We encourage interested adopters to fill out an adoption application first as an approved application allows the adoption process to proceed.
Once submitted, one of our adoption officers will contact you within 3 to 5 days after they have reviewed your application. They may have additional questions based on your responses and will keep you abreast of the status of your application. If you do not hear from one of our adoption officers after 5 days have elapsed, we advise checking your spam, junk or suspect mail folder first as sometimes our correspondence winds up there. If not, please visit our Contact Us page on our website to send us a message to inquire further.
Please be aware we often receive several applications for the same cat around the same time. We review applications on a first come, first serve basis. The first application submitted, if approved, has priority over all subsequent applications to follow. If things don’t work out with the first approved prospective applicant, we move to the next application in line. This is a process that can take time and can be a factor in a delayed response. If you have your heart set on a specific kitty, we completely understand. However, we encourage applicants to list two or more cats of interest in the event one of them already has an approved potential adopter.
Once the application is approved, it will be forwarded to the Kitty Devore foster guardian caring for the kitty you’re interested in adopting. The foster guardian will either call or contact you via email and will work with you to schedule a Meet and Greet in their home or at one of our Petsmart or Petco adoption venue locations. Meet and Greets are mandatory. They give you the opportunity to get to know the kitty and decide if they are a good fit for you. They also give the kitty an opportunity to get to know you so that they can determine if you are a good fit for them. It’s a two-way relationship.
If all goes well and if, after meeting the kitty, you’d like to proceed with his or her adoption, a home check is the next step.
Our home checks are not invasive and we do our best not to be intrusive. We just want to get an overall sense of the home environment and check to see if there are any safety concerns.
Unfortunately, interested adopters who refuse to open their home to a KD home checker will automatically be denied.
Please know that it is also possible to have an application approved but later denied at the home check or Meet and Greet phase of the adoption process.
If there are no concerns with the home check, the KD foster guardian will schedule a time to deliver your new kitty to your home.
Our adoption fee is $125.00 for one kitty and $225.00 for two. We accept two forms of payment: PayPal or personal check.
If paying by PayPal, we ask that you complete the adoption fee transaction BEFORE your new kitty is delivered.
Personal checks should be given to the KD representative who brings your new kitty to your home on the day of delivery*.
Within three weeks of the date of delivery, our home office will mail an adoption box to you via USPS mail. This box will include information about your newly adopted kitty’s microchip and registration procedures, an adoption certificate, a copy of your approved application, an overview of your kitty’s history while in KD Rescue’s care and all accompanying invoices and documentation that confirm the various procedures they’ve undergone while in our care for your records. These documents can also be supplied to your personal veterinarian so they also have documented medical history. The box also contains a few goodies for your newly adopted kitty to help get them settled into their new life with you.
We usually wait three weeks before sending out the adoption box and official records in order to give time for everyone to adjust as we’ve found most returns happen within the first two weeks post-adoption.
In the event things don’t work out, we are always more than happy to take a former KD foster kitty back into our rescue’s care. If returned within 30 days, we will issue a full refund of the adoption fee.
We will also take a former KD foster kitty back into our rescue’s care years after their adoption if the adopter’s life situation has changed. Once a KD kitty, always a KD kitty. We will forever be their back-up safety net.
We are unable to adopt outside of California, the Seattle area of Washington and specific areas of Arizona.
Shelter Direct Adoption Assistance
In instances where an adopter expresses interest on a cat’s Facebook photo thread and wants to adopt a “Friendly” cat directly from the shelter with the assistance of the KD team, we still require an application, subject to approval and a home check before the adoption can proceed.
Our adoption fee is the same but we cannot guarantee the final cost to the adopter as variant factors may come into play depending on the shelter’s determination of temperament or health status changes. For liability reasons imposed on us by our insurance carrier, we cannot pull cats deemed “Rescue Only” by the shelter for interested adopters. We are also unable to rescue pregnant female cats and moms with underage kittens for interested adopters.
When we pull from the shelter, we become the legal owners of the cat according to shelter and San Bernardino County records so, technically, the adopter is adopting through us and not the shelter. The adopter will be required to cover our $25.00 puller compensation fee, cost of transport and gas in addition to our $125.00 adoption fee.
Cats adopted directly from the shelter receive an FVRCP vaccine when admitted to the shelter and are microchipped upon leaving the shelter. They are kept overnight and then transported to the shelter’s off-site shelter vet – Loma Linda Animal Hospital – for sterilization the following morning per Devore Shelter policy. Cats adopted on Fridays and Saturdays are held until Monday before being transported to the shelter vet.
Any additional medical procedures or testing must be arranged and paid for by the adopter directly with Loma Linda Animal Hospital the day the cat is there to be sterilized.
Cats are picked up the same day they are sterilized and, depending on availability of our volunteer membership, delivered to the adopter’s home within a week of sterilization.
We take just as much care ensuring these adopters are as solid as the adopters who adopt through our foster program. Our adoption process is exactly the same in these types of adoptions.
We are unable to assist interested adopters outside Southern California. Our assistance with shelter direct adoptions is limited to Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino
* If the adoption is a shelter direct adoption, personal checks must be given to the home checker BEFORE we can pull the cat from the shelter.