Pets

Dogs and cats looking for a new family:

they are the two animals most often bred for profit, which is why each has an adoption branch of its own. A dog or a cat that needs a home goes in adopt a dog or adopt a cat, listed with its age, whether it is sterilised and its vaccination card. Leads, beds, scratching posts and travel crates sit under dogs and cats, and that gear is where nearly all the buying and selling happens.

Rabbits, hamsters, fish and reptiles, and the enclosures they live in:

with the smaller animals, the listing is nearly always the housing, and it is worth choosing by the animal’s lifespan rather than its size. A hamster lives about two years, which is why its cage so often turns up barely scuffed. A rabbit can live eight to twelve years and needs room to hop, stretch out and stand up, far more floor than the hutch it usually comes home in. Both sit in rodents and rabbits. Fish and reptiles depend on equipment that never switches off, the filter on a tank or the lamps over a terrarium, listed under fish and reptiles and amphibians, while cages and perches go under birds.

A second-hand hutch, cage or terrarium:

smell it before you look at anything else. Bare wood soaks up urine and never quite gives it back, so a wooden hutch that housed rabbits for years is worth much less than its frame suggests, while a cage with a plastic base scrubs clean. Shut every door and lid. A hamster gets through a gap you would not notice, and a snake will find the one corner of a lid that does not lock. On a terrarium, treat the UVB tube as spent unless the owner knows when it went in: it keeps glowing long after it stops giving out the ultraviolet a lizard or a turtle needs, and replacing it is part of the real cost. Ask what lived in it and whether it was ill, because anything that housed a sick animal needs disinfecting before the next one moves in.

Rehoming a dog, a rabbit or a turtle:

the listing that finds a home that lasts is the honest one. Say that the dog pulls on the lead, that the cat will not share a house with another cat, that the rabbit hates being picked up, and why you can no longer keep it. Meet whoever answers before the day of the handover, ideally at your home, where you can watch how the two get on. Send its food, its bed and whatever papers came with it. The animal goes to the family that suits it, not to whoever answers first.

Dogs lost after the November parades and the New Year fireworks:

the drums of the patriotic parades and the New Year fireworks both send frightened dogs over walls and through gates left ajar. If yours goes missing, post in animals lost and found the same day, with a clear photo, the corregimiento and street where it was last seen, and the collar it was wearing. If you have found one, most veterinary clinics can read a microchip. Keep back one detail, a scar or a white patch, so you can tell the real owner from someone who simply wants a dog. A tag with a phone number on the collar lets whoever finds the dog call you directly, with nobody in between.

Cages, carriers and tanks you no longer need:

photograph them empty and cleaned, give the inside measurements, and say which animal used them and for how long. List what is missing, whether a water bottle, a filter cartridge or a lid clip, since a new pet needs it all working on the first night. And anyone coming to collect an animal rather than a cage should bring a proper carrier, not a cardboard box, which a frightened cat is out of before the car has left the street.