A Park Slope woman who gave away her kittens on Craigslist was later shocked and aghast – a common affliction among Park Slope residents – to see the buyer posting an ad trying to sell the very same kittens, even though her ad said that if the buyer wasn’t going to keep the kittens themselves, they were to return them to her. Turns out the woman she gave them to is a serial “cat flipper.”
These are folks scoop up “free to a good home” cats posted on classified sections and then turn around and sell them for a profit.
When confronted, the buyer wrote the seller back, “I just decide to find them homes…You still gave them away to me for free, no contract, once in my hand their [sic] initially mines. That means if I wanted to give them to my nieces, stranger walking the street, dad, or grandmother thats initially on me. … I’m not gonna sit here going back and fourth with you, then get excited and have an asthma attack.”
Rescue organizations recommend charging an adoption fee to deter cat flippers and to have an adoption agreement in writing.
Slope woman gets a cat scam as free felines are later sold! [The Brooklyn Paper]
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Or, you could go the software route, and attach a license agreement that says the buyer has to transfer the cat to the next person for free as well.
Not a bad idea.
yay for open source kittehs!
Ah, but do we go GPL or MIT license?
BSD with commercial advertising clause (I suggest using a small electric shaver to etch the logo on the cat).
I’d do it if I were in such a position to have kittens I didn’t want. I’m not sure if I’d want to enforce it though.
but then you are not buying the cat, you’re buying a license to use the cat
The way you say “use the cat” implies something sinister.
Are you building an army of ninja cats I should know about?
“Ninja cats” is redundant.
Given the inherent nature of cats, does anyone truly own one?
cat owns you!
This is the reason I get all my cats off BitTorrent.
Just wanted to say, I lol’d.
Wouldn’t that be KitTorrent?
That’s actually not far from what rescue agencies do when you adopt a dog or a cat. Part of the contract typically has a right of first refusal clause should you later want to give up the pet.
Yeah I have heard of them doing that, but it also seams like it would be hard to track. I mean I could just say my cat has a different name get a new tag and as long as the cat isn’t chipped just go by a different name Isn’t that right boots I mean mittens? And as far as I have heard rescue agencies do not go through the cost and bother of chipping animals.
Ah yes, the Kittie Public License (KPL)!
I don’t see how this is a scam. The seller has found a low-price source for his goods, people who willingly give up their cats for free. If he can find a family willing to give the cat a good home and willing to pay for it, I still don’t see the issue. It’s not like he’s making cat tacos out of them or anything. Or marinating them in the back of his car for being “selfish and greedy.”
Selfish and greedy they are. Cats deserve all the onions and peppers they can be smothered in.
It’s loosely a scam, because the flipper lied about their intentions when they adopted the kittens to begin with. It’s like taking freecycled items and reselling them for a profit: you’ve taken the items away from someone who could have used them when free but not when attached to a price tag. The flipper is still taking advantage of someone.
What happens to the excess inventories? Is the flipper decent enough to feed and clean them until she can sell or give them away for free? That’s my only concern.
That would also be a concern to me.
If, against all odds, I were to have a litter of kittens or puppies or whatever to find homes for, I would draft a contract/agreement that would specify several things:
(1) The animals(s) are not for resale. If they are given to other people, it must be as GIFTS.
(2) This same agreement must exist for all future transfers of the animal(s)
(3) The animal(s), when old enough, will be spayed/neutered by a veterinarian (I might be able to help with the expense, through an arrangement with my own vet.)
(4) In the event the animal(s) can no longer be cared for, and a new home cannot be found, they are to be returned to me.
Your ‘contract’ would be completely unenforceable.
And what makes you say that?
What? It’s entirely enforceable through any small claims court I’ve heard of. You could enforce a contract like that for any property- a television for instance. Their is an acceptable remedy in the contract- the return of the animal to the first owner. You’d want more ideal contract language- but there’s nothing I can think of that would prevent such a contract from being enforced. There’s nothing illegal about it.
It’s “there” not “their” where it was used incorrectly- it’s late etc.
Indeed, definitely I’d want better wording for any actual contract. Those were just the provisions I’d want the contract to secure, expressed casually, for the purpose of discussing the idea in general.
I’d probably also charge an adoption fee, and make it refundable upon proof of the animal being spayed/neutered by a licensed veterinarian (within two years of transfer). Most vets will happily furnish adequate proof of this; the local Humane Society has the same sort of program for un-spayed, un-neutered animals (like puppies or kittens) – we got our current two cats from there, as teeny tiny kittens.
