I will go by the Chicago Humane Society and they have all the dogs and cats and you can see them through the windows. Of course the animals are all like “pick me,” except for the one smart ass cat who has his back to the window as if to say “I don’t care.”
Anyway for you pet owners tell us how you came to choose your dog or cat or gerbil or bird or whatever.
And why did you choose him/her over the other pets?
I actually thought up the name (Feather) for a cat, then went looking for a cat who looked Feathery at the local Humane Society. She’s been a great cat. 
For my first cat a friend of my dad’s cat had given birth to kittens so I went to check them out and see if any of them seemed like a good fit. When I walked in the room 3 of the 4 kittens ran and hid under furniture and the 4th walked up and started climbing my pants. He picked me! Obviously he was destined to be my kitty.
For my second cat I was at a PetCo where they had the adoption people with the dogs and cats and it felt like fate. I’d had it in my head that I wanted an orange kitty for a while and I walked over and there was an orange cat just chilling in his cage. He looked at me and I looked at him and it was like he was saying, “Finally! I’ve been waiting for you all day!”
They’ve both been wonderful kitties, full of life and trouble. I couldn’t have made better choices.
I did a shit ton of reading about dog breeds, spent hours on websites with adopted dogs, walked into Pets Inc., said I wanted to adopt a dog that was cat safe, housebroken, and calm. They brought out this ugly dog and we looked at it, shrugged, and took it home. Could have skipped the first couple steps.
Of course, with the cats - the first one we spent hours trying out shelter cats and nervously picked one, feeling guilty about all the others. The second we took home in five minutes because we thought a kitten would blend into the household better and there were only a few. The third I found under a porch.
She was lost and walking down the middle of the road.
The last time I saw a dog doing that I turned around and came back to find her hit by a car.
I said, “Hey! Little dog!” and she looked around and came over to me.
I have never in my life gone looking for a pet. When you work at a vet clinic and your parents live out in the boonies where a lot of assholes abandon animals, your pets just kind of turn up. I don’t bring home every homeless critter who turns up at either place, of course, but every now and again there’s one you just click with at a time when you’re ready to take another one in.
With our rabbits, we wanted two, who were already introduced and getting along, no lops (more ear infections), no angoras (daily brushing or else the fur gets matted), and preferably one was black and white (husband’s preference). We looked in shelters online, then started in on the pet stores. Finally my husband said that we should check the pet store that his childhood pet rabbit came from, over 30 years ago, to see if it was still around, seemed decent, and had rabbits.
It was indeed still there. We saw one rabbit cage. Two adorable little 10-week-old rabbits hanging out comfortably together, Dutch breed (and therefore not lop or angora), and one was black and white. We said to each other later on that we both independently realized at that moment that we were going home with them. They looked healthy and well-fed, and were not skittish when humans came around, so we bought them on the spot. The store didn’t even have a large enough cage for them, so we kept them in the cardboard transport box in the car and ran into a pet store we’d checked for rabbits earlier, to pick up bowls, litter boxes, hay, and a cage.
After losing Whitey the Wonder Cat, I decided it would take at least two cats to replace him. I went to our local vet school, and they took me and another lady into a room where there was a litter of kitties ready to go. One of the kittens had the sweetest, most beautiful face……the other lady bagged her first.
So I stood and watched the kittens play until one of them approached me. I chose him, and then another kitten that didn’t resemble the first. They became Bruno (evil user cat) and Lloyd (big fatty stupid).
My first dog Tilly was selected for me. I had started looking for dogs to adopt, and told my friends to keep their ears open. One friend worked with a lady who was trying to get rid of their dog because she was jumping the fence and running off, because she had to be kept outside all day because someone in the family was super allergic. First thing they said was, “she’s really independent, we haven’t been able to teach her any tricks.” (Other than teaching (TEACHING!) her to jump up on everyone who walks in the door - delightful.) The first day I had her, she had learned “sit” and “lay down”. She still jumps up…
When it came time for a second dog, I knew I was going to get it through my doggie day care (they offer a 2-for-1 on daycare if you adopt through them). I kept an eye on their website for a dog that struck my eye. And finally, they got a new batch in, with a lab mix named Max that just looked perfect. The next time I was in, I stayed late, to see how he got along with Tilly. As Max was running all over the place acting like a fool, Toby was busy giving me the hard sell and showing me how well he could catch balls and pay attention. I went home with Toby later that week.
Sawyer is the only cat I feel like I really picked. The others were strays or abandons that a friend or family member found and I ended up taking in. Sawyer came from a shelter that had at least 20 kittens for adoption, so I had a good selection. I spent a long time holding and playing with each one, unsure of my decision. They were all adorable, how could I pick just one?
Finally, I got around to holding the oldest of the kittens. Most of them were around 6-10 weeks; this one was 3 months old. Unlike the younger kittens, who just wanted to sleep or wiggled and crawled around everywhere when I tried to hold them, Sawyer cuddled up against my chest, purring like he was the happiest creature on the planet. He looked up at me with huge orange eyes and I just knew he was mine.
Sawyer continues to be the friendliest cat I’ve ever met. Every new person is instantly his new best friend. When I took him to the vet, the doctor couldn’t get him to stop purring long enough to listen to his heart. She had to take him to the back room and I can only assume torture him to get him to shut up. 
I found both of my cats on craigslist, at separate times. The first one was rescued from an abandoned apartment and on her way to the shelter if she didn’t find a permanent home, and the second one was rescued from a litter on their way to the shelter.
I have always owned “rescue” animals.
