Hey everybody,
We're foreigners here in Finland and we seem to be having a really difficult time finding a cat to share our lives with here.
Here's our problem:
In all the countries we've lived in, we pretty much always adopted strays from the street. Typically the cat walked inside in the summer or meowed at our back door, we gave it some food, it spent the night, and then of course we bonded with the cat and it stayed for years with us, going freely in and out of the house and doing cat things outside when it wasn't inside cuddling with us.
Either that, or we rescued a cat from the local shelter days or hours before it was due to be put down. Again, for some reason, we instantly bonded with the cat.
Since we moved to Finland 7 years ago, we've tried adopting a cat from a local shelter - to no avail.
Problem #1: there are no strays in Finland, because cats aren't legally allowed out. No cats out, no strays, no shelters.
Problem #2: because there are no strays here, cats are in short supply. And I'm saying this literally: the few shelters operating in my area told me cats come in and go within half an hour - and for top dollar too. They're not cheap! Even common grey striped cats you can find a dime a dozen in any other country's shelters.
So we turned to the commercial market. We bought a cat 2 or 3 years ago from a student who said she didn't have time to take care of the cat. Turned out, after spending a week with the cat, it was mental. We had to give it away because it was destroying the house.
2 months ago, we decided to try it again. We're now in a large property with a lot of space. I built a large fenced-off area for the cat to play outside legally. We bought a cat the previous owner said she "had an allergy" to and had to give it up.
Allergy my hiney... This cat is mental too. That's why the owner gave it away: the cat is nice enough, but it has so much energy it too tears the house apart. I'm not kidding: it runs around the house so much it managed to scratch half the wooden floor just by bolting repeatedly when it gets the crazies in its head.
We're loving cat people, but there's nothing we can do to calm it the hell down. So we're going to give it away too before it makes us insane. We had it sterilized, vaccinated, chipped.. the whole nine yards. But it's just a 24/7 tornado. We have to.
The more we look at cats on Tori, the more we can read between the lines now: all the cats listed there are sold because the current owners can't live with their cats either. They're all mental. The cats that aren't mental don't wind up on Tori.
So here's my proposal: if you have a cat you genuinely need to give away or sell for actual genuine reasons other than because the cat has behavioral problems, we would like to take your cat for a couple of weeks with us. If the cat is nice and friendly as you claim, we'll pay you triple what you ask for. If it isn't and you just want to pass the problem to someone else, we return the cat to you. All by contract of course, so neither you or we get shafted.
We're in the Oulu region.
I thought about that. But then we'd have to adopt siblings who grew up together. Random cats that are brought together forcibly hate each other. They just tolerate each other because they have to. Cats aren't social animals in nature, unless they've been brought up together.
As for dogs, that's a no-no. We're not dog people. Like... at all. We can't stand then. And I myself have a deathly fear of dogs because I was badly mauled as a kid, and dogs feel the fear and instantly become aggressive around me.
well my 3 cats beg to differ
Uh no, you don't need siblings that grew up together to have multiple cats. I have a tabby and a Russian blue that get along wonderfully, and there are thousands of other examples you can find online.. like what? There are people with 4+ cats in the same house, you think they all got them from the same litter?? I'm not going to say it always works out, but it's very doable if you introduce them to each other properly.
You having the same exact experience with two different cats and chalking it up to them being "mental" makes one wonder if the problem is the cats at all. You describe your former cats as only getting zoomies "once in a while" or once in the morning and once at night, which suggests you've never had a juvenile cat, or you had one that was oddly lacking in energy. Young cats are terrorists if you don't get the energy out, and yes, that means playing with them past the point of you being tired.
This has never been a problem for me. It may take a little while but they end up getting along just fine.
Cats are actually quite social. I think this misconceptions stems from the fact that cats are solitary hunters (unlike dogs who hunt in packs). Outside hunting they have quite an active social life, which is exactly why you shouldn’t have just one cat, especially if it’s not allowed to go outside and mingle with other cats.
You'd be surprised how social cats are. They don't necessarily hate each other, at least not all of them. What they consider friendly and social among each other might be hard for us to notice.
Alone is hard for an animal. Then again, if you find living with a destroyed (scratched?) floor very difficult you might not want to have more animals.
I have more animals I can count and my bf next door has more - cats, dogs, poultry, pigs, sheep, donkeys, horses all move around among each other. Nobody here has behavioural problems, and even interspecies communication is quite non-aggressive and smooth. Having enough space to get out of each other's way is important, and having enough space in general. When I see how urban pets are kept I get depressed - isolation, boredom, narrow spaces. Of course they go mental!
You do not have to adopt siblings that grew up together. You just have to introduce them slowly, with a door between them for a few weeks. We have two cats that are over 6 years apart. They play and keep each other entertained and have so for over a decade now.