but on this occasion she disappeared from her new home two weeks after arriving there. It was April 2018. Sophie was not found until six months later. In the intervening months, her owner had adopted another cat and therefore Sophie could not be accepted back into the home.
On this occasion, therefore, it seems that Sophie left the new home because she didn’t like it. She was unsettled. She had been moved around from pillar to post and had been unable to establish a territorial home range. I would think that at this time she was going through a distressing time, perhaps some mental turmoil. There was something about the home that displeased her. We don’t know what or why but we, as her caretakers, should know. We should have the answers.
She is now back at the Cats Protection shelter looking for a new home. During her six months of wondering without a home she lost a lot of weight and therefore it was presumed that she fended for herself. This must have been very hard for her and dangerous.
She’s been called the unluckiest cat in the West Midlands (of the UK) but I think this is more about human failure to satisfy her feline needs and desires. That’s not to say I want to be overly critical because people are doing their best but it looks ham-fisted. Perhaps it reflects a general failure in cat domestication.
Sophie is 8-years-of-age and needs a new home, a quiet one where there are no kids and no cats or dogs! She has a nice character but clearly it is a delicate character. Please call: Dave Widdows on 07913 301788 if you are interested in adopting her and cat meet her needs.
Source: Metro.co.uk via Cats Protection.
