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WEST JORDAN -- A West Jordan woman wanted a kitten for her birthday, so she went to the Humane Society. She's adopted pets from there before, and currently owns a cat, but this time she was denied -- all because someone else had a say in the adoption process.
Ally Major filled out an application and she and her husband held interviews, as they had before. But this time the kitten's foster parents weighed in on the adoption, and the answer for Major was a flat-out no. The reason: they didn't like how she planned to raise the cat.
Ask any one of Major's neighbors and they'll tell you her cat, Baca, lives a cushy life -- spending his days running in and out of her West Jordan home.
Major adopted Baca nearly three years ago from the Humane Society of Utah. For her birthday this year, she and her husband went back and fell in love with a brown and white kitten.
"She was three months old, super cute," Major said.
They started the application process and were surprised by all it entailed. Two pages of paperwork and two personal interviews later, the Humane Society rejected the application.
"It was just shocking to hear that you can't have this cat, especially when there are hundreds of cats that will be euthanized if they don't get homes," Major said.
It was during the second interview that a worker asked Major if she allows Baca to go outdoors, and she said yes. The Humane Society told her she'd picked the wrong cat -- a cat that was not allowed to go outside.
"(They) said, ‘Nope, can't have the cat, he could get run over,' naming all these horrible things, making me feel like I'm a bad cat owner," Major said.
She put the cat back in the cage and left in tears.
"Kind of put a sour taste in my mouth, wanting to do a good deed and then having my hand slapped because I let my cat outside," Major said.
"We're always sad and sorry if someone comes away with feeling like they had a bad experience," said Carl Arky with the Humane Society of Utah. "That's not what we want to have happen."
Arky says the Humane Society's application process tells them the kind of home an adopter can provide.
In Major's case, the kitten had been living with a foster family. Because the family had spent two months nursing the cat back to health, doing things like constant bottle feedings, Arky says the family got a big say in the adoption.
"This was a family that said, ‘To us, we want this cat indoors. We've invested too much time, too much effort into this cat to take the risks we feel exist outdoors for a cat,'" Arky said. "We want to do adoptions, but we want to make sure they go to the home that is the right fit for them."
A few days later, Major did open her home to a new friend for Baca: Bella, a gray kitten she found on ksl.com classifieds.
As for the brown and white cat Major wanted to adopt, the Humane Society says another family has adopted it.
The Humane Society says its main priority is finding good homes for the thousands of cats and dogs in need and doesn't intend to hurt anyone's feelings.
E-Mail: aforester@ksl.com
