As anyone who follows me on Twitter knows, I recently adopted a kitten. After a long and arduous search, one that included visiting tons of shelters, browsing PetFinder.com, and attending adoption events, I found the perfect guy for me at Denver Municipal Animal Shelter. His name is Señor Macho Solo (after 30 Rock) and he’s a lynx point Siamese. He’s sweet and playful and has boundless energy, something that encouraged me to find him a companion so he wouldn’t be so bored when I’m gone during the day.

The search began again as I tried to find the perfect sidekick for little Macho. I checked out the websites of various shelters, including Boulder Humane Society where I got two precious kittens as a child. Knowing that many shelters don’t haven time to constantly update their websites, and that there would likely be an influx of new kittens after Christmas as people “returned” their “gifts”, I decided to make a stop at MaxFund Animal Shelter in Denver. Widely publicized as a no-kill shelter that truly values the lives of animals, MaxFund seemed like a place where I could find a little buddy for Macho and feel good about supporting such a good cause. Little did I know what kind of insensitive and irresponsible behavior I would encounter.

Once at the shelter, we headed to the cat room (the kitten room was closed due to an outbreak of ringworm) and started browsing for a cat with the right temperament. There were some adorable cats, but I worried that most were too mellow for my playful little friend. The two volunteers that were manning the cat room led us to another area in the veterinary part of the shelter with two larger cat enclosures. On our way there, we saw a man with a box of kittens headed towards the entrance of the shelter. Once inside the cat rooms in the veterinary wing, we found some big sweet cats, but none that seemed to be the purrrrfect fit. (I couldn’t resist!) On our way out, we saw two kittens outside in the cold who ran towards the door as we opened it. They had no doubt come from the box the man was trying to surrender.

One was a little Siamese that reminded me a bit of Macho with his curious and playful attitude and one was a sweet and mellow gray longhair. After being encouraged by the staff and volunteers at MaxFund, we agreed to take the kittens to a vet at our expense and see if they would fit in with our other cats. My mom agreed to take the gray and I decided the Siamese would be a good fit. We were assured by everyone that, if the kittens didn’t get along with our other cats, we could take them back to MaxFund any time. We headed to the only veterinary office that happened to be available the day after Christmas and spent a pretty penny getting the little guys their first shots and a thorough health check to make sure they didn’t have anything that could spread to our other cats. After receiving a clean bill of health, we took them home, first to my house to let Macho decided who he liked best.

He chose the Siamese, which I named Rickety Cricket (after It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) due to his crooked tail. My mom took the little gray kitty home and began the process of getting him comfortable in her house and introducing him to her other cats. He didn’t fare as well and was more nervous than his brother around other cats. My mom decided to make him comfortable in a room in her house and we planned to take him to MaxFund in the morning.

We called MaxFund the next morning and told them the story and that we wanted to bring one of the kittens back to the shelter. This is when we got a glimpse behind the façade of feel-good animal care that they claim to represent. The woman on the phone told us that, not only could we not bring the kitten back, but that they had refused the man with the box of kittens and were not accepting any new animals. In the conversation, we found out that they had a very cavalier attitude as to what the irresponsible pet owner’s options would be. A man who brings a moving box full of kittens to a shelter is not exactly the kind of person who’s going to drive from shelter to shelter trying to find a home for his kittens. MaxFund’s answers was that they typically just called animal control to come catch “stray” cats outside their shelter. When we said that it didn’t seem right to just leave a box of unsterilized domestic kittens who had no idea how to fend for themselves outside in the cold, the woman on the phone replied, “They’re just cats.”

That attitude—that a cat can just fend for itself outside—is exactly the kind of thing that fans the fires of Denver’s feral cat problem. Just putting out one or two house cats that haven’t been fixed can create a population explosion in a short period of time that strains the resources of Denver’s Animal Control and leads to many cats being euthanized. Shame on MaxFund for essentially ignoring this kind of thing! I completely understand if they don’t have the resources to take in the cats, but they could at least hold them there until Animal Control can come get them. Just leaving them outside means they can be eaten by foxes, hit by cars, or picked up and labeled unadoptable feral strays. I guess it’s easy to be a no-kill shelter when you let someone else do the killing.

In the end, we decided the kittens would be better off adapting to our homes than roaming the streets or sitting in a kennel at the pound. The entire experience has left me very soured on MaxFund and very upset with the way they handled everything. If I get any more pets, I’ll get them from Denver Municipal Shelter, where you truly are saving a life by adopting. I can only hope that MaxFund figures out a better way to handle pet surrenders in the future.