If possible, you could even have the kittens spayed/neutered prior to adoption. I know there’s a vet clinic in my old city that offered a group rate of sorts, for this kind of situation.
And if they were stil with me at the right age for that procedure (generally 6-8 months of age), I would.
I agree. Buying low and selling high is the very foundation of our economic system.
When one gives kittens away “to good homes”, the hope is that the person who takes them, WANTS them … permanently.
To then discover that this person was only looking to make a profit on them, brings into question “just how well are the kittens being cared for?”
So it might not be a scam per se, but it definitely creates the same emotions of betrayal and hurt.
“the hope is that the person who takes them, WANTS them … permanently“
Hope and five pennies will get you a nickle. In other words, it’s objectively pointless to argue about it.
The first lady has no reason to be mad. If she wanted to make money off of the kittens she could have. Once she gave them away she has no basis to complain.
The first lady has no reason to be mad. If she wanted to make money off of the kittens she could have. Once she gave them away she has no basis to complain.
Clearly, you’ve never been much of an animal lover.
Also clearly, you’re not the sort of person I’d place an animal with.
It’s not about “the first woman could have made the money and chose not to”. It’s about, the second woman adopted those kittens under false pretenses. And her true motives call into question just how good the care those kittens are receiving, really is. Which leaves the first woman worried about what might happen to the kittens. A worry that would not exist, if the adopter hadn’t intended to resell them all along.
Also, from the original article:
There was just one requirement: “I gave very clear instructions that if she changed her mind and didn’t want the kittens, I wanted them back,†said Holmes, who lives in Park Slope.
Now, that may not be enforceable, but it clearly indicates that the woman took the kittens under false pretenses.
Yes! Because it’s all about the money!
Way to be a fucking person.
Here’s the rub:
If you assume the cat-flipper will sell the cats to a bad home, YOU gave your cats away to a bad home. You’re no better at finding a good home for your cats than a cat-flipper is. The cat flipper, through random chance, might actually do a better job than you.
I am only assuming the flipper cares more anout the $$ than the cats.
As evidenced by the dishonest means she employed to ACQUIRE said cats.
If you are truly concerned about the welfare of an unwanted pet, it wouldn’t be unwanted in the first place. In this case, it appears OP likes cute little kittens just fine but does not want them enough to keep them as adult cats.
inb4 “u dont no her situation!!”– I don’t have to. It’s very easy to keep dicks out of your ovulating female animals if you truly want to.
But apparently not out of The Consumerist comments section?
Score!
ca-ching!
If you are truly concerned about the welfare of an unwanted pet, it wouldn’t be unwanted in the first place.
Who says she didn’t WANT them?
Maybe she cannot AFFORD them? Or maybe, her residence does not PERMIT that many cats at once?
There can be many reasons for giving up kittens, puppies, and so on other than not wanting them.
It’s very easy to keep dicks out of your ovulating female animals if you truly want to.
And god forbid someone should, say, adopt a stray – only to discover it had gotten itself impregnated just before you adopted her.
Was it my fault that I was stuck with a litter of kittens when a roommate got herself a cat, never had her fixed, and then abandoned her with us when she left?
Sometimes, what you see is a kind person cleaning up the mess left by others.
It’s a scam because the slimeball took the kittens under false pretenses. She agreed to bring them back if she, personally, didn’t want to keep them.
You need to get over it. This is not a scam. The person took free unwanted cats, is taking care of them, and is doing extra work to find buyers of them.
A shelter does less work and charges more.
SRSLY? Maybe you should spend at least one day volunteering at a shelter . . .
Really? You think he’s doing background checks on the adopters, making sure their landlord actually allows pets, taking care of spay/neuters and first-round vaccines? She was a moron for giving the cats away, yes, but if he’s selling single kittens to people who “want a pet for their incredibly young child” or something that would be a warning flag to anyone at a shelter with half a brain…
Scam or not is immaterial. If you think animals are property like any other property, that would be the way to phrase things. I’m just thinking of the lovely lesson she would’ve learned had the cats been scooped up by someone using them as dog-fighting bait. Seriously, she didn’t think anything was going on when someone offers to take all your kittens off your hands?
