This nice gal was at the county shelter and was put up for adoption after doing her 5-day stray time. She was already spayed so we updated her shots and she's ready to go.... and based on her teeth, she looks to be just over a year old!

Agatha is quite hissy at other cats so we are going to say she is not good with cats or dogs or children at this point. 

She also came to us with bumps around her neck from fleas, those are slowly going away since all the fleas on her are now gone to flea heaven.  

Agatha enjoys having a "spot" just her own. She is out of her crate now that she is used to the foster mom's routine, however she still jumps back in the crate to use the pan and eat and drink!! So she likes having a "space" of her own and has not really sought out other cats.  

Agatha was one of the candidates at the county shelter, now run by Brevard County Sheriff's Office, for RTF (Return To Field).

At the county shelter now, if the cats are not adopted (at a one-chance lottery) then they are fixed and put back on the street where they were originally found. This one-chance adoption was put into place as a brainchild of someone at  BCSO who has never done rescue before. Hm.

Needless to say the "one chance lottery" goes against all our teachings....I mean, the county is supposed to be no-kill which makes you think they would hold onto the animal until it's adopted. Nope. It only gets one chance at adoption. If no one wants it, back on the street it goes. This also is completely against any cat rescue efforts we've ever heard of, 'cause the #1 rule in cat rescue is, if it's tame it needs to be in a home.

So, without the $3M budget that the county shelter has, many small (VERY small) local cat rescues are taking in these animals once they have been passed over in the one-chance lottery adoption.

Luckily the county shelter is working with us to let us know which cats every week are up for lottery and what date.....and we share the info with other cat rescues. We put our rescue's name on each kitty before the lottery, so if they are not adopted, we take in the animals.  We care for them in a "true" no-kill fashion, that is until they find a home. Our foster families pay all expenses out of their own pockets at PAWS. A couple of larger rescues like SPCA and Brevard Humane Society (Cox Rd.) are also helping take in RTFs.

This "drop it where you got it" methodology is officially called "Return to Field" or "RTF". It is USUALLY only done rarely.... yes, other places do it too.... RARELY..... But our local county shelter has started doing it 100%.

Also, the RTF policy for Brevard County is that these cats and kittens can be dropped off 1/2 mile from where they were found. It is sad because we are sure the 8-week-old kittens probably do not make it back safely (yes they are doing RTF on small kittens).  Do you wonder why they are they doing the drop-offs up to 1/2 mile away?  Could it possibly be they do not want the public to know?

Additionally, all cats get a microchip -- even before they are put back on the street. That's $10 a chip....so when we found one of the RTF kittens, we called the shelter and asked for the records based on his microchip. The answer we got is that they do not track the chips for these "put back on the street" cats. OK so it's a wasted chip, then, if there's no tracking back to the shot records, etc. What if someone gets bit, and now you cannot get back to the rabies vaccine info?  So in the case of our 8 week old kitten, we had to re-vaccinate which is always so risky, but we had no vaccine history.



Contact Mona at meowmail1@gmail.com.