About the Cow Cats Pet Adoption Center

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In Service Since October 2001!

What is a cow cat?

Our cat address, www.CowCats.com, is named in honor of our beloved cow cats - you know, the ones with the Holstein cow patterned coats, big patches of solid color over white. For us the cow cats are specifically the gray and white ones. Our first cat was a cow cat and they will always be special to us.

What is a dog log?

Our dog address, www.DogLogs.com, is a reference to what we affectionately call our own dogs. It's silly but it's happy, and dogs like happy.

Why build this service?

We designed this service to reduce the pressure on local pet shelters and to enable anyone within the community to help a cat or dog in need by finding a home for them without relying on a shelter. While volunteering nearly full-time with a local pet rescue organization, we learned first-hand what was missing from the animal rescue system. We learned that:

1. Every day people approach no-kill shelters for help and are turned away because the shelters do not have enough boarding space for more animals. This makes sense because whenever they do have more space they are able to instantly fill that space by taking in more animals from local euthanizing shelters. Therefore the people who want to do the right thing by working with a local no-kill shelter have literally had nowhere else to turn other than to a euthanizing shelter.

2. There is a critical shortage of practical information on how to find a new home for a pet. People who are faced with the task of re-homing a cat or dog often don't have any idea where to begin, other than to contact a shelter. Fortunately these days many people search for shelter information online. Therefore the people who take the initiative to look for a no-kill shelter online have a very good chance of finding any well-promoted online adoption resource such as this one.

Based on our experience we concluded that there was both a need for non-shelter online adoption listings, and also a proven method for people to conveniently access those listings.

How does this service solve the overpopulation problem?

It doesn't. Spay/neuter is the only long-term answer to overpopulation. However we believe that compassion for the individual lives is critical to a humane long-term solution. Compassion isn't an efficient solution, but we need to have compassion in order to be part of a civilized society. You get what you give, what goes around comes around, karma, call it whatever you like but even children know that being mean or selfish is going to be bad for you in the long term. These cats and dogs don't deserve to die just because there are too many of them right now, and since there isn't and probably never will be enough shelter space, the only remaining option is to get the community involved in providing for as many of these cats and dogs as possible. This service helps to do that by giving people the opportunity to keep cats and dogs out of shelters.

How is this service different from other online resources?

There are actually quite a few online resources for animal listings. However to date they are primarily geared towards multiple listings for shelters and they tend to be strict about requirements. While these requirements are noble and enforced with the best of intentions, they can inadvertently drive people away from a resource that could have saved a life. These hurdles can prove to be insurmountable for low-income people and even for people who are just trying to help out a stray. This service is different in that it has a minimal number of barriers that might prevent a listing from being published, while at the same time providing checks and balances to prevent abuse of the system.

Why just Arizona?

It seems to make sense that if a solution works locally, it should work nationally as well. It doesn't, and here's why. In order for this service to be successful, the listings have to be up to date and in a high enough volume to attract adopters. Maintaining and promoting the service just within Arizona is a fairly monumental commitment. Maintaining and promoting it nationally to the point of having sufficient and up to date listings for every state would be practically unattainable. Many of the available online resources are national, and more often than not, when we looked at the local listings they were outdated and few and far between, not because the animals here don't need help but because these resources haven't been promoted heavily enough to be effective locally.

We accept listings from throughout Arizona and the surrounding area, including the following cities: Apache Junction, Avondale, Bisbee, Buckeye, Bullhead City, Camp Verde, Casa Grande, Casas Adobes, Catalina, Chandler, Chino Valley, Coolidge, Cottonwood, Deer Valley, Dewey-Humboldt, Douglas, Drexel Heights, El Mirage, Eloy, Flagstaff, Florence, Flowing Wells, Fortuna Foothills, Fountain Hills, Gilbert, Glendale, Globe, Gold Camp, Goodyear, Green Valley, Kingman, Lake Havasu, Marana, Mesa, Mohave Valley, Butler, New River, Nogales, Oro Valley, Page, Paradise Valley, Payson, Peoria, Phoenix, Picture Rocks, Prescott, Safford, San Luis, Scottsdale, Sedona, Show Low, Sierra Vista, Somerton, Sun City, Sun Lakes, Surprise, Tanque Verde, Tempe, Tuba City, Tucson, Winslow, Yuma

Is this service anti-shelter?

Absolutely not. No matter how effective spay/neuter programs may become, there will always be some people who dump animals and therefore we will always need to have shelters. This service works in conjunction with shelters.