I don’t think she should be praised as “doing extra work to find them homes” if she got the kittens from other CL ads, stopping those people from initially placing their kittens for free in a loving home. Her priority is clearly the money, and not the animal (otherwise she would not have intercepted all these free kittens trying to find good homes and instead would have let them go to said good homes in the first place.)
By the flipper’s own attitude, it doesn’t appear that this is some unsung hero situation. “they’re my cats now i can do whatever i want even give them to strangers on the street because you gave them to me for free hahaha” (paraphrased but that’s the gist of the quote to me) does not sound like a person who is doing this for the sake of the kittens.
I got my cat on CL. Paid a $10 rehoming fee, the lady got a little teary when she brought the kitten, and she helped me make sure my home was kitten-proof. It was a positive experience, and for the time/effort/care the lady put into finding my home, vetting it, and delivering to me a well-fed and -adjusted cat, the $10 would not have turned a profit. I shudder to think how little effort a person would put into caring for cats and placing them to turn a profit on CL.
“Get over it” is one of those phrases in an argument that lets you know the other person doesn’t have much to say, but figures telling you to STFU might substitute for having a point.
It is a scam. From the actual article, as related by the original owner:
There was just one requirement: “I gave very clear instructions that if she changed her mind and didn’t want the kittens, I wanted them back,†said Holmes, who lives in Park Slope.
That’s “taking under false pretenses”, which is … wait for it … a scam.
eh, because the person giving them away didn’t get a profit from it, it’s now a “scam”.
No, because the person getting them for free, did so under false pretenses.
Go back up, and read the bit I put in italics. The woman who sold the kittens, violated that term of the exchange.
But she did want them, so she could sell them. So, it isn’t a scam at all.
After you part form something it isn’t yours anymore.
Since we are talking about living breathing creatures as long they are not mistreated it is his property he can sell it or give it away as he wishes.
If I offer you a thing, with conditions, and you accept – you accept the conditions as well as the thing.
Should you violate those conditions … the offer is rendered null and void, and it becomes MY thing again, not yours.
That’s the way contracts work: all or nothing. You cannot choose, after the fact, which parts of a contract to honor, and which parts to ignore.
I don’t believe that stipulation would be a legal, enforceable contract.
Yes, it would be. It’s even so often used, it has it’s own official legalese name: Right of First Refusal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_first_refusal
I agree. As long as he isn’t abusing the cats while he looks for a new home for them then more power to him.
WRONG! I just had a convo with a breeder a while ago and I used my supreme logic to ram his head up his ass.
If you do not care about the animals, you should not treat them like objects. These people are looking at animals as money and in the meanwhile when they have them, they don’t feed them at all or very little so they can have a low “adoption fee” of 50 dollars and trick people into thinking they are just looking to recoup the cost of food and it is impossible to tell otherwise.
This is unethical, wrong, and I know that soon, people will need a license to own a dog or cat. That is the right thing to do to stop abuse of animals. Couple that with a breeding ban and we have a better world for everyone.
But that’s the problem isn’t it? There’s no reason to believe the flipper is looking for a “good” home for the kittens. The mere fact that she is a “flipper” and had “several postings” selling different cats indicates that she’s not bothering to screen buyers and is just handing these kittens off to the first person with the cash.
This woman’s concern isn’t about money. She’s not mad that the flipper is making money off of the kittens. What she cares about is ensuring that these kittens find a good home where they will be cared for.
with all the free kittens out there, anyone willing to actually pay for them is generally on the up and up.
The flipper can’t do much worse than the woman originally did. Might even get lucky and find them a better home.
I’m eager to get a kitten of my own. But I’m not eager to pay the 300 bucks my apartment wants to have one.
I mean PS3 Vs Kitten.
I really can’t decide
kitten. because then you can submit adorable pictures of it to the consumerist flickr pool and people will ooooh and aaaaah over your kitten when it’s the header for top posts of the week/open thread.
also kittens are cuddlier.
Thank you for the 1 free internet
I have a cat.
Get the PS3.
Adopt an older cat. Preferably declawed. I had 2 and they were cuddle bunnies and don’t tear your stuff up. Ps3 is way overrated : )
Declawed? That’s not cool.
It is (sort of) if that’s the condition they were in when they were adopted. Sometimes when I look too closely at the rug my two managed to deface beyond recognition, I kinda sorta kinda drift off into a fantasy where I go to the shelter to adopt and lo and behold they happen to have two kitties who were cruelly declawed by their previous owner.
