Kenosha man speaks out after lost cat adopted by different family in humane society error

 

KENOSHA, Wis. (CBS 58) – A man in Kenosha is sending a warning to pet parents, after his cat was adopted out to another family due to human error.

While many lost animals may not get reunited with their families because they aren't microchipped, that's not what happened here.

"Shadow was a stray. He was dumped, along with his brother, Charlie. So it took me six months to be able to touch him and socialize him," Jon FioRito said about his beloved cat, Shadow.

He had Shadow for more than two years before the cat got out and went missing.

Then, a couple weeks ago, there was a glimmer of hope.

"One of my neighbors had come over and showed me a picture of a cat at the humane society and he asked me if that was my cat," FioRito said.

Confident that Shadow was microchipped, he reached out to the Wisconsin Humane Society's Kenosha campus and learned heartbreaking news.

"They ended up adopting Shadow out to another family," FioRito said.

WHS said they couldn't get in contact with FioRito before Shadow's mandatory stray hold was up.

"My vet called the microchip company and verified that my information was correct, I called the microchip company and verified everything," FioRito said. "The humane society ended up saying one of their employees made a mistake and wrote down the wrong phone number."

FioRito said they called him to apologize, but said the new family is unwilling to return the cat, and legally, there's nothing they can do.

"They did explain there might be a kid that's attached to the cat and that's the reason why, so that's a little bit more understandable," he explained.

WHS took responsibility for the mistake, saying in a statement to CBS 58:

"We work hard to reunite lost pets with their families whenever possible, but unfortunately, our error prevented a successful reunion in this case."

"I would love to have the animal back, but as long as it's in a nice home, it's being taken care of, that's the important thing," FioRito said.

Now, he's reminding pet owners to doublecheck their microchips, and warning that issues like this are a possibility.

"You spend a lot of time with your animals, a lot of money, it's part of your family, and I'd hate to have someone else go through this," FioRito explained.

FioRito said the WHS-Kenosha director told him they will put policies in place to make sure this won't happen again.

In a statement, the Wisconsin Humane Society said they have procedures in place to prevent human error and are actively reevaluating those procedures to prevent future issues.

Read the Wisconsin Humane Society's full statement below:

"We work hard to reunite lost pets with their families whenever possible, but unfortunately, our error prevented a successful reunion in this case.

On July 27, a cat was brought in as stray after being found at an apartment complex. The cat was held and listed publicly for six days on stray hold, and while a microchip was found, the phone number written down and called by one of our staff members was off by a digit.

We scan all animals for microchips, and we post all lost animals to our website and social media, but unfortunately the cat had been adopted by the time the owner contacted us."

This ultimately led us to believe we had no additional active leads to pursue to get the animal back home.

Once we were made aware of our mistake, we contacted the adopter to explain the situation and ask if they would be willing to bring the cat back to WHS so we could reunite him with his prior family. As the new legal owners, the adopters have the ability to deny this request, which they did.

While errors like this are exceptionally rare, they are a possibility, and we are very sorry for the way this situation unfolded. We do have procedures in place to help mitigate human error and we are actively reevaluating them in an effort to prevent future issues."