Rolling Dog Farm Blog

You may remember reading about two cats named Bonnie and Clyde who arrived here on October 9th from Austin, Texas.  We had agreed to take them because we’d been told the cats were ‘disabled’ and had cerebellar hypoplasia, making them wobbly and unbalanced on their feet. Well, after a couple of days lurking in a wide-open crate (see photo), the two cats finally ventured out … and we learned they weren’t disabled at all!

These two cats could run, jump, climb, and do anything a normal cat could do, with no sign of wobbling or any disability whatsoever. They leaped onto window sills, jumped through the open window into the outdoor enclosure, and raced across the cat house floor.

We were incredulous that anyone would have described Bonnie and Clyde as ‘disabled.’  We gathered it was a handy way to get them a permanent spot in a nice sanctuary, rather than take them to a local shelter.  Since we have so few open spots and save our very limited room for truly disabled animals, we told Bonnie and Clyde’s owner that we would either send the cats back to her, or trade them to another shelter that had genuinely disabled cats.  The owner initially said she didn’t want us to send them back.

So last weekend we arranged a trade with the Humane Society of Gallatin Valley, a no-kill shelter run by wonderful folks in Bozeman, Montana.  They have a blind cat named Turtle and a true ‘wobbler’ named Mink they were excited to send us in exchange for taking Bonnie and Clyde.

Then, yesterday, the owner said she wanted them back after all, so we made travel arrangements for Bonnie and Clyde to fly back to Austin today.  A few hours after making the reservations, the owner contacted us again, now saying she wanted us to send them instead to another shelter in Arizona.  Fed up at that point, we declined to do so and went ahead with Bonnie and Clyde’s planned trip.  So I took them to the airport this afternoon, and as I post this, the two cats should have arrived safely in Texas.

Of course, the Bozeman folks had been so gracious about offering to take Bonnie and Clyde, and they were so delighted with the idea of their two disabled cats coming to the sanctuary, that we decided to go ahead and take Turtle and Mink anyway.  Our go-everywhere volunteer, Jerry Black, is heading to Bozeman tomorrow to pick up Turtle and Mink and bring them to the ranch.

The irony here is that because these two non-disabled cats, Bonnie and Clyde, made a brief stop at the sanctuary, two disabled cats will now have a new home here.  In the end, this seemed to work out alright, didn’t it?