Till that fantasy comes true, my two varmints have learned to tolerate sporadic manicures.
That fee might actually be illegal. Check your local and state laws. I’m going through that with my landlord.
Where do you live that pet fess are illegal?
A haiku:
Kittens are so cute
They’re fun to electrocute
Taste better than dogs
I want a kitty. I need a kitty. Phooey on landlords who would charge $300 just to have one. I mean, really, how much damage do they think a cat can do to a rental?
I had a diabetic cat. Trust me, they can easily do $300 worth of damage. Ever had to replace a carpet?
Psh. The reason apartments/rental units have carpets in the first place is because they are *meant* to be replaced after every few tenants due to simple wear-and-tear. It is apparently cheaper to replace carpets than it is to repair badly-neglected hardwood flooring.
Though it is true, cats are murder on carpets, even if they never harf somewhere or “miss” their litter box. I have owned three cats, each separated by more than a year, who had an alarming tendency to tear up the carpet from underneath doors, trying to “dig” their way into a closed room.
A lot. They can’t trust everyone who walks through the door and you might be normal at first but if you let your cat go nuts, the apartment complex would have to spend a lot of money to replace carpet, patch walls, etc.
If you’re a good tenet, ask nicely. I had my fee waived without my even asking. I walked in to do some business, told them I got a new cat and asked whether that meant I needed to do something. They said there was a $300 fee, but that in my case they didn’t care.
I have both.. watch out for when kitteh sits on your lap when playing PS3… very difficult to beat Zeus under those circumstances.
Cats are evil, vile creatures and they hate you. If you have cats, just know that they spend their days plotting the overthrow of your apartheid empire.
That’s why you gotta constantly remind them of their lot in life.
While the attached image is cute, the image in the link proper is hilarious. Worth the click.
Thank you for pointing that out. I wouldn’t have otherwise followed the link and my day would be unknowingly incomplete.
“Cats if filmed on location with the real men and women of feline enforcement. All suspects are innocent until proven quilty in a court of law”
srsly?
anony-bars for the kittehs?
re-donk-u-lus.
lmao, thanks for the heads up!!
Yeah, the attached is cute but a screenshot of Pig-Eye Jackson juggling (flipping) kittens would have been better.
“cat flippers”
Conjures up such images.
It’s a classic Steve Martin bit: Cat Juggling!
I don’t know why someone hasn’t tracked down a cat-flipping gif yet. Internets, get on that please!
Sounds like the script for the next reality show.
Flip that Cat!
Cat flippers piss me off because they created a kitten bubble. These flippers come in, trying to make a quick buck, then next thing you know there are a bunch of foreclosed kittens in the neighborhood dragging down the value of my kitten.
I couldn’t help but laugh at that one.
There’s a kitten name in there somewhere to I know it.
Strategic Default is a great name for a kitteh.
Default for short.
Little ‘Faulty
Speaking of cat names, one night some idiot abandoned a cat in the bank drop-off chute. The bank employees named the cat “Teller”, like bank teller. True story.
That happened all over in my neighborhood. It got to the point where a bunch of the kittenowners, including myself, owed more food to their kittens than they paid.
So I just did a strategic default on my kitten.
Regardless of the legality of what the scammer is doing… wow, what a fucking bitch.
“I’m not gonna sit here going back and fourth with you, then get excited and have an asthma attack.”
Nice.
You’re spot on. A lot of people here are saying that it’s perfectly legal, which it is. But come on.
Why do you care? People who didn’t want the animals essentially unloaded them off on someone who will feed them and take care of them until they can find someone willing to buy them.
There is nothing wrong here. In fact this is essentially a service a shelter would charge you for. If you gave your cats to a shelter they would want money from you and then they would turn around and demand money from the adopters as well.
The real question is: why do YOU care and why can’t YOU get over it? It’s clear this subject has gotten you very worked up and you feel the need to respond to a bunch of posts in this thread indicating as such.
You’re going to have an asthma attack if you don’t stop.
Why do you care?
Animal welfare is important to me.
People who didn’t want the animals [...]
Assumes facts not in evidence. I have seen people have to give up their much-beloved cat or dog because they had to move, and the new place wouldn’t let them have pets. In fact, one of MY cats was adopted from a friend under exactly those circumstances.
