What It’s Like to Adopt a Shelter Pet (Like Binga)

According to BlogPaws, it is Adopt a Shelter Pet Month. If you Google it, though, October seems to be Adopt a Shelter Dog Month. But since we’re a cat family here, and there is actually a shelter cat among us, I thought I’d stick with shelter pet and devote a mostly Flashback Friday post to Binga, who was adopted from the Lacy Street animal control facility, one of the toughest city shelters in Los Angeles. The photo above was taken almost exactly 12 years ago, in early October, 2003! Binga had been living with the humans for nearly two years by then.

Many of you have seen this kitten photo of Binga before, but there aren’t many kitten pictures of her because my human didn’t have a digital camera back in 2000. Binga was insane as a kitten! The humans had no idea what they were getting into. In fact, my human named her Binga because she bounced off the walls, bing-bing-bing! And she was feisty. A friend came over and as he held her, he said she looked “tore-up” (that’s what he thinks of all tortoiseshell cats)… and Binga bit him!

As you can see, even back in the early 2000s, my human was making cats pose with dumb things. Binga didn’t appreciate it.

And she has always been the same way about not wanting to share things. Here she is, telling off Sparkle because she did not want her playing with the Alpine scratcher… even though my human got it for Sparkle.

But when the mood strikes her, she can be fun. Here she is playing with Sparkle on the new cat tree.

And here she is playing with me over a decade later… on the same cat tree!

And here is a recent photo of Binga. My human wasn’t thinking of adopting when she walked into that shelter. She was actually looking for a neighborhood cat that had gone missing. But when she saw Binga as a kitten, desperately begging to be released from her cage, reaching out with her paws and licking anyone’s fingers who tried to pet her, she knew that she did not belong there. So she and her boyfriend rescued her from the place. There are cats in shelters that need a home every day of every month, not just October.

I know a lot of people think shelters, especially the city-run kill shelters, are horrible, depressing places. A lot of them are. Can you imagine being stuck there, unable to leave? That’s why you should go visit one next time you want to add a kitty to your family. And if you wind up with one like Binga… don’t say I didn’t warn you!
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Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” Sparkle had answers to many annoying problems in her two award-winning books! Visit her author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of her awesome Dear Sparkle books!