Kitty Rentals: A Great Idea To Help Homeless Shelter Animals

What is better than owning a cat? Kitty rentals, which is also a great way to help overcrowded shelters and house an animal in need for a few days.

Yes, kitty rentals are the latest rave for those people who love a furry friend, but can’t own one for different reasons. The brilliant idea was born where else, in Silicon Valley and it’s similar to what many people know as animal fostering.

Animal fostering is similar to kids fostering. A family or individual takes in a kitty, puppy, rabbit, parrot, or any other homeless animal home, gives it some much needed TLC, and prepares them for moving into their own loving home. It is a crucial component of animal rescue life.

Just like us humans, animals who are abandoned and homeless are usually traumatized because of the situation in which they have been placed. So what could be best than kitty rentals? If you love cats, but can’t afford to raise and keep one forever, it’s the next best thing, for the animal and possibly you.

According to the Huffington Post, shelters rely on selfless volunteers to take their residents in and give them some sort of normalcy before placing them in a permanent home. This is a great way to make the animals more social and used to interaction with other humans.

Fostering pets helps all involved. The shelters free up some much-needed space, it gives the animals stability, and brings down euthanasia rates, a sad fact of these animals’ lives. Finnegan Dowling, spokesperson at the Humane Society Silicon Valley, spoke about kitty rentals in particular.

“It’s the only affordable rental in the Bay Area: it’s free. We provide the food, the supplies, the vet care and the kittens. You just bring them in for regular checkups and bring them in when they’re old enough to be adopted.”

This is the perfect time to try a kitty rental, as spring and summer are known as “kitty season” meaning that the shelters are full to capacity and struggle to accommodate all the homeless residents. As such, this is the time when volunteers are most needed to promote animal adoptions.

According to Dowling, the kitty rentals is indeed the same as what is otherwise known as animal fostering. The efforts target pet lovers who have lots of affection to give a kitty in need.

“We seem to have a never-ending stream of kittens available,” Dowling told the Huffington post. “There’s a lot of awesome people who love kittens, would have a blast doing it and would do a great job.”

[Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images]