There is nothing wrong here. In fact this is essentially a service a shelter would charge you for.
What is wrong, is that this “Unique” woman lied to the original owner. A shelter would not lie.
If you gave your cats to a shelter they would want money from you and then they would turn around and demand money from the adopters as well.
Wrong. You can bring a cat to a shelter, and they will take it – no money required. Perhaps you are confusing kennels and catteries, with shelters …?
Schadenfreude.
To quote Inego Montoya: “I do not think that word means what you think it means.”
Obviously, it’s your new favorite word. But, nonetheless … it really doesn’t apply here.
If she really loved kittehs, she’d have said “HAZ an asthma attack.” Beyotch she is!
She has asthma and cats? Gee, talk about work hazards.
I really don’t see how this is a scam. But I hope the woman had her cat fixed so she doesn’t fall “victim” again.
It’s a scam because the flippers often have some convincing story about how they’re going to keep it as their personal pet, even though they have no intention of doing so. Some people do whatever they can to make sure their pet’s going to a good home and will receive proper care, and the flippers often promise this in order to get the free critter, even though they have no intention of keeping it. They often post it right back on craigslist with a $400 “rehoming fee” claiming that they don’t have time for it anymore so they’re doing “what’s right for the animal” and also it’s a purebred show dog/cat but, gee, I just can’t find the papers anywhere and that’s why it’s “only” $400 even though it’s worth sooo much more.
This just sounds like another pragmatic application of capitalist principles. At first I thought this was one of those “pets or meat” kinds of situations.
Either the flipper is experiencing some sort of anxiety over the issue or they just don’t about sounding uneducated. My guess is the latter, because this is a scummy thing to do—legal, but scummy.
And here I fall victim to the law of correcting grammar: the one correcting will invariably make an error.
Starting a sentence with “And”? Not capitalizing after a colon?
Fuck, I just used two sentence fragments. You’re right.
Starting a sentence with a conjunction and not capitalizing after a colon are both acceptable, though.
Invariably? Meaning, always? Constantly? Perpetually?
Surely you meant inevitably…
I now await my flogging…
I don’t see how this is any different then people who go antiquing looking for good deals to resell.
Except that it’s a living being, and the original owner was giving it away for free in hopes of finding it a “good” home, not some nasty bitch that’s reselling it for a profit.
Whoa, whoa.
Nasty bitch?
A woman is taking cats someone does not want, is feeding them and taking care of them, and actively trying to sell them off to someone who wants to give them a good home.
This is actually much better than a shelter, because a shelter would charge you to abandon your cats with them and then charge anyone wanting to adopt them.
This sounds like a very good service. Shelters naturally will be against this type of thing, because they would rather make the money off the cats. They do not like competition.
Actually, we don’t know how the flipper is treating these cats, because that information wasn’t provided in the article.
When I worked for a shelter, I believe we invested a minimum of $300 in each animal brought in (standard health tests including FIV, Spay/Neuter services, microchipping, etc). If the animal was adopted the very next day for $80, we lost $220 on that cat. If the cat is with us longer, the bills for food, litter, medical care, etc, increase. I can assure you, no shelter is making a profit.
And they love competition. Every cat that finds a home without the help of the shelter is one more cat that the shelter can save that wouldn’t otherwise be saved.
I suspect that this woman takes the kittens and then sells them immediately. Once the kitten is about 6 months old, they become much more difficult to find homes for because the insane cute factor is gone. What does she do with the cats that she can’t find a buyer for? Yeah, getting dumped somewhere.
A woman is taking cats someone does not want, [...]
You don’t know that the original owner didn’t want the kittens, only that she couldn’t keep them.
And the flipper acquired them by lying.
She wasn’t looking for someone to sell the kittens for her. She was perfectly fine trying to find a good home for the kittens herself. I think the fact that she clearly stated that she wanted the kittens back if the buyer ended up changing their mind shows that she was willing to keep the kittens for as long as it took her to find them a good home.
You act is if this “Unique” woman was doing her a favor. She’s not. Who knows if she’s looking for a “good” home for these kittens or if she’s just dumping them on the first person who’ll give her the $50. She may be selling them off to animal testing facilities for all we know.
Lies.
That’s what makes it different.
The flipper lied to the first woman, in order to convince her to part with the cats. The flippr presented herself as someone who wanted pets, who wanted the kittens for herself.
