I find contracts like this incredibly odious, and obviously open to abuse.
As a cat owner I am one hundred percent of the opinion cats are indoor animals and should not be permitted outdoors, but I’m not the King of Animal Ownership.
Feline Friends et al are grade A nimrods, but cats are not so rare that Rae Bees couldn’t have found a more accommodating shelter to adopt from.
It seems like these stories always happen when the animal gets lost or something and taken to a vet where their chip is scanned and the shelter takes ownership of the animal. How hard is it to get a chip changed to reflect the new owner? And if a shelter won’t let you do that, find a new shelter!
In my experience with dog rescue, the contracts are dubious and unenforceable. I completely understand the reason they’re used, but I doubt any organization has had their adoption contracts fully vetted by an attorney. Even having worked in rescue organization leadership, I comply only partially with the adoption contracts that we signed for our pets.
In my opinion they only serve the purpose of reminding adopters of what proper pet care should entail. But of course in reality, that’s situation-dependent, and open to debate.
Contracts are contracts … Rabies signed it, she has to comply with it now … unless there’s an illegal provision in the contract that renders the whole thing null-and-void …
HOWEVER: The contract linked to in MfM’s post clearly uses the word “allow” … meaning Rabies would just simply open the door and let the cat out to do his cold-blooded killing … that’s not what’s happening here and Feline Friends has no evidence that Rabies has been “allowing” Reggie outdoors … ergo, no breach of contract … I hope the judge takes Feline Friends to the cleaners; court costs, legal fees, pain and suffering, AND a referral to the DA’s office on theft charges … the lesson here is that if you decide to repossess property, make damn sure you can defend your actions in a court of law …
Is there such a cat shortage in Chicago that shelters can get by with these types of draconian restrictions? … most places would be happy to dump as many cats as possible on any takers, as long as one doesn’t look like a cancer researcher … I understand that Rabies loves and affects Reggie, but spending north of $10,000 in lawyer fees seems excessive for someone who (apparently) couldn’t afford re-registering the micro-chip … I’m sorry, Cook County Circuit Court has better things to do than decide custody of a cat … just saying …
My understanding is that neighborhood friends of Ms. Bees have conducted several “Free Reggie,” fund raisers, and this has allowed her to cover her legal bills.
How is this cat “escaping”? Are there holes in the walls that lead out? Is it ripping holes in a screen door? Is it jumping out unsupervised open windows? Contrary to popular fiction cats do not have the ability to teleport, so if this woman is just not noticing that the cat is walking out the door when she opens it, then she is indeed “letting it out”.
This is true. Outdoor cats have less than have the lifespan of indoor cats. Cats are perfectly happy indoors.
Yes, “escaped several time a week” means that the owner was being negligent and letting the cat go outdoors.
I do think a compromise could be reached, however.
Some cats are really good at slipping out through a door as soon as it’s opened. I used to have a special twist-push-STOMP maneuver I’d do when coming home: twist the doorknob, push the door open, and immediately STOMP my foot to startle the cat who was inevitably waiting on the other side, trying to dash out. She repeatedly sneaked past houseguests, and we’d have to go out and hunt for her.
Obviously not all cats.
The linked sample contract says:
That right there is bullshit. They mention the law, but don’t reference it. I doubt there is any law available for a penalty to be imposed.
It also says:
This is almost certainly wrong since that’s not an appropriate way to calculate deductible donations.
The right to reclaim if there is a misrepresentation is also pretty bullshit. A jury can decide, but ultimately the public should should weigh in and make sure they can no longer do business. Too bad the chip information wasn’t changed.
Are they somehow leasing the cats?
I’m trying to imagine this working with some other item for sale: “We will sell you this television set…but if you do not clean the screen on a regular basis and/or leave it running unwatched for hours at a time you must return it under penalty of law”.
Also, the contract doesn’t capitalize the word “adopter” and it’s not defined in the contract. Who is accepting responsibility as the adopter is ambiguous.
The reclaim section says “…will invalidate any subsequent adoption agreement”. I take it to mean there is an actual adoption agreement, rather than this application. I expect the wording in that agreement to be equally atrocious.
One point I notice in that contract: The shelter’s right to reclaim the cats is not actually based on what the adopter does after the adoption. It’s based on what the adopter states on the form. If the adopter says something on the form that’s false, then they get to reclaim the cat. But the contract surely cannot expect the adopter to foretell the future. If, at the time that the adopter signs the form, the adopter intends not to let the cat out, then the statement on the form is correct. If the adopter later changes her mind and decides to let the cat out, that does not make the statement on the form a misrepresentation, because it the statement on the form can only speak to conditions as of the time the form was sold. In order to claim the cat, then, the shelter would have to prove that Bees intended, at the time she signed the form, to let the cat out, and that would be almost impossible to prove.
To the more legally-inclined Dopers, does this make sense?
Is there a legal difference between buying an animal and “adopting” an animal that gives legal authority to those disbursing said animal?
To clear up some of the confused points being made:
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Presumably, the organization believes that the owner is intentionally letting the cat outside; the cat is not truly “escaping”. If that is true, then the owner would be in violation of her representation that she would endeavor to keep the cat inside. Proof, as always, is in the evidence adduced (not the pudding, sadly; as an attorney, I always thought it would have been better simply to taste each side’s pudding and use that to determine who had proved their case).
