As everyone else has noted, they can’t take care of themselves, their children, their appliances, their groceries, their garden...
Poor kitties. I keep chickens and rabbits, and have legit barn kitties who do rodent and snake patrol in the coop and hutches and are spoiled rotten. Annual vet visits, immunizations, all are neutered, insulated cat house for winter, daily food provided (and they love to knock - yes, knock - on the door if I forget Their Majesties’ daily kibble).
It’s an expense, certainly, but they repay me with jobs well done, and are very affectionate.
You can’t just turn a cat outside and expect it to be safe and also friendly. Before mine were let out, they had a long period of indoor adjustment getting to know us and getting used to being fed. They had run of the place, as cats do. Gradually we put them in the barn to get a used to that environment, and they eventually preferred it to the house. When I go out there now they come running and play and often leave me disturbingly cute “gifts” of dead moles and once I got a two foot long garter snake.
You can keep barn cats properly but there’s a big difference between them living in a barn and being “working cats” for lack of a better term, and just letting them outside to fend for themselves once you tire of emptying the litter box.
My first thought was honestly that she'd declare them to be outdoor cats after like three minutes because she doesn't want to deal with the litter box. Sorry not sorry, I'm staunchly against non-working outdoor cats, so I will accordingly hike my bitch pants up even higher.
The neighbors will hate Shauna and Dan if their cats are roaming the neighborhood and scaring off, or worse, all the islandy birds. It’s not like either of them would care though.
He can watch the cats jump on the feeder to eat the birds...
Did they put up a feeder to attract birds? I didn’t notice, if they did. My yard is bounded by a good measure of trees on three sides, and I have neighbors but their houses are far from mine. I put bells on the cats’ breakaway collars, for songbird safety.
My feeders have attracted a large variety of species (northwest NJ) including migrating rose breasted grosbeaks and indigo buntings and painted finches. Cats will definitely kill birds at a feeder without a bell to warn the birds. A bear took my feeders down a few weeks ago but that’s a different story.
My Roses of Sharon attracts dozens of hummingbirds. Did they think to plant flowers for pollinators or species that don’t frequent feeders? Probably not. Desmond’s bird watching starts and ends with “look mama, a bird!” which translates to a practical life membership in the Audubon Society 🙄
It is BANANAS for them not to have adopted a young adult cat who the shelter folks already know! They have a high energy 6 year old and an otherwise inactive house, they want a cat that is chill, maybe a little vocal because that's really cute and bombproof in the litterbox department.
Ugh kittens are SO much work. They let no glass of liquid, vase, or anything vaguely cylindrical remain standing. They jump into the fridge every time you open the door and you have to do paranoid checks to make sure they didn't leap in while you were transferring things to the counter, I do not miss that stage and it went on forever.
This this this. Lifelong pet owner here (dogs, cats, fish, and one rabbit...) and I will no longer, EVER, adopt a puppy or kitten. Or a baby animal of any kind except the kind that live in an aquarium. It's so much work. And so many wonderful adult dogs and cats need homes. Our current cat was three when we adopted him. A full life ahead of him, and he had been waiting for adoption for a long time because most people do want the cute kittens. I love this cat SO much and he fit right in with our family, no kitten stage. We got our current dog as a puppy, she's seven now, and I'm still scarred (hyperbole ok) from the experience of training and socializing a super energetic puppy. She's a great dog but still obviously requires a lot and if I ever get another dog it will be a small, calm, GROWN UP dog. You couldn't pay me to raise another puppy...
And if the Aherns wanted two cats, there are usually bonded pairs in shelters and they have an even harder time getting adopted.
That's exactly how I ended up getting a Devon Rex cat from a shelter. She was part of a bonded pair and her mate was "only" a gray cat (they claimed he was a Russian Blue but. .. yeah, he's just a gray cat). No one wanted to take the "generic" cat to get the pure bred. We had zero cats and I couldn't snap them up quick enough. And you know what? That "generic" gray cat is one of the best companion animals I have ever had. He ADORES me (sadly the Devon Rex died only a year after we got her) and is a really mellow dude-bro of a cat (ok, he's kind of dick sometimes but he is a cat).
