Thank you for volunteering to do a Home Visit for Safe With Us Animal Rescue!

Home Visits are essential part of our application process. It gives us an insight into the potential adopter’s home and lifestyle, and helps us place our cats in safe loving homes.

Some things to remember:

• Do not talk about specific cats with the potential adopters. Remember, people only hear what they want to. When you engage them about a specific cat they feel that that cat is now theirs.
• Keep in mind you are not there to approve them or not approve them. You are there just to gather information and pass it on to our applications team who will approve or disapprove the applicant based on the home visit and all the other aspects of the application process.
• If they have specific questions, direct them to their adoption coordinator. Our adoption coordinator is the person that knows which cats have been promised as well as which cats would be a good fit for their family. Play up their role, make them sound like the cat guru and that they are excellent at making sure the new family member is a perfect fit for them and the cat. It keeps you out of the hot seat.
• If you are contacted by the applicant after the home visit, please refer them to the adoption coordinator. Having the applicant contact the correct person speeds up the process and gets cats adopted faster.

Home visit information for you:

The purpose of the home visit is to meet the prospective adopters and see the environment that they will provide for a cat. Safe With Us Animal Rescue essentially wants to know if you think the applicant will provide a good and loving home and provide for the cats safety at all times.

When you arrive at the home, introduce yourself and briefly explain the function of the home visit. Tell them that you are visiting to meet them and to evaluate the appropriateness and safety of their home for a cat and to get to know them a little better.

NOTE: If you are not comfortable with the applicant as a cat owner or are in any other way uncomfortable, please end the interview on a nice note and leave immediately.

Tour the house and living areas. Check to see whether the living quarters are cat friendly.

Try not to make this a formal interview!

Observe their behavior. Get a sense of how they would be as cat owners. Do the children seem like they would be respectful to pets? Will the adults monitor the children’s’ behavior with the cat?

When the meeting is over don’t tell the person whether or not they are approved.

The information you provide is relayed to our applications team to make the final decision. Not every home is right for every cat so even great people can be wrong for a specific cat.

That is why we have an adoption coordinator, to try and make sure that the cat or cats they are interested in are a good fit for their family and lifestyle.