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It matters not how execrably poor the language of the contract is; the contract is enforceable if it establishes offer, acceptance and duty. One of the things courts do is interpret poorly written contracts; casebooks on Contracts law are filled with examples.
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The language on page 2 of the document is merely an informational page which is used to establish which cat will be allowed to be adopted. If you wish to be pedantic, it can be considered part of the “offer” of adoption. That’s why it raises a possibility of “subsequent adoption contract” (i.e.: the actual contract formed when the offer is accepted by Feline Friends".
From a legal point of view, the organization probably has a tall mountain to climb here. To establish that they are entitled to reclaim the cat without returning the adoption fee, they would appear to have to prove that the owner mis-represented her answer to one of the questions on page 2. Now, that can be done circumstantially, say, by evidence that the cat from shortly after adoption was being let out of the house by the new owner. But unless there is some other portion of the “contract” that indicates that letting the cat get out of the house (intentionally or otherwise) would entitle the organization to redeem the cat without repayment of the fee, it seems unlikely that the organization’s attempt to establish a right to reclaim the cat exists. And that’s without consideration of the poorly written nature of the contract, which probably will be interpreted against the organization (as they wrote it and applied it as a form to all adoptions).
But contrary to the opinions of several posters, this is not an open-and-shut case (although Reggie certainly seems to have managed to make it seem otherwise as to the door! 
).
Imagine a clause in the contract that said, “If the Adopter changes her mind and is no longer willing to keep the cat exclusively indoors, or if the Adopter finds she is unable to keep the cat exclusively indoors for whatever reason, she agrees that ownership of the cat will revert to Feline Friends and will assist in returning the cat to Feline Friends.”
Would that clause accomplish what FF is trying to accomplish? Is there anything like that clause in the actual contract? If not, is the absence of it damning to their case?
I don’t know about legal authority, but there are a couple of differences between buying and adopting:
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In many places it’s illegal to buy dogs and cats. These laws were established as a way to get rid of the puppy mill (and kitty mill) problem. That is, animals being bred in high volumes, in negligent conditions so they can be sold in pet shops.
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Having removed the profit motive from the equation, shelters and rescue groups still needed a way to fund operations. They’re allowed to accept a donation or “adoption fee” for the animal. The legal difference between a purchase price and an adoption fee will require someone with legal expertise to explain, because I don’t know. I only know the connotations or popular/social differences.
Having said that, an adoption is not like leasing the animal and I don’t think organizations really have the right to confiscate the animal if the contract is broken. If I’m wrong about that, I’d love to read about the court case proving it.
One of the organizations I was on the board for actually got into this situation. I tried to stay out of the drama, but still got copied on emails and Facebook posts. We had a lady who was fostering dogs for us, and for some number of months seemed like a fantastic and responsible person. Then one day there seemed to be some kind of falling out between her and one of my fellow board members, so they wanted to confiscate the dog she was fostering. It didn’t go to court that I knew of, but she dragged the organization into the mud in social media. Although my fellow board members didn’t behave appropriately, this lady was worse and truly went off the deep end, accusing them of “violent home invasion” and other silly things. What she didn’t know was that one person was filming the visit to her home with his cell phone. (There was no violence or force, all the screaming was just her. Even worse, the board president lost her fostering agreement/contract, so I expected that we’d lose if she took us to court.
tl;dr confiscating a pet comes dangerously close to property theft if you don’t have all your legal ducks in a row.
Every year cats that do not have homes end up euthanized. This cat has a has a home - its owner may not be the best at keeping the cat inside - but the owner obviously loves and cares for the cat. The rescue agency should spend its time and resources on a cat that is less lucky and whose unnecessary death is a certainty rather than a “they MIGHT get run over by a car.”
At least it doesn’t approach the problem we had here in Oregon with a shady group that actually leased pets: “Hannah The Pet Society”.
It would be one thing if they came onto her property and repoed the cat. But that didn’t happen. The cat got lose, it got captured and turned over to the Cathouse. So they’re not confiscating the cat, they’re just not giving it back.
That said, there are millions of stray cats and untold numbers of them are euthanized every year because there are no homes for them. If there’s a lady who wants the cat, give it to her even if she’s a crappy cat owner, unless her care amounts to animal abuse. And if the cat gets out and gets run over or eaten by a coyote, that’s what happens to cats sometimes.
If you can keep a cat indoors you’ll prevent a lot of aggravation and dead birds and an early death. Or you let the cat outdoors and it has a possibly shortened life and shortens the lives of lots of other animals. However, letting a cat outdoors is not animal cruelty. There’s no law against it, and there shouldn’t be, except maybe in places like Australia where feral cats are destroying endangered species.
I side with Bees also. This nonsense with pet contracts has gone too far. I have adopted a human child with fewer conditions than required to take in a stray that would otherwise rot away in a cage at some animal shelter. We want another dog in our life soon but there is no way I’m signing some kind of contract that allows anyone control of my pets. If they think I’m abusing them they can call animal control. There won’t be any reason for that to happen.
I have no idea if these contracts are enforceable but they smell bad in general.