Kitten rescuer agrees to foster abandoned cat for local shelter, only to be denied over a technicality and charged $240 to surrender her, rescuer says: "I feel like they tricked us"

Blake Seidel • Lead Editor

Jun 2, 2026 6:15 AM EDT

Wouldn't it be nice if doing the "right thing" was always met with a good reward?

People say "a good deed is its own reward", but when they coined that phrase, they weren't living in this economy. Sure, it feels good to do a good thing, but less so when it ends up costing you a lot of money. And even less so when you realize that you were tricked by "the system" into paying fees that you never should have had to pay in the first place.

Our rescuer's story that was posted in the r/CatAdvice Reddit page really grinds our gears for this exact reason. It takes a lot of effort to rescue kittens, both emotionally and financially. They may be smol, but they still need food, medicine, and care, all of which are expenses that you often haven't budgeted for. They rescued an abandoned kitten, and the shelter asked them to foster the tiny baby and try to find a home for it themselves. Knowing that shelters are crowded and underfunded, they agreed to take on the burden for the sake of helping this kitten find her furrever home.

Six weeks later, with no interest in the kitten, they returned to the shelter, only to be denied because of an unspoken policy requiring them to pay $240 to surrender the kitten.

So, we ask you again, wouldn't it be nice if doing the right thing was always met with a good reward?

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via Curated Lifestyle For Unsplash+

Woman holding her foster cat after rescue (picture is represented by a model)
Unfurtunately, this just feels like another example of an organization creating a system that purposefully tricks good people into funding them. According to the shelter, if the rescuers kept the kitten for six weeks and posted about the kitten on their rehoming website, then that technically makes the kitten “theirs”. Because the kitten is now under their “ownership”, they have to surrender her instead of giving her away as a rescue. This type of technicality should have been mentioned upfront!
How else are the rescuers supposed to feel, if not deceived? It feels purrfectly clawful to “do the right thing”, and then get slapped in the face (metaphorically) by the system whose rules you played by.
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via Getty Images For Unsplash+

A veterinarian writing notes about kittens in a cat rescue shelter, as represented by a model
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A model representation of a cat owner holding their silver tabby foster cat
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