feeling all mushy... too many cute kittens and puppies

i barely made it out of the store in one piece! the most adorable were the little chihuahua puppies playing with each other
and a basket of seven (yes seven) kittens all snuggled up together sleeping.

hell, even the rodents were looking awfully cute.

I always get mushy whenever I see kittens regardless. This one pet store in this mall I was in was asking for $499 for Himilayan kittens ....I love kittens, but that is WAY too much. And what's funny is at first I thought she meant $4.99, but I didn't say anything....because I wasn't planning on getting more cats anyway.

emm said:

I hear ya, I love animals! There is a pet store close to me that I love going to, because they have a wide variety of animals (minus dogs and cats, for some reason, they don't sell those). But they do have birds, ferrets, rabbits, fish, guinea pigs, gerbils, mice, I think even small lizards. I enjoy just walking around the store and looking at them.

http://www.prince.org/msg/100/123372

Please,please,please don't buy puppies or cats from pet stores unless they're up for adotion from a shelter or rescue groups. I know they're all cute and practically irresistible,but NO reputable breeder would let their animals be sold in a pet store. For the money the stores charge, you can go right to the breeder and see where the puppy or cat comes from, meet the parents and if things don't work out for you the really good ones will take the animals back from you and find them another home.
Even better yet go to a shelter or rescue group and save somebody's life. We have an Australian Cattle Dog{Blue Heeler} that we rescued who is the best dog in the world and we only paid $100 including some shots and spaying.

PJ Pets store charges too much $$$ for puppies/cats. I would rather buy from the SPCA

We were in a really bad store in Syracuse last week, they were having a grand opening special thing going on and it was pretty awful for the animals. We were there just a couple hours after the store opened and the puppies were so out of it they didn't even bother to pick up their heads to look at people. They had 2and 3 pups in each small cage with wire mesh bottoms in the cages for them to walk on. They had the small pets and birds in open bins so people could play with them. You could play with the hamsters and mice and go right over to the parakeets and cockatiels and touch them without washing your hands. Actually I don't think there was anyway to clean your hands at all there. We wanted to buy a few things that were on sale, but had to get out of there. We usually buy all our pet stuff at stores where they don't sell live animals.

this thread should read
DONT BUY PETS FROM A PET STORE ---PERIOD

They are all rejects from breeders etc...all unhealthy or disabled.

origmnd said:

Yeah, so screw them, right?

OH FOR PETE'S SAKE.....

i don't know about the pet stores you have, but all the major ones here have adoption deals with the local spca's... so they have animals that are from the shelter and animals that are from breeders...

how did my innocent thread about how cute animals are get turned into something about puppymills???

emm said:

luv4u said:

Co-sign. I have three catz that I adopted from a no-kill environment, all former strays. It feels good to give an unwanted animal a home, since there are sooo many neglected/unwanted/mistreated animals out there.

one cat is a stray that turned up on the farm... the other i've had since he was a kitten from the farm...

the dogs we've had - one was given to us by family in california after they realized he would be happier on a farm, one was taken in after he was left behind at the animal hospital my sister worked for and one was a puppy from a neighbor who's dog wasn't spayed

only animal i've ever bought was a fish from wal-mart.

i went into the store for hairball remedy for my two cats. i guess my point is... i was feeling all gooey looking at all the animals that
even the animals i think are nasty were looking cute to me!

JoweeCoco said:

I mean that the are rip offs---they dont tell u whats wrong and the animal will get worse before u find out...

luv4u said:

I don't cost much and I don't lick my balls either. (doesn't mean others shouldn't )

and I'm pretty much potty tranied. I rarely miss.

Heavenly said:

Only because you can't reach!

doctormcmeekle said:

True even if I could, the pain of being in that weird position wouldn't make it fun.

If less people buy from the pet stores then hopefully the pet stores will stop selling the live animals. There are many sides to this problem, there are good and bad shelters too. You are allowed to take a camera or video camera and document any neglect or abuse that you see. You can get copies of the animal cruelty laws to give to the police and they will remove the animals from the premises,if it's a private seller you can use the cameras or video cameras without the sound on. Of course it's hard for the poor animals that didn't ask to be born into such terrible circumstances, there is a lot of work to be done to help. Reputable breeders are a whole other story and usually they are cheaper than the pet stores anyway.Did you ever try to ask the store what happens to the animals that they don't sell? It's strange, but in our area they don't seem to end up in the SPCA or other rescue sites.

I love animals too, really love them.

hmmmmm...there seems to be a lot of animal lovers here

AnckSuNamun said:

Where I live this guy was selling puppies for $1500. Weeks went by and the price went down, but no lower than $1000. It's not like the puppies were rare or anything. He wanted to rip people off.

unlucky7 said:

Perhaps he was a puppy whisperer?

I was again at the pet store today, buying cat food. There were these little black and white bunnies in a cage, running around and chasing each other. It was so funny because they were running right into each other.

It sounds like they were having fun. Rabbits are really smart ,you can train them to use a litter box and let them have the run of your house. You just have to be careful because they will chew on anything including electrical wires.Personally ,I still wouldn't buy them from a pet store, but they really are cute little critters.

If you don't buy pets from the pet store, the Chinese restaurant next door to the pet store will.






Oh I'm just kidding!

That's my dog. I got him at a farm about 40 miles from where I live.
He still cost a bit of money but he was raised indoors with the mother
still there and the family were obviously in love with all the puppies.

They had 3 girls aged 5-14 and they were playing with the pups all day
long, taking them outside, showing them other farm animals and letting
them play on the laws etc etc.

He's turned out to be the most sociable and friendly and loving dog I
ever had. We had a few pedigree dogs when I was young and they always
had a lot of health issues and usually quite bad characters.

This one's like your best friend. He's just the nicest and the best
dog in the world. Plus, because he's a mixed breed, he's very strong
healthwise.

Anyways all I wanted to say is that you should indeed never buy a pup
from one of those puppyfarms. People who have puppyfarms and are just
in it for the cold hard $ should be locked up imo.

What a beautiful dog! That's exactly what I meant, proper socialization and a loving environment makes all the difference! Good luck with him, I hope he has a long happy life.

shellyevon said:

they are. I used to have two rabbits. But they lived outside in a raised caged, since we live kinda out in the country. They were easy to keep up with too...I used to take them out of their cages and just let them run free in the yard for exercise...and my cats would play with them, like they were other cats. It was cute to see cats and rabbits bonding.... I miss those days. They were huge rabbits too.....bigger than the cats We had to get rid of them, because not only did they get too big for their cage, but it turned out that one was a male and the other one was a female and ended up having babies. The man who sold them to us got them confused and said that they were both female. You shoulda seen the look on my face when I went down to the cage to feed them after school. And to make matters worse the mother rabbit was eating her babies.....I'm not sure if that's normal for them to do that. The babies she was eating might've already been dead though. There were about 8 that lived. The ones that were alive only lived for two days, because we weren't expecting them, so we had no clue how to take care of them. We tried to bottle feed them warm milk...but that didn't work. I would love to have dwarf rabbits.....they're probably easier to take care of, since they're so small.

MrJoker said:

unlucky7 said:

that's ridiculous. I hope nobody actually fell for that. You know you can find some really nice dogs at animal shelters.....full breeds too. If you go to the nicer ones in bigger cities.