Someone emailed to ask why we didn't adopt a dog from a local shelter. That was a very valid question, and there is a very valid answer to it.

Mr. Husband and I actually do strongly believe that animals should be rescued first and foremost. In fact, we have adopted together in the past. Waaaaay back in the day, we adopted an older Lhasa Apso named Rocky. Only when we adopted him, we had no idea he was a Lhasa Apso. He was so badly matted and so dirty that we assumed he was a true mutt. We learned otherwise when we first took him to the vet.

Over the years, there have been other examples of us adopting, and that lasted right up until Jasmine. We did purchase her, in part because we had fallen in love with the breed thanks to Rocky, and in part because of this guy:

That is Powder, our oldest furbaby. Powder is a special sort of guy who is REALLY allergic to vaccinations. We're talking the kind of allergic where his face puffs up to 4x its normal size, he gets hives everywhere, he vomits, and as an extra-special bonus, his throat swells up until he can't breath. And, yes, we did learn that lesson the hard way. While dead broke in college. Good times. Anyway, we could go to great lengths to figure out which vaccination actually causes his problems and try to control it, or we could follow the simplest course of action and just not get his shots. We choose to not get his shots. He's not allowed outside (the photo is of him on our second story deck which he can't get off no matter how hard he tries), so we feel that withholding shots is less of a health risk for him than getting shots would be. Interestingly enough, our vet agrees with this strategy.

Anyway, before we found Jasmine, I had called a few dog shelters. Repeatedly I was told that we would need to provide vaccination records for our cats. Repeatedly I was told that there is no valid excuse for not vaccinating your cat. Repeatedly I was told to go to hell because no way were we eligible to adopt a dog. And no thank you, we do not need to see a note from your vet because FORGET IT.

While I genuinely do understand the need for such rules, that experience was enough for me to become totally disenfranchised with the main local shelters. Sure they do fantastic work, but I just couldn't get their attention long enough for them to see that really we aren't horrible people for not vaccinating our cat. No, in fact we are saving his life by not vaccinating our cat.

And that is why we bought Cody instead of trying to find a shelter dog. I'd have to say that considering how much he and Alexis adore one another, it was a good decision.