And she didn’t. She never had the tiniest faintest glimmer of a shred of any such intent. She intended, all along, to sell them – and didn’t come right out and say “Hey, you know, I sell cats. I could take these guys off your hands, give them good care, and sell them to someone. You can stop paying for them, I can make a profit, and these little guys still get great homes. What do you say?”
No; she LIED to the original owner, in order to get those kittens.
Well…she clearly doesn’t know what “initially” means
sounds like your kittens need a shrink wrap Licence like AutoCAD! … I hope you don’t have to actually wrap them… :p
I think this is the first topical cat picture posted here since the “cash for clunker cats” article.
If the image was truly topical, the Cat would be flipping.
Thankfully, being in a state of perpetual drunkenness comes to the rescue.
I just open my glassy eyes a bit at the cat picture and it just spins and spins. I’m very impressed with the cat’s lateral flipping maneuvers.
Cat flippers disgust me just as much as Cat jugglers.
Cat juggling disgusts me AND entertains me.
This is preposterous. You can’t flip a kitten, they always land on their feet!
Not if you tape buttered toast to their backs.
Then they just never land.
What a CATastrophe, I’m up hauled, & I don’t even live in Park Slope !
This is one of many reasons why “pets free to a good home” is a bad idea. There are people who want to sell them for a profit; people who feed the puppies and kittens to other animals, like large snakes; people who sell the puppies and kittens to labs to be experimented upon; etc.
My recommendation is that, if you find yourself with unwanted pets, give them to a no-kill animal shelter or rescue organization, then get your cat or dog spayed. If you’re low on money, there are plenty of organizations who will spay or neuter your pet for a low cost. Heck, my county’s animal control department will spay or neuter the pet of a person on food stamps FOR FREE! Just Google “low cost neutering”.
Absolutely. If you care about animals at all never, ever give away one for free.
Don’t just give them to a no-kill shelter, make a donation while you’re there.
And donations don’t have to be cash, either.
Food, cat litter, even toys may be welcome. Pet carriers, too – if your puppy outgrows his, and you buy a bigger one? Wash the old one out, and donate it.
Honestly, the kittens might end up in better homes since the flipper is asking for a fee, whereas the original owner didn’t.
At least, I’m hoping.
I thought the same thing. The first thing I learned about getting rid of baby pets was to always charge a fee (this usually attracts honest, good potential owners, and the fee can be dropped if you feel sure the situation is safe for the kitten or puppy). I know some people pick out puppies and kittens to use in the training of hunting dogs.
I know some people pick out puppies and kittens to use in the training of hunting dogs.
I did not want to know that.
Whaa….? What kind of hunting dogs are we talking about here? What is the proposed game these dogs will be hunting? What is the proposed benefit of including a puppy or kitten in this training? Perhaps you meant fighting dogs?
Flippers don’t care about screening the prospective home and will hand the pet over to the first person who shows up with the cash.
Yeah, but why would a bad owner pay money for kittens when there’s so many out there for free?
I see it happen all the time. Same reason people pay $1000 for a puppy from a pet store that likely came from a puppy mill. They somehow think they’re getting a better animal and flippers often make up a back story that makes the dog/cat seem more valuable…AKC registered but, oops, I can’t find the papers right now…it’s worth $1000, but since I can’t find the papers, I’ll let you have it for $400 (what a deal!)…the parents are champion show dogs, you can stud this dog out for a lot of money, etc. There are ads like this on craigslist all the time and, sadly, people buy it.
Well, if you really want to hit her where it hurts, call the cops. If she’s doing this a lot, she’s acting as an animal dealer/seller. Most likely, she’d need a license of some sort to do that. Check with your local and state prosecutors.
Really? Call the cops? Yes, I’m sure they’d type a report right up on their invisible typewriter, and then put it right in the Very Important Round File.
We should only report the absolute most serious of crimes. Heck, let’s just toss out the law book for misdemeanors. Drunk driving? Who cares! Beat your wife? Why not! Unlicensed pet mills? Can I get a Hell Yeah!
Hell Yeah!
(Sorry, I got caught up in the moment.)
Yes.
Call the police. Better yet, call the SPCA. In many cities, their officers are also POLICE OFFICERS, with full powers of arrest.
Or haven’t you ever watched “Animal Cops” …?
http://animal.discovery.com/tv/animal-cops/
Oh, and here’s a trick: one of the places this is true? NEW YORK CITY. Meaning, Brooklyn. Where these cats were taken from.
