A few of you may have noticed we haven't shared any photos of our two cats in the last few months. Good eye, and also a teary one at that. I thought I owed you all a bit of an explanation as to why we had to leave our cats in Georgia and not take them with us when we moved back to the Chicago area.
I'm going to note here that it was an extremely tough decision that we made on our part, and in all honesty, it was mostly myself that had a more that my fair share of tears when deciding this path for our fur babies.
When Zach and I knew that we wanted to get back to our family in Chicago and after going after a dream of building our own home, we knew the process was not going to be as easy as we thought. In a perfect world, we would have found our dream home, packed all our items in the moving van and drive up with our family and fur babies to our brand new home.
Unfortunately when it comes to building a home ( and it can be a long process ) we had about a 4-5 month gap in between when we were moving to Illinois and officially moving into our new home. If you've been following my blog for a while, you know that our Zach had bought Ellie for me when we were in college, about 9 years ago. It was also known that she fully attached herself to me and despised anyone else. It had becoming almost a joke because Zach has rescued her from a shelter at 4 months ago but she could care less about him and only wanted me 24/7.
After college I moved back home with my family to attend graduate school ( Ellie and I lived in the current basement we are living in now ) for two years. Zach and I got married, saved money for our first home and had Lily all within a year and a half. We found out only 3 months after moving into our home that we were getting transferred to Atlanta. We loved our three years down there ( both in an apartment and our amazing home ) and even added another sweet kitten, Belle, for my 30th birthday.
My kids adored having two kitties to play with. It was a bit of process to have Ellie adjust to a new playmate as you can tell, she's one independent woman, but we managed. When we realized that we wanted to be closer to family, we had a long talk about if we would move our cats as well. Ultimately we didn't want to because pets are family in our eyes, but we also didn't want to put them through the stress of moving, being confined to a basement for 5 months and then move again.
They must have sensed us being stressed because both girls behaviors changed overnight. They began peeing outside their litter box in our daughters room, on our couch and everywhere in between. When you're trying to sell your home and you have that smell everywhere, it was a nightmare. I even brought them to the vet to see what we could do but there wasn't anything to be done.If you're thinking about starting the process to find a new home for your pets, here are a few steps we began to take.
1. Call your local shelter - I began calling local shelters in our county as well as in the city to see if they had any room for our girls. Some shelters and rescue organizations may have posts about your pet as a courtesy listing while your pet stays at your home. Some agencies may even have programs to help you rehome your pet as well.
2. Advise through friends, neighbors and local veterinarians- If you think about your personal network, they may be the best pool of adopters for your pet. We asked many neighbors, work and school friends if they were interested in taking the girls and we were in luck as one neighbor decided to take one, while another friend took our other. I felt so blessed to have kind, helpful people who I trusted and knew would take care of our little ones for us.
3. MakeYour Pet More Attractive To Adopters - Have your pet be vaccinated and checked by your veterinarian. If your pets are spayed or neutered they may be more an attractive adoption
I get a few updates here and here about how they are doing and I truly only advise doing this if you really are at your last resort. We know our girls are doing amazing, are loved and feel that it's best for them to be where they are at. Have you been through this too on needing to find a new home for your pets and if so, how did you cope?
