Since Coco decided to move out and not pay us any more attention, my partner missed having a cat around. He grew up with cats and he was upset that Coco now ignored him. Coco would sit on the fence and look at my partner as if he didn’t recognise him. He wanders around the yard, aloof, concentrating on his own cat thoughts. He doesn’t even accept food from my partner any more. The behaviour is really weird, because Coco’s siblings always come around to be patted and fed.
For weeks my partner looked at online ads for kittens, but what was disheartening was the fact that people are greedy and the cheapest 5 month old kitten was over $600, even up to $2,500. He wasn’t going to spend a stupid amount of money on something a few years ago was free.
As he searched the ads, he came across a $250 kitten. Even though it was still expensive, it wasn’t as expensive as the rest of them. He contacted the seller and she said that we could come other pick it up that night, or the following afternoon. Because we live on the west side of Melbourne, and the kitten was near where my sister lived on the east side, it would take us 1.5 hours to drive there. He told the seller that we will pick the kitten up at midday. She agreed.
We decided to pay my sister a visit on the way, which was nice to catch up. While there my partner messaged the seller that we were about 15 minutes away, and she replied with “the kitten can’t be located”. I immediately thought that was weird. Who uses the word “located”, wouldn’t you use “the kitten has gone missing” or “I can’t find the kitten”? That was the first alarm bell.
But we left my sister’s house to go and collect the kitten. My partner messaged the seller again once we arrived and she replied with “The kitten still can’t be located.”
It was then that my partner realised that she was just wasting our time. We drove 1.5 hours to collect a kitten that didn’t exist. Of course he sent her a message about how she wasted our time, and she removed the ad from the sales platform. He wanted to believe that the kitten was sold to someone who offered more money, rather than realising it was just someone wasting our time.
We went home, kittenless. My partner was really upset because he had his heart set on collecting the kitten.
He kept looking for kittens. I came up with the idea that he should look at rescues – even though I have issues with them because of Nova. He found a rescue and fell in love with a kitten, her big eyes were a winner. The rescue wanted $400 for the kitten, but he asked whether they could lower it a little. They did, by $50.
So, we went to pick up the new kitten that night from Sunshine.
The rescue was amazing. They handed us a package of paperwork which included a desexing, microchip and vaccination certificate, a contract that had to be signed, a glossy booklet called “the kitten guide” published by Petcover and several flyers for 15-30% of various kitten related products. We had to fill in a form to change the microchip information over. Honestly, I was expecting the adoption of Nova to be like that, but it was nothing like it. It was half-arsed and rude. After all, all I got was an email saying “This is your health record”… even the vet thought that was strange.
Anyway, the next day the kitten was up for sale again on Gumtree, under a brand new account. I would be very surprised if she actually “located” it.