An interesting trap when applying to adopt cats. [View all]

My wife and I lost our cat a while back, - she passed at age 18- and after much consideration about our grief, we decided to adopt another one from a shelter.

We have never done this, adopted from a shelter. For all the cats we've had, we either took them in from a relative who couldn't keep them or took in feral strays.

One feral stray, a beautiful polydactal cat tested positive for toxoplasmosis when my wife was pregnant and we had to give him away to strangers. The other feral we had didn't last too long. She was struck by a car when she went out and paralyzed. We had to put her down.

We had to fill out an application form at the shelter and among the questions they asked was whether we wanted a declawed cat. We answered no. We're OK with our cats destroying furniture and we've learned to use furniture covers to slow their process. We don't approve of declawing.

Another question asked if we wanted an indoor or outdoor cat. We said indoor since we have understood that outdoor cats don't live very long in our neighborhood, and we lost an outdoor cat years ago.

They accepted our application and gave us a mother and son cat since I wanted a mature cat and my wife wanted a kitten.

We had to sign a contract to adopt and in the contract it said that we agree to never declaw the cats and, also, to keep them as indoor cats.

It turns out that answering the question about declawing positively or indicating we wanted an outdoor cat, they would have refused to let us adopt. They were trick questions designed to screen us as suitable. (We also had to give them nonfamilial references; they actually called both of them.)

I was surprised at that. I will say there were a lot of people adopting cats when we were there, literally a line out the door.