May I rant a bit?!
 

I need to express some harboured feelings and know not where else to do it. Well I attempted to adopt two little kittens receantly from a local animal shelter. After calling them back a bunch of times, and their supervisior only working liek 2 hours a week I finally got a call today saying I am not allowed to adopt. The reason they gave, cause my wife has a mild allergy that, more often than not, doesn't even occur. Needless to say I am a bit upset, was really looking forward to the little kittens. It was my understanding that animal shelters are in great need of people willing to adopt. But yet they make it harder than child adoption! I mean they attempt to arrange home visits, they check you out six ways from sunday.. all in all a nasty experience. I choose to go through the shelter rather than finding a private individual because I knew they had a bunch of animals that needed homes. And when I went there to check them out, then had like 3 rooms full of cats and kittens just waiting for someone to take them home, and according to the lady there, they get a new bunch each and every day! They gave me no indication that my wife's slight allergy would be a problem, no where on their rules of adoption did it say "Those with allergies need not apply". At any rate, I am slightly upset and bothered and just needed to vent/rant... I am sorry if this is the wrong place/thread to post in...

A fine place to rant.

Sounds like you got served. Only by idiots. Who didn't so much get the advantage over you.

Yeah.

Complain to someone in charge of the shelters!

A shelter is a fine option, I say.. four walls. Maybe a roof.

Of course, you could be smart (like me) and skip the entire bureaucracy. How? Well, just do what I did. Stand under a bridge; lots of kittens fall that way.

Edit: seriously, what; do you live in a small town or something? 'Cause here, nobody has time to ask these stupid questions. They take your address, your $25 and away you go with your new pet. Or, possibly, dinner.

I tell you what, you should see if your city has any no-kill animal shelters.
Inform them as to what happened and they might be able to rescue the kittens from the death needle. I had the same thing happen in my town, and I never even thought of that. Now I just catch em' before they get to the shelter.

Sheesh, you'd think they'd give people enough credit to know what they and their allergies can handle. I'm the first to admit that a lot of our contemporaries aren't quite mentally capable of that, but explicitly warning them is enough.

Yea do that it made me feel warm and fuzzy, I saved two of my dogs from the death needle.

As for living in a small town, the answer is two fold. Firstly I live in the largest city in my province.. secondly my province is Newfoundland.. and if that means nothing to you... then the metropolitan population of St. John's (where I live) is 175,000. As to complaining to someone in charge, did that got no where.. and finally the no-kill shelter thing doesn't exist here. We have like two shelters either the SPCA or the Humane Society (where I went). All other places for animal adoption are either A) Privately owned and thus more strict or B) a Pet store and charge 70 bucks for a kitten. To get around this entire mess my wife decided to get a friend of ours to adopt the kittens and then just give them to us, pretty sneaky if you ask me...

Hah.... 175,000 is considered metropolitan? Ya learn somethin' new everyday...

Congrats on finding and utilizing a loop hole to get what you wanted. So many rules are pointless and go against rationality.

Wow... that blows.

I suppose you could always talk to a local or provincial politician about your dilemma; any effective one will either explain to you why this is happening or jump on this as an injustice that needs to be sorted out; even better is to directly contact the department in your provice or locality responsible for shelters/strays. Bureacracy is intended to have a strict levels of heirarchial power; keep going up the line until you get what you want.

I used to handle adoptions for a shelter as part of my job (I worked at a PetSmart). 99.999 percent of the time, the reason these cats were given to the SPCA was only listed as, "allergies." Now, we all know that's just an excuse people use when they don't want to say, "holy crap! You mean I have to feed it EVERY day? Fuck that shit!" However, I do SORT OF understand some reluctance to adopt cats out to people with allergies, because about half the people who adopt end up returning them, and most list the reason as being allergies.

That said, it's a stupid reason not to let you adopt a cat. Check with another shelter, or just look for ads in the paper. You're bound to find some kittens somewhere. I wouldn't bother complaining to the shelter; you're very unlikely to accomplish anything, since they're not really a profitable business. If you've got the energy for it, raise some hell, but realise that you'll most likely just be wasting your breath.