When one of my dogs died, my girlfriend suggested that I get a puppy, so I started looking at the pound and the Humane society. I found a puppy that was described as a Chow / Golden mix (I’ve always liked Chows), so I went to the Humane society to see her. They said that the puppy had been transferred to a different location, so the GF and I went out together to find her. When we got there, nobody knew where the puppy was. One of the workers told us a cage location, but she wasn’t in it. So, we went looking for ourselves. We found a puppy that looked like the one in the photo, but it was in a cage marked “adopted,” and it had the wrong name on the cage.
We asked about this puppy, and finally, someone figured out what had happened - she was scheduled to go on TV the next day for their annual adoption drive, and they had moved her to a different cage. So, everyone who had come by would have thought that she was already adopted. This was just extra confirmation that she was meant to be ours.
Oh, and she has about as much Chow in her as I do. Her name is Grace, and her photo is below.
We adopted Andy from Petsmart (they work with local rescue organizations). We were very interested in him, and when we were talking to the adoption person, she asked if we had other dogs. We said that we did, and she asked us to bring Grace by. We said we would be back in 10 minutes. When we got back, someone else was asking her about him. We looked at each other with a *WTF! * expression. Well, they didn’t want him enough to put in a contract, so we got him.
Here are Grace and Andy.
That is an amazing picture, beowulff. Such good doggies!
That’s how I got my first two kittens. A litter of barn cats came into the hospital where I worked and I just clicked with the orange one, so I brought him home and he and my husband were instant best friends. Then the runt of the same litter stayed with us in the hospital for a while and wasn’t adopted, so I took him home too! They were best friends until the orange died last year.
Mr. Elysium found our girl cat on the street. She was wandering around and came up to him meowing frantically and desperate to be in his arms. Once we established she’d been abandoned (we found her previous owners and their only response was that she was expensive and she “got out, so…”), we immediately took her in. She chose well, I think, and she’s BFFs with Mr. Elysium now.
Now, after our orange cat died we went to the shelter because this time I wanted to give an adult cat a home and really take a look at the kind of personalities we could find. We looked at several cats and none really clicked, but then the shelter personnel took us over to another big cage with a really feisty mackerel tabby. He saw us and began MOW-ing really loudly and actually climbed up the side of the cage to ceiling height and chatted at us. I knew immediately he was the one I wanted to take home.
He now rules the house and yells at us if we don’t cater to him or get him snacks in a timely fashion.
Also got a “rescue” dog, from Arkansas. We checked out a webpage for a local rescue group, and saw a cute pup. The person from the society had to come to our house and check us out to make sure we were not a group of insane dog-killers or something. At the end of the visit, the woman told us that the dog we had seen was “not for us”. She told us which dog we could have. She was like a dog matchmaker. Tasha has been lots of fun, and I swear recognizes that without us, her days were numbered.
Reminds me of Patrick Stewart as the Maitre D’ in LA Story… “You can have the Chicken.”
My last cat was a shelter cat.
We went in on a weekend afternoon, and the place had been nuts. Tons of people going in and out and rattling the animals.
Most of the younger cats were curled up in the back corners of their cages, trying to get as far away as possible from the people. One cat walked up to the front of his cage and demanded to be petted. When I picked him up, he immediately draped himself over my shoulder and started purring.
We figured that any shelter cat that was calm and happy at the end of the day was going to be a mellow cat.
I did exactly this with my dog, Joe. I was looking for a puppy named Joe and I found him at the SPCA.
Most of the rest of my pets just found me. Kitty Smokey came from my parents when they couldn’t handle a kitten and my dad’s cancer at the same time. Kitty Blue was dumped in our yard at a few weeks old. Kitty Fuzz just wandered in one day.
We got Puppy Georgie at the city animal shelter because my son (10 yo at the time) took one look at him and refused to even look at another dog. Puppy Diesel is a long term foster for some friends who are in England for 2 years and the UK wouldn’t let them bring him.
My husband and kids had been negotiating (begging) for a dog since my inlaws moved out along with their chocolate lab. One day a coworker brought her new puppy in to meet everyone and my husband happened to call while I had an armful of puppy. Sensing weakness they redoubled their efforts and picked me up from work and drove straight to the pet store. He wanted an English Bulldog, I wanted an Irish Setter and we went home with a Boxer. My daughter wanted to call him Muffin, hubby wanted Joe (Joe Boxer), so I decreed his name to be Mojo.
About a year later we were making mumbling noises about getting a second dog when his daycare told us about a poor little boxer girl. She was 9 pmonths old and had been abandoned once and her adoptive family had just fallen through. The rescue group brought her over to meet Mojo and us and it was instant love. The two of them are still inseparable and after almost 5 years she almost believes we won’t abandon her. Kaia came pre named.
Boomer – lab/something mix – came to us via a friend. He was a stray who wandered into her yard. She advertised and contacted local vets, but no one claimed him. She already had two dogs. At the office Christmas party, she told us about him and my husband said we’d take him. Boomer was already housebroken and trained to a leash. He rarely barked, never ever jumped on anyone, and was the Best Dog Ever until he died in December 2008.
Sadie (golden-doodle) came to us last summer. A friend was breeding golden-doodles and selling them for $300. Sadie had been spoken for but the buyer chickened out. The friend didn’t want the bother of placing another ad so he asked us if we’d like to try her out. We fell in love. She’s cuddly as a cat.
We’ve had three cats in the last 20 years, all from local folks, and all three the last of the litters to find homes. No choosing, but who can resist a kitten – any kitten?
