AdvoCat Rescue — Local services in New York

Unfortunate to have to share this experience as I generally support efforts of pet rescue organizations and all they do. When you look to adopt a cat from Advocat, there is a video meet and greet after a lengthy survey about the future owner's "qualifications" and how you would handle health or behavioral situations. I assumed this was an initial screening step and that there would be a chance to meet the cat before adoption. That is not the case. They won't let you meet the cat at all, and this is post-Covid. During the video call meet and greet, the foster mom was patronizing and while they need to screen out risky adopters and behaviors, they should also be providing some information about the cat. The foster would not introduce herself, she spent a lot of time talking about herself and everything she's done. I repeatedly had to ask the foster to let me see the cat on video. She barely did that. She wanted to spend most of the time questioning me. I answered those questions and also had many questions of my own: cat health, behavior, diet, litter box, playfulness, etc. She either answered me very minimally or said that she doesn't have any information (eg how much does the cat weight as she said it was very large). To many of my questions, she also replied that it's not her role to know the answers - so therefore who is if this is the only interaction?

This process is ridiculously one sided doesn't now allow for a mutual exchange. Since the entire point is to find the cat an adoptive home, I suggest that Advocat revisit how they train and manage their fosters to allow for more quality dialogue and information sharing. And also to allow in person meetings, not to mention a follow-up to the candidate, one way or another. This is not about whether or not my application was approved but rather their overall process.

NOTE: the response from the organization is one-sided and misses the point. Attacking me personally rather than addressing how they train their fosters to interact with potential adopters, the actual process, communication, and to provide background information. I actually did try to speak with this organization in person but they were too busy to...

As of four days ago - I knew NOTHING about cats except what the general law abiding citizen knew. I thought they were cute creatures but I stayed away from cats as the ones I encountered were mostly feral. However, a litter of 6 kittens were crying for multiple nights as of last Sunday. My neighbors and my family found it odd as we’ve had many community cats in the area but we never heard much from them outside of the random “cat fight” in our backyards. We started seeing some of the kittens walk toward us throughout the week, and we inquired about the mother, as she would be best to raise them and we didn’t to interfere. However, given the rapid deterioration of these kittens, we realized that the mother might have been either killed by an accident or abandoned the kittens. We waited almost two days before intervened as the kittens were in our backyard. When we did, we researched as much as we could about how to raise kittens but 5 kittens is overwhelming for anyone - much less people who never owned pets. I reached out to multiple rescue organizations and all of them confirmed that they were over capacity when it came to take in kittens due to the pandemic. However, Advocat came to the rescue - they responded to me via Instagram and helped me place two of these beautiful kittens who I’ve been nurturing over the past 3 days. They were prompt, direct and extremely insightful: Whether it was a flea bathe I had to administer or making sure I went through my checklist of duties as a foster caregiver, they assisted me in many ways. Within the same day I was able to place two of the kittens with a qualified foster parent and alleviate the workload I had taken on. I HIGHLY recommend considering advocat as an organization to adopt kittens or adult cats from because they have been essential in helping me rear and raise these kittens. The neighbors and I plan to keep the remaining litter and raise them as our own family members because we’ve grown way too attached to these beautiful souls. Rescue orgs such as this provide such an invaluable...

I came to know of this organization through a simple cat rescue google search in queens and I'm so glad it was one of the top results that appeared. My neighbor and I had been feeding a stray cat that would pop up on our doorstep, not realizing she was pregnant. We live right next door to one another. I had an old outdoor cat house that I decided to keep in case any stray cat needed a place to sleep.

Anyway, my neighbor discovered the cat delivered some time over the weekend. I googled searched cat rescue organizations. I took a chance and I emailed AdvoCat Rescue and within less than an hour of emailing, they emailed me back. We communicated back and forth with me explaining the situation and them asking further questions and that SAME DAY, they had a caring cat rescuer, Tamara, come out to my neighbors house (the cat house was in my neighbor's yard).

I hate to make this a long story but I must express how patient and caring Tamara was with getting the momma and her kittens. Unfortunately, not all the babies survived because of the winter season and us not knowing proper outdoor care. But two of them did, plus momma of course. So if you ever come across a stray cat or pregnant cat and you care just as much as we did, I highly recommend contacting AdvoCat Rescue. They were just great and acted quick. Just my experience alone says they are legit and genuinely care and that's what these stray cats needs...a caring organization and caring people behind it.

I saw pictures of them on their instagram page, cleaned up and healthy looking, and that's proof I chose the right organization to rescue the family. Thank you guys for all that you do. You have a new follower and a new...