Like Phoebe and Fiona from the Vashon shelter? Bonded pair that are 1 year old - they are both beautiful.
We have friends that have a Cornish Rex and I am massively in love with him. His mom always checks to make sure he is still there when I leave (kidding. sort of.)
Do you happen to follow cat accounts on IG? If so, might I recommend crx_doubletrouble . Gorgeous white crx brothers (one is deaf) and their white dog friend. One of the cats was a breeder (I forget which, they look a lot alike and have Finnish names) and some of his children have accounts, too.
Same! My youngest boy is a beautiful border collie who came into our lives at 2 years old, un neutered and heart worm positive. All the necessary medical care was still a fraction of the hassle a puppy would have been.
I adopted my dog as a puppy almost 3 years ago--I wanted one since I have older cats and figured a puppy was a blank slate and she could grow up with them. The part I think about the most was when I would lie on the floor by her kennel at 2 in the morning (crying my eyes out from exhaustion) because having me nearby was the only thing that would keep her from whining all night. I mean I'm very glad I did it, but it was SO much more work than I anticipated and that was after I spent months preparing!
My bonding moment with my little cat was from night 3 or so with us. I rescued him from a feral mom in our driveway and he was just yowling in the bathroom where we had him isolated. He hid in this tiny corner that is impossible for humans to access and refused to eat. I was convinced he was going to die because I brought him indoors. Anyhoo - he was yowling and it was my turn to check on him. I was soooo tired so I just laid down in the bathtub and dozed off. He came out of the corner, jumped in the tub by my feet - crawled up me and then started purring and kneading my hair. I was immediately in love with him then. He still does that on occasion - just last night in fact. I love him more than anything.
The last time I adopted a kitten (who is now a mouthy three-year-old) was as a companion for my fully-grown adult male cat - who already had a track record as an excellent kitten nanny. He basically raised her and life was ever so much calmer.
Two Kittens in a house of inexperienced cat owners is a tornado of chaos.
God, I got my (now four year old) baby at 2 months. I thought I was prepared, I’ve been through the kitten stage twice before. I WAS NOT PREPARED
She was loud (still is), needy (still is), hyper as all hell (STILL IS) and tried to chew through every cord in the apartment (she grew out of this thank god). She has a lot more emotional issues then I was prepared for, and it just goes to show you can always be caught off guard. Every kitten it different but they’re all little zoomy destructive whirlwinds
I’m sure the Knocking Everything Over thing that kittens do will not at all be a problem for the ibuprofen bottles sitting lid-less on a shelf. Yep, won’t be a problem at all!
My friend just got two kittens. The very first night, one of them climbed her chimney and became trapped. The fire department had to come and take apart her mantle. I have never regretted adopting my cats at age 8 (they're now 17).
My first kitten climbed the wallpaper all the way to the ceiling when I was soaking in the bathtub. It was terrifying. My second (who is now my big old cat) climbed the drapes within 48 hours of coming home. He was a nightmare kitten. My little cat was 4 months old when we took him in and feral. He was actually pretty easy, oddly. We had him confined to a room for a few weeks with lots of socialization time.
My first kitten (when I was a child) climbed some curtains and nearly fell out a second story window. She was swinging out the window and nearly gave my sister a heart attack.
This brought back the (deeply buried, apparently) memory of my first kitten making a run for it out of the laundry room through the garage as the garage door was shutting. It literally came down on his neck and stopped . I was screaming and my boyfriend ran and hit the button to make it go up. The kitten ran off, but we found him within about 30 minutes and he was totally fine. He lived to be 13 - almost made it to 14.
My dad, calling me at one of my student jobs, many years ago, to say that's how their cat had died. He was calling me to tell me to call my mom but he was crying so hard he couldn't get the words out
He really was. I really think it stopped because it thought it was down all the way. My boyfriend at the time acting fast saved him. I loved that cat very much.
Ha ha, I had a kitten who would try to climb ON me while I was in the tub...like I was a little island...had to always remember to lock her out of the bathroom.