Schadenfreude.
… what is your obsession with spamming that one, single word at me?
If this doesn’t fall under the purview of the police, they can direct you to who you are supposed to contact.
Most likely, though, if this woman is carrying on a business without proper licensing, the only real remedy is some sort of police action.
I Hate These People. Period.
They are living beings – Not Property, you bitch.
Except, in the US, they are property.
>Rescue organizations recommend sterilization for companion animals to reduce pet overpopulation.
Whoops, fixed that for ya!
That being said, what’s the problem here? In order for there to be a scam, I’m pretty sure that someone has to be ripped-off. Giving stuff away freely and getting angry that someone else is selling it is not a scam. I’m down with it if the point of the article is “don’t let it happen to you!”, but I don’t think its appropriate to trot out the word scam so much.
I love how she says “initially” she she means “technically.” Dumb people shouldn’t try to use big words.
i no! their so dum, i dont’ no how theigh even post adds! morans! they shood keep there ignorence off cragslist.
I love it when people spell it “morans”. +1
That’s what struck me, too. She clearly doesn’t know what “initially” means.
Reading the scammer’s response really made me want to see a picture of this winner.
“I’m not gonna sit here going back and fourth with you, then get excited and have an asthma attack.”
not very bright, revealing you Achilles heel to your enemy. a little semi-legal harassment might cause some dangerous aggravation of her condition.
please, dont anybody do that, because that would be wrong.
Like any flip on craiglist the flipper should not get caught.
Many times my wife and I grabbed “FREE!!!”- stuff from clean outs, curb alerts, people moving away, etc. We just figured on that we had several choices:
trash the items
keep the items
repair or clean or store for resale- yardsale or craigslist or maybe ebay
If the people seemed to be avid craiglist people we might wait sometime before re-listing the item or if we had too much stuff we would pull a fast yardsale to dump at below market prices.
I do realize that most of this does not apply to kittens since they are live pets but the market is free. The give away person should not crank about the receiver reselling them as pets as the kittens could be received and then fed to a snake in some cases…
I don’t see how this is a scam. If you are stupid enough to give away for free what you can sell don’t blame anyone but yourself.
The issue isn’t that the donor is upset about not being able to make money. The issue is that the flipper lied about her intentions and took advantage of a service intended for people who actually wanted to give a kitten a good home. We have no idea what the flipper actually intends to do with the kittens or how she is treating them.
Just be glad she didn’t make them into soup.
Or snake food…
I think when you give stuff away it should be just that, give them away and mot worry about peoples intentions. Like when people ask me for change for “food” I just give them if I can, if they want to go get drunk or shoot up oh well.
With most freebies, I wouldn’t care so much. However, these are living animals we’re talking about. I’d also be indignant if the donor was giving away food to hungry people and some jackass took a portion just to turn around and sell it.
I fail to see the problem with this.
You got rid of the cats you did not want, and the person feeds them until they can sell them. What is the the problem?
Why does everyone assume the kittens were unwanted …?
More often, when I hear of people giving up animals … it’s not because they don’t want to keep them, it’s because they CANNOT keep them.
sold…. to people with hungry pythons. Seriously.
The jerkwad in question has horrible English. Shocking that it’s a less than average intelligence person doing this.
Another example of why “free to good home” is a bad idea: A 4-H leader in WA was caught taking “free to good home” horses off of Craigslist, and taking them directly to the meat auction. Brought kids out to meet him and told the military guy deploying to Iraq they’d have a “good home”.
http://fuglyblog.com/?p=429
(Horse was bought out of kill pen but ultimately euthanized for medical reasons)
There are worse things that could be done to a free kitten.
I’m not a pet owner, but isn’t the simple solution here to spay and neuter your pets? Don’t we already have too many cats in this country without homes?
I look around in the neighborhood and there’s a few cats that just roam the streets.
If this person is turning around these cats and giving them a good home, then more power to them.
And who’s to say the mother-cat wasn’t already pregnant when the OP adopted her …? A cat which is a week or two pregnant, won’t look that different from a cat that isn’t pregnant at all. Especially not to an untrained eye!
And yet we didn’t hear about how a sack of dead cats washed up on the east river. Seems like a win in my book..
Could be worse. It’s *only* 100% commission. My stock broker sometimes nets more than that based on how he (mis)uses my money.
