I am a happy owner of a dog adopted through orange county animal shelter and a cat from a high kill shelter in Virginia. My kitty came from a completely volunteer run organization in Virginia that collected cats from high kill shelters all over the state and did courtesy posts on craigslist, pet finder, and many other websites. It was well run with clear communication, guidelines, and expectations. IAR is nothing like this. As far as I can tell they are a group of older, lazy, non- communicative women, who have too much time, and not enough interest in finding these kitties good homes, with no knowledge on well- constructed website design to boot.
I was rejected over two years ago without explanation, and when I called to ask why I was hung up on, and never told why. This experience deterred me from adopting any cat for over a year. Over a year later I decide to try again after such a nice experience with the volunteer organization in Virgina . I thought perhaps it was a big misunderstanding and they confused me with someone else, or that was just one persons misconstrued opinion. But, again, I was given a curt message explaining my file was red flagged. Again, no explanation.
A month later my partner fell in love with a cat he saw online through them as well. I explained my experience to him and he suggested we let them see our faces first. Perhaps, if one lady met us they would see we weren't crazy miscreants of any kind. We went to PETCO a few days later, met the awesome kitten, met the nice lady, who said she might keep the kitten we wanted even though she already has three dogs and three cats... I will politely leave out the poor organized design of their website that doesn't tell you correct information about were and when their events are held, but that exists, too.
Today we were sent the same curt message. "Your file has been red flagged. We will not be adopting to you due to history issues." I have no history with IAR. Beware of animal hoarders wasting your time, folks!

All I can say is wow. About a month ago, we fell in love with a puppy from this organization if that's what you'd like to call it...we played with him at the fosters home, filled out all the paper work and had the check ready for them.At the time of home inspection we stated that we would soon be moving to a home (we currently live in a town home with an older relative ) ,within the next 2-3 months that is larger and has more yard space.Once that was done they told us we could take the puppy within a few days. I get an email at 10PM saying that the puppy may overpower my older relative and that him being in a play pen for a few hours isn't good? Because of this they are deciding on not giving us the puppy. Again,when I am not home someone else who will take care of him is so he will never be lonely. I am truly heartbroken and have no idea what to say...we put time and money into bringing this beautiful boy puppy into our home and we were so excited to have anew family member all to later be met with "it's basically not a good idea because you're moving and you have a relative in her early 60's who's somehow going to be overpowered by a 2 month old puppy"



It's unfair that there are people who want to bring these animals into loving homes and grow attachments to these animals and then get told that cannot bring them home. We are genuinely so heartbroken we couldn't sleep last night thinking about this whole ordeal.



Please put your time and love somewhere else so you don't have to go through the same situation as we did.