It was difficult, haha. If I could, I would have walked out with every single one of the cats. She just spoke to me. Literally. When I walked into the cat room, she took one look at me and wouldn't stop meowing. I spoke to the front desk about adopting her and found out that she was a stray that was caught the day prior and that I'd have to wait two weeks until she could come home with me. I decided to wait and came back two weeks later to take her to her forever home.

My ex spouse was going to a shelter every few weeks just to say hi to all the cats. One day they messaged me, crying, holding a tiny one eyed kitten "can we keep this one?". Sometimes the right one calls to you. My cat I was plastered and a friend was telling me about one of the kittens they had tried to adopt out and it got sent back twice and I drunkenly was like hell yeah I'll take it after having never met it. So sometimes the right one kinda happens. Just gotta go with the flow and be open to loving it even if they aren't "perfect" because nothing ever is and that's part of the joy

For our dog, we knew we wanted a dog that would be good with the cats, so we passed any that were going nuts barking at us. That gave us a list of about 5 to meet. Two were Huskies, and the shelter worker asked, "Have you had a Husky before?" At which point we realized that probably wasn't a good idea. A third dog was already spoken for. We met the last two, and while meeting the second one we started talking about which one we liked more, while the second dog was still in the room with us. We noticed that he settled down really quickly, just kind of relaxed and chilled out while we were talking.

8 years later, he's still that way! A little excited at new situations at first, but then he calms down. The cats love him. I hope the other dog found her forever home quickly.

For the cats, it's just about the vibe with the cat. It can be hard to tell because they're so reserved, and shelters are stressful places. So far we've only really been surprised by one cat's personality - in the shelter video (during covid) he would demand to be carried around, but he wants none of that at home. But because of the pandemic, we never met him in person before adopting him, and I think that had an effect - he just got stuffed into a carrier and handed to us. He is slowly coming out of his shell (6 years later), but he may never be a lap cat, and he still runs to hide under the bed very often. We're still giving him a good home though.

went to the shelter and met cats. this one just kind of picked me. we bonded immediately.

My experience with cats always was that they picked me, not the other way around. My little princess and her brother came to me because she decided to jump on me and cuddle with me like stupid including starting to drool and wanting to have her belly rubbed - she seems to love how i smell :-) She didn't do that before she met me, and has never done that with anyone else over the years.

Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal?