A nine-year-old cat that lived his entire life at a northwest Iowa animal shelter has been adopted by a family from Missouri.
Barney was adopted after becoming a social media sensation last month. Emmet County Animal Shelter Director Kristy Henning says Barney was featured in the shelter’s “Sunday Spotlight” on Facebook.”We do that sort of thing all the time, but he just became really popular for some reason and then someone on Reddit who’s name is Josh, he saw it and shared it over to a forum on Reddit,” Henning says, “and it just went gangbusters from there.”
The post drew attention nationwide and in Canada and 15 applications were filled out to adopt Barney the cat. The shelter selected a family from Lee’s Summit, Missouri as Barney’s forever home. “They actually had to come up twice,” Henning says. “One was halfway because Barney ended up having a fever from one of his boosters we gave him, which isn’t uncommon, but because we didn’t want to send him on in not tip top shape, we said that we wanted to hang onto him for a little while and monitor him and then as soon as he was feeling better, the family was super excited to make the trip again.”
The Sherer family is keeping the shelter — and the internet — updated on Barney’s progress. “We are friends with them on Facebook now so we get to see all the Barney posts
and then they text us updates letting us know he’s coming around and he exploring,” Henning says. “The last notification I got was he had walked across their piano keys, scared himself, made a ruckus, woke everyone up in the house. They thought they had a burgler, but they all laughed about it, though.”
Barney’s mother was pregnant when she was taken in at the Emmet County Shelter, so he had spent every day of his life at the facility until he was adopted. Henning says there’s no carpeting at the shelter and Barney’s new family says he loves rolling around on the carpet at his new home in Missouri.
(By Ed Funston, KILR, Estherville)