Adopting pets from shelters isn’t always a simple or straightforward experience. But what you probably don’t expect is to walk into a shelter for a young cat and instead come home with a senior cat who was misidentified from the very start. Yet that’s exactly what happened to Reddit user u/ConditionGentlyUsed from Washington, whose attempt to adopt a cat from the Seattle Animal Shelter turned into what they described as “the most mismanaged experience” in their 15 years of caring for animals.
In their post, the user explained that it all began last Thursday when they visited the Seattle Animal Shelter and met a sweet cat labeled as a 10-month-old female on stray hold. Staff told them the cat had an upper respiratory infection and wasn’t ready for adoption just yet but reassured them that she would likely be available the following day.
The next day, the cat’s profile appeared online as “available,” so they rushed back to the Seattle Animal Shelter, only to be met with a whirlwind of confusion. Several staff members gave them contradictory information about whether the cat could be adopted at all. After a three-hour wait, one staff member finally suggested they begin fostering her instead, explaining that once the cat recovered, they could finalize the adoption. They even admitted they “didn’t know” whether the cat was spayed. The user was told to bring her back in a week for a check-up and possible spay procedure before the adoption could be made official.
It sounded like a reasonable plan, until the user brought the cat home. That’s when the red flags really started piling up. “As soon as she was out of the carrier, I noticed she was limping, her eye was cloudy, and she had fleas,” the Redditor wrote. They immediately combed and bathed her, then reported the issues through the shelter’s foster parent portal. The shelter told them to come in on Monday to get her limp checked out.
When Monday came, the situation only got stranger. At first, the Seattle Animal Shelter staff told them that the cat wouldn’t be spayed that day because she still hadn’t fully recovered from her infection. But later, when the user came back to pick her up, they were told the surgery had been performed anyway. On top of that, staff casually mentioned that the limp was the result of an old injury, brushed off concerns about the fleas and cloudy eye, and then dropped the biggest bombshell of all: The cat wasn’t 10 months old. She was closer to 10 years old.
“This was devastating,” the user admitted. “I lost my last cat just over two years ago. I wasn’t ready for an older cat because I didn’t think I could handle losing another one so soon. But it’s been five days now, and I’ve already bonded with her. She’s my cat, no matter what.”
Other redditors on the Seattle subreddit were stunned after reading about the user’s experience. Many agreed that the situation seemed to stem from serious management issues at the Seattle Animal Shelter. One commenter wrote, “That’s just crazy! There’s a big difference between a 10-month-old cat and 10 years, and they couldn’t tell? The whole thing sounds a bit odd. You are a very nice person to adopt her regardless, and I have no doubt she will have a happy life.”
