| rev:text
| - Please do not adopt any pets from here until they update their standards. I hate to think of animals living in cages, but...
!! At least two cats adopted from here in September have diagnosed with the herpes virus by the vet, and this is contagious to other cats. !!
AKA, it is likely that the shelter staff is not washing hands between handling pets and they are not testing for a virus that can be fatal in kittens.
I recently adopted a kitten from their shelter--I picked him up from their Pittsburgh Public Market adoption station. I was told that he had been tested for common feline viruses and up-to-date on vaccinations. These were both untrue statements. The kitten has the herpes virus and was not vaccinated against this. My roommate, who was with me, and I were warned about the upper respiratory infection (URI) that can occur because of this virus and others, but we were not told that he was neither tested nor vaccinated for the herpes virus. They gave me a paper with his vaccinations, but it was in vet-speak, so I took their word for it.
Furthermore, the shelter staff put my kitten in my roommate's name mistakenly (and claimed that if we just called in that they would fix this mistake, but then wouldn't), so when he got sick, no one from their clinic would return my calls--I'm guessing this was since I wasn't the owner according to their records. I had to email them to get a response, which basically said sorry that we didn't return your calls but this is your problem now. They never apologized for the kitten's health or asked if he was feeling better. Where's the compassion for the animal?
So now I have a very sick kitten on my hands. I took him to the Big Easy in Lawrenceville when he stopped eating, and Dr. Ruiz is the best. She took care of him, but it cost $160 to treat the virus he picked up at the shelter.
The Animal Rescue League shelter/clinic said that it does not and will not cover expenses for this. After I had already taken him elsewhere, the clinic staff said that they would have given me a discount if I had waited two days to go to their clinic, but who would wait two days while the kitten wouldn't eat?? And now this virus makes him ineligible for pet insurance. It will cost hundreds of extra dollars a year to keep him healthy.
Had I not fallen in love with the little monster, I would have taken him back to another shelter. That's what the person who adopted the other kitten with virus did. Whenever he gets an outbreak, he will get another URI. This means a lethargic cat who sneezes, gags, and coughs because he can't breathe and who won't eat because he's too congested to smell his food. It's very sad--protect your cats with the herpes vaccination, please!
Oh, and in case you were wondering: just like in humans, cat herpes is fo' life. Poor little guy. This also ruins my plan of getting another cat in the future. Bad shelter!
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)