Shutterstock

Adopting a pet is a big decision because pets are a big responsibility. It’s not fair to the pet to bring one home if you’re not going to take care of it properly.

In this story, we hear the perspective of an employee at an animal shelter who has to deal with annoying families stopping by to look at the pets. The worst part is when the parents don’t seem to care about the animal shelter’s rules.

Keep reading for all the details.

If your kid can’t listen to you, why are you buying them a pet?

At the animal shelter I work at, we have a few simple rules regarding children (which we repeat every time we see a child creature step through the door):

• No one under 18 can handle the cats/kittens or walk the dogs. If a kid wants to see an animal, the parent can take it out or a staff member can do it.
• Kids must stay with their parents at all times.
• Kids can’t open cages/gates.

Yikes! This day sounds stressful!

Sunday was an absolute mess of kids and dumb parents.

Family 1: Mom with at least eight kids in tow comes in to drop something off to one of my coworkers.

All eight of them immediately start fighting over the candy jar, running around the lobby, jumping around, and the oldest looking girl leaps behind the counter and starts messing around on our computer where the assistant manager had previously been updating adoption records.

Mom doesn’t say a word, but leaves quickly enough.

Another family wanted to look at a dog.

Family 2: Mom, dad, two little boys and an even younger girl. Now, these people have been here before – I think it was just the grandma with the two little boys, though.

The oldest boy is hyper but keeps his hands to himself. Younger boy will run around the shelter asking questions, bothering people, poking at the dogs.

I took a dog out for the family to walk and he kept trying to grab the leash out of my hand when I was handing it to the grandma (who didn’t look like she was too pleased about it).

Throughout their visit, the leash kept getting into the hands of the little boy, who wasn’t even holding it correctly and the dog in particular was small, but strong enough to bolt if he wanted to.

It gets worse!

The second time they came in was with their mom, dad, and apparently the younger sister.

The youngest boy and the girl immediately start racing around despite us asking the mom to keep them with her.

Fifteen minutes or so after they go out to look at the kittens, we hear a sharp yowl from the kitten hallway.

Apparently the kids had slammed a paw in a cage door.

But they also wanted to look at a dog.

The same kids also ended up with a dog’s leash yet again and were almost asked to leave because the mom seemed to not care about this rule either way.

We had a lot of other dogs out being walked/played with as well, and unless we’re doing a meet and greet we prefer to keep them separate because some dogs might be great with people, but not so with other dogs.

Little girls and kittens: Enough said.

I know the whole ‘arms full of kittens’ thing sounds sweet on paper or in a picture, but we don’t really feel like running around chasing escaped cats during the hours of operation.

It doesn’t sound like that family went home with a pet that day. That’s probably a good thing.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person shares their opinion about parenting and pets.

Another person cringed.

One person has a theory about what the parents are hoping.

Here’s a suggestion.

Families like that don’t deserve a pet. The kids are out of control. I’d worry about the pet’s safety. Adding a pet to a chaotic household will not make the household less chaotic!