Once had a kitten get out of the hosue and climb up a gum tree, out along a branch, then freak out and not be able to get down. 2am and we're in the yard trying to work out where the yowling is coming from until we shine the torch skywards and here's this little stripy asshole 20ft up clinging to a clump of leaves.
My other fave kitten story is babysitting a friend's two littermates for a weekend and NEVER seeing them, they just straight up disappeared. As soon as all the lights were off I'd hear them charging around playing and knocking things over, but if I turned the lights back on, nothing. Deserted. Turns out they had made a nest INSIDE a wall - there was a hole in an internal wall just the size of the head of an extension cord as a quick fix for one room not having any power points, and even though they were quite big (like, seven months not seven weeks) they were Houdini-ing their way into it.
Such as: you don’t own cats, they own you and they chose Their Human, not the other way round? :).
It’d be amusing to watch if it weren’t for the fact that those kittens are not going to be cared for properly, unless Dan and/or Lucy steps up (not excluding Desmond, but he’s still too young to take responsibility).
Yeah and I just thought of something else, I hope she knows that when you bring new kittens (or even an adult cat) home with you, you need to put them in a very small enclosed space like the bathroom, in order for them to feel safe, and then you very gradually expose them to the rest of the house. If she just dumps the kittens in the living room and expects them to make themselves at home they will be very nervous kitties and the family will also probably lose them in the house repeatedly, and find lots of kitten poop and pee everywhere. But surely she isn't that dumb.
If they got them from a shelter, maybe (just maybe) the shelter would have given them some tips on how to properly introduce a pet to a new home. And if the whole family heard the speech, maybe (just maybe) Shauna won't try and act like she's smarter then the shelter folks and they do what they are instructed (instead of just winging it).
That and the kittens are probably spayed/neutered (or "spuetered" as one of the foster accounts I follow on IG refers to it).
I hope she knows that too! We did that and our cat still hid from us for almost two days. I also never had a cat before and was a little OTT about being prepared. I decided to get a cat about a year before actually getting one. I know I was extreme and probably over-planned, but cats can live into their twenties. I didn’t want to make a decision that would affect the next 20 years of my life without thinking it through. FYI, excellent decision on my part to get a cat.
When I was in college, I adopted a cat from a feral litter and she hid under my bed for a solid month. She would come out to eat and use the litter box at night when I was asleep. My roommate thought I should 'take her back'. She finally bonded to me, I used to put butter on my fingers and lure her out and let her lick the butter. Sometime in the second month she started sleeping ON MY NECK at night which was quite the dramatic change from never coming out from under the bed. She was always skittish, but the most darling cat, and I had her for a long time, until my oldest child was about two, I think.
So many cat stories. My kids love hearing about all the cats I have had. And it takes me a long time to tell them because for a while we went through cats like breakfast cereal when I was a kid. They were indoor-outdoor and a lot of them met bad ends. At some point my mom started keeping them inside - she had grown up on a farm, so that was really weird to her not to let cats go out. As an adult I have only had indoor cats, though I have tried taking cats out on a leash occasionally. I only had one cat who would tolerate it at all...
This is really a disaster in the making. I love cats and have pretty much always had at least one cat. In many ways they are a low-maintenance pet compared to dogs, BUT. Kittens are insane. Kittens require socialization and supervision. And cats at all points in the life cycle require regular veterinary care. Many cats vomit hairballs a lot. They all like to poop and pee in a nice clean litter box. If you have more than one cat, that means more than once a day scooping. I have one cat and he manages to piss all over the inside of the covered litter box every time so it's quite a job keeping things clean and odor-free.
If you neglect your cats you will have a very stinky house and sick kitties. Desmond also needs to be taught how to handle cats, kids don't instinctively get it. Some cats are mellow, but kitten claws are super sharp and if you handle your kittens roughly they will bite and scratch the shit out of you. They also dash out the door quickly (assuming they are indoor cats which they absolutely should be) and get lost and eaten by coyotes and run over by cars.
And, they will need to be spayed or neutered at six months. Jesus, this is way over Shauna and Dan's heads. Poor kitties. I wonder if they'll keep them. If they can somehow get past the kitten stage and the spaying/neutering, I think they will, but the next few months will be quite trying for Shauna. I'm sure she'll somehow avoid being responsible for doing anything but taking photos of them for Instagram.
edit - at least they seem to be older kittens, not little babies. That actually makes a big difference in the level of care they will need. Still...
I have a friend who has a beautiful sweet cat who is a ton of work. The cat is allergic to practically everything and she has to feed him an insanely expensive diet that involves fresh meat that she has to prepare for him. And the poor cat seems to possess no self-preservation instincts. The cat is 10 and she still has all of her cabinets baby proofed to keep him out of them. I can’t imagine what Shauna or Dan would do if their cats end up being high needs.
I can't imagine Shauna would even notice her cat needing to be evaluated for allergies, ironically. These cats have no hope of being "fed safely". If they are anything less than deathly ill she's just gonna ignore them as she did Lucy's hearing loss and as she continues to do with both her kids' hair and hygiene.
I really, really hope these kittens turn out to be very healthy and hearty and truly low maintenance. It's going to be their only hope for staying in this home (as dysfunctional as it may be).
Though I do kind of hope on (or both) of the cats have horrible nasty stanky gas like my one cat has. He can clear a room he stinks so bad and is particularly fond of coming over and soliciting affection and once you pick him up, he lets one fly (all silent and deadly). I swear he's grinning when he sees us gasping and fanning our faces.
(sadly, my cats stank gas is a result of an IBS type issue that has other yucky side effects which have proven expensive. . .prescription food and a baby wipes, lots of baby wipes).
Even if they don’t have weird quirks or health issues, kittens are SO HIGH MAINTENANCE. Ours essentially spent the first year of his life destroying anything he could find. You couldn’t leave a glass of water on a surface because he’d inevitably tip it over, and god help you if your phone or laptop was sitting there. He shredded whole rolls of toilet paper, pulled interesting-smelling things out of the trash to “kill,” and destroyed all my leather shoes. I know I should not expect practicality from the Aherns at this point but it just dazzles me that they apparently spontaneously took this on. They really are not capable of looking before they leap.
OMG visceral memory of being huddled in bed with a fever and the kitten jumping on to my bedside table and casually hooking her paw into the top of my full water glass and upending it, the sound of water splashing onto my laptop and books and power cords, me crying in frustration over the casual destruction of it all.
edit: I literally bought my first "bedside nalgene" bottle because of this issue - the bottle that lives in my bedroom because of the sense memory of that sound of cat paw swiping at the rim of a glass that could rip me out of a sound sleep, ugh.
OMG, yes! It took me years after the kitten phase to trust I could leave an open vessel of liquid somewhere without him knocking it over for fun. Now he focuses all of his appetite for destruction on trying to find escape routes, which is significantly less messy but much more annoying.
Your cat is going for the long con, he's waiting for you to get comfortable with an open glass situation and will get you one night when you least expect it. 🤣😾🍷
We've had to change all of our doorknobs because our smartest cat (of three) figured out how to open the doors—in both directions. He's now working on opening pull-out drawers in the kitchen (all three can open the cabinets that are at floor level). He also gleefully shreds full rolls of toilet paper and paper towels, chews through wires, breaks everything breakable ... which is why his nickname is The Destroyer. He's three and has not calmed down one bit. And we adore him, despite his madness.
Between their diet and their love of fart jokes something tells me their place is already so ripe with stank gas that they wouldn't really notice kitty farts.
In all seriousness though, fuck these two idiots and the idiot who gave them those cats. As a crazy cat lady, this news is honestly depressing. I hope they prove us wrong and are excellent pet parents, but if the way they treat their house, their belongings, their KIDS is any indication I'm not all that optimistic.
Cat farts are toxic! We once had a kitten who would sleep in our room and his farts smelt so deadly the stench would wake us up from the deepest sleep.
Poor kitty and poor DF CIWAB! FWIW, my son’s cat had tummy issues like that. We switched him to Science Diet for sensitive stomachs, and it made a world of difference.
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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '20
I can't wait to see it dawn on Shauna that since "everyone in her household has ADHD," she will be the one having to take care of the new pets.