MEOW Cat Rescue Mercer Island Eastside Orphans and Waifs, Bonne Vevea Bad experience, Kirkland, Washington

My family had some bad experiences fostering for MEOW. Their staff take in some feral cats in addition to socialized ones. When we signed up to foster, we told them that we were uncomfortable fostering ferals, but would be happy to foster socialized ones.

Aware of this, they kept giving us cats to foster that they knew were ferals and telling us they weren't. The way it would work is they would hand over the cats to us to foster, already in kennels when we arrived, assuring us they were fully socialized. We'd take their word for it. By the time we got home, there was a message from a MEOW volunteer on our answering machine telling us not to return the cats until they were socialized! And, what do you know, we'd let the cats out of the kennels and they were completely feral. Then we had the choice of a) trying to socialize a feral cat, not an easy task, b) trying to return the cat to MEOW, also not an easy task, c) trying on our own to find an adoptive family or sanctuary for a feral cat, again, not an easy task.

Unfortunately, the above happened more than once. Granted, we should have learned our lesson the first time with them, but it didn't give them a right to bait-and-switch, either.

The final time we fostered for them, when we let the foster cat out of the kennel at our home, we noticed that there was fresh blood on the towel in the kennel (towels are sometimes put in the kennel because it's more comfortable for the cat). The cat didn't appear to be bleeding--not that we could get very close to her-- so we called MEOW to ask about it. We learned that the blood was probably a MEOW volunteer's; before we had arrived the cat had seriously attacked her while she was putting the cat in the kennel and she had to have her hands and arms bandaged. The volunteer was conveniently out of view when we showed up to pick up the cat. This was the same cat they told us was socialized.

There appeared to be a haughty attitude among some of the management, including co-founder Bonne Vevea, that fosters and volunteers who didn't want to work with the special-needs cases were lightweights, and not truly committed to animal rescue. We felt the cold shoulder from Vevea. We quit fostering for them, which means they lost a foster home that could have been a good fit for their non-feral cats. We have since met others who had similar experiences with MEOW.