People, please spay or neuter your pets please.
Or just spay and neuter your pets, people.
“Spay, neuter your pets, people”.
;>
Isn’t a person who’s willing to pay for the cat more likely to take better care of it than someone who’d pick it up for free? Except for the “flipper’s” bad attitude and terrible grammar, this seems like a self-solving problem.
So, I read through the entire story on The Brooklyn Paper website, and I still wondered if this was secretly written for The Onion. Are we seriously giving this much attention to a woman who collects free cats and then sells them? It’s not like she’s drowning them in the river. What’s the big deal? If the initial owner was so terribly concerned about the future of these cats, she should have: A. kept them herself, B. gotten her cat fixed so that there weren’t any kittens to worry about in the first place, C. given them to a friend or neighbor so that she could check on them every day.
It’s not a scam, and you should spay/neuter your pets instead of pumping out kittens/puppies you don’t want to keep. I’ve always been told never to give pets away for this and many more reasons. Just stop creating undesired life, though. It’s cruel and pointless.
Way to make huge, baseless assumptions about hte OP, in order to shift the blame entirely on to her.
And in the process, show the world what an ass you are.
I want to know how this woman is selling kittens on Craigslist in the first place. You are not allowed to sell animals – those posts get pulled very quickly. You are only allowed to charge a reasonable adoption fee.
I don’t understand the difference
“I just decide to find them homes…You still gave them away to me for free, no contract, once in my hand their [sic] initially mines. That means if I wanted to give them to my nieces, stranger walking the street, dad, or grandmother thats initially on me. … I’m not gonna sit here going back and fourth with you, then get excited and have an asthma attack.”
She sounds stupid. I hope she’s reading this right now, getting excited about how I just insulted her. Go get your inhaler, honey, then sign up for some literacy classes.
Now, now, just because she’s a dishonest illiterate bitch doesn’t mean she’s stupid.
It does mean she’s venal.
Sometimes i sell stuff in-game in World of Warcraft, and the person who bought it will turn around and try to get a better price for it.
BFD. I got the price I wanted for whatever I sold. Cat lady got the price she wanted for them (in this case, free). there may be a legality issue with her being a pet dealer and needing a license, as someone else said, but I see nothing legally or ethically wrong with what she’s doing (She”s snarky in her response, but it’d be hard to not be snarky at someone who got butthurt that you sold something that they could have sold but chose to give away instead.)
The problem is not that the flipper made a profit.,
The problem is that she lied in order to get the kittens in the first place.
As long as the “scammer” isn’t treating the kittens bad while in her possession I don’t see a problem.
If the giver awayer (lol don’t know what else to call her) doesn’t want to go through the hassle of actually trying to sell them for money that’s her fault, don’t get mad when someone capitalizes and does no harm to the cats.
The problem isn’t that the flipper made a profit.
The problem is that the flipper lied to the OP, in order to get the kittens in the first place.
OMG, is the kitty in the picture available? Soooo cute I could cry.
How about this:
1) Sell next litter of kittens yourself
2) Use kitten-gained profits to get source-cat fixed
3) Fixed cat = no more kittens = no more “kitten scammers”
4) STFU
Sometimes cats get pregnant before the vet says they’re old enough to get spayed.
Animals can be “fixed” at as little as 3-4 months. Even at as little as 6 weeks! Some vets don’t like to do it this early, but others do. Most animals can come into heat at 6 months. Females are always encouraged to be fixed BEFORE their first heat in order to cut down on the risk of breast cancer in the future.
If you have a vet who won’t do the surgery WAY before the animal is able to become pregnant, you need to find a different vet.
And if you adopt a stray, who – unbeknownst to you – is already pregnant?
Don’t assume the OP is a horrible person, just because she had kittens she couldn’t keep.
You should always model cat sales after new home sales and create a contract where you get a paid each time the cat is sold.
Really, it’s crummy but when you give things away it’s going to happen.
Slope woman? Wow, what a racist article.
That stuff happens all the time. My neighbor picks up stray dogs and sells them on craigslist.
She’ll buy a dog off craigslist and keep them 2 weeks to a month then sell them for a profit.
Since I’ve known her in the past year she’s had 6 dogs, 1 cat, 1 hamster, a guinea pig, and who knows what else. I stopped socializing with her so I don’t know what she’s done in the last 3 months.