NEWS AND VIEWS – SOMEWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES: Chloe Mitchell adopted a female tabby cat from a shelter. We don’t know the name and address of the shelter! She paid the shelter US$900 which is an awful lot for a shelter cat. It goes well beyond the normal shelter adoption fee.
Mitchell has a TikTok page and she posted her cat and herself on her TikTok page. And in doing so she learned that she might have been scammed. The shelter had told her that the cat was a fifth-generation Savannah cat which as you might know is a wild cat hybrid. Hence the very high adopted fee.
The Savannah cat is a tabby cat but within their DNA there is some serval which is an African wild cat with a rangy body conformation. It is the wild cat with the longest legs to body size of all the wild cat species.
That’s beside the point in the story! Mitchell appears to be a nice person but without wishing to be too critical I think she could have been a little bit more demanding of the shelter when she adopted her cat and asked some questions because in all fairness her cat looks like a standard tabby cat which is exactly what she is.
She had some DNA tests carried out on the back of feedback on TikTok. The tests confirmed that her cat is a regular tabby cat. So, she was scammed by an animal shelter which is exceedingly rare as far as I know. It’ll destroy their reputation. I guess that’s why at the moment it has not been named.
The report on MSN fizzles out at that point. It originally comes from the Daily Mail. The natural question to ask having read that story is, “What did she do next?”
She says that she loves her cat as much as ever notwithstanding that she is not a glamorous Savannah cat. But she should and I hope she has contacted the shelter and asked for a huge rebate being the difference between the adoption fee of a standard tabby cat and the $900 that she paid.
She has all the evidence that she needs. She is guaranteed to get her money back. It is just a question of whether the shelter agrees to give it to her voluntarily or whether she has to fight for it. I would very much doubt that there will be an argument because of the scientific evidence that she has.
To the best of my knowledge, it is very rare to adopt a purebred cat from an animal shelter in America or any other country for that matter because very few owners of purebred cats give up their cat to a shelter.
It may happen when the owner dies, the cats are rescued and placed in a shelter for rehoming. But often times people who own purebred cats make provision for their cats in their will to ensure that they are rehomed within the circle of friends and associates that they know. That would be a better route for rehoming than via a shelter as there is always a risk that shelter cats remain unadopted and sometimes euthanised.
