One of my favorite weekend activities is volunteering at the Animal Defense League, the only no-kill animal shelter in San Antonio. My favorite place there is the cattery, where I play with the pooties and help potential customers find the right one. Observing the cats is like watching a soap opera, except that the characters get adopted instead of being written out or recast.
Considering that a shelter is the animal equivalent of an orphanage, these kitties live a pretty good life. They have plenty of food (and in many cases, it shows), toys, and humans to play with. And, since it is a no-kill shelter, they can stay as long as they need to. No Dickensian conditions here. However, there is a "dark side."
Follow me below the fold to see what I am talking about.
Many first-time visitors notice it right away: there is a large percentage of black cats in the shelter. Right now, 14 out of the 56 homeless kitties posted on the ADL website are black; that's 25% percent, which is relatively low compared to other times of the year (more about that later). The percentage of tabbies of all colors and varieties put together is only 21 (12 out 56 adoptable adult pooties). The percentage of black cats among the long-term residents (five years or more) is even higher. So what's going on here?
Superstition and prejudice, that's what. It never ceases to amaze me how many people in this day and age still believe in cat-related myths straight from the Middle Ages. According to them, black cats are evil, creepy, witches' familiars, and symbols of everything unlucky. Whenever we think we heard it all, there is another customer telling us a far-out reason why they would never adopt a black cat. I can't count how many time's I've said, "But it's just fur." (We even have a sign that says, "Black kitties need love too.") At the same time, I'm thinking to myself, if our poor Cinderella (who does have a bit of an attitude) were really a demon in disguise, as some customers have claimed, wouldn't she have some kind of powers? And if she did, why would she choose to hang out at an animal shelter for, like, six years?
Of course then there are the weirdos that want to adopt black cats -- only black cats -- for all the wrong reasons. That's why around Halloween no black cat is supposed to leave the premises (white cats can't be adopted either, but we don't get that many of them). So then in early November, we always have an amazing assortment of black felinity. Just around that time, the second kitten season of the year starts, and entire litters of junior pooties come in, most of which are -- you guessed it.
The most far-out (or "furthest out"?) story from a customer I've heard, however, did not discriminate against black cats alone but all cats that aren't tabbies. Why? Because they supposedly lack "the mark of the Virgin."
A lady decided against the cat (not black but calico btw) she had been playing with for twenty minutes because the cat did not have "the mark." She was shocked and amazed that I had never heard of that. Well, supposedly, Baby Jesus in the manger had cold feet, and a tabby cat in the stable warmed them. Out of gratitude, Mary marked the cat with her initial on the forehead, so now all of its descendants have the M. The story must be from a very apocryphal gospel. I couldn't help but ask the lady why Mary, a speaker of Aramaic, would use a letter from the Latin alphabet, particularly at a time when her country was occupied by the Romans. The woman looked at me like I was nuts (the staff member on duty later said that I was too intellectual for my own good). She and her son ended up leaving without a cat, even though there were plenty of tabbies to choose from (but none of them particularly "holy").
Anyways, to those of you who are potential cat adopters, consider the black ones first. They don't deserve their bad reputation and really need a good home.
Does anyone here have a pootie superstition story they would like to share?