Where to Adopt a Cat in Moncton

Start at P.A.W. on Greenock Street if you want a cat soon. It is the largest shelter in New Brunswick, cats are $250 and kittens $295, and everything medical is already done before the cat leaves the building. If you would rather know exactly how a cat behaves at 6 a.m. or around a toddler, go to a foster-based group instead. Abandoned Cat Rescue, CARMA and Fortunate Felines all keep cats in volunteer homes across Greater Moncton, so somebody has genuinely lived with the animal you are asking about. Neither route is better. They answer different questions.

P.A.W. charges $250 for a cat and $295 for a kitten six months and under, and that is the only published fee schedule in Greater Moncton. The volunteer foster groups set fees per cat rather than by a tier, so you ask when you enquire about a specific animal. Expect foster-group fees to land in a similar range, because they are recovering the same veterinary work. Anything dramatically cheaper usually means the surgery or the vaccines have not happened yet, and that bill lands on you later at full clinic rates.

The expensive veterinary work, done before pickup. A P.A.W. cat goes home spayed or neutered, with a first vaccination, a first deworming, flea treatment, ear cleaning, a nail clip, microchip identification, and one month of 24-hour PetWatch coverage. That bundle would cost several hundred dollars ordered separately at a Moncton clinic, plus 15% HST on the non-surgical parts. P.A.W. also asks that every cat leave in a proper carrier, so bring one or buy one before you go. Staff will not hand you a cat loose in your arms.

No. Moncton requires a licence tag for dogs, not cats. The city dog licence runs $10 for a spayed or neutered dog and $20 otherwise, with an exemption tied to microchipping, and P.A.W. enforces animal control for Moncton, Dieppe and Riverview. Cats are covered by the animal control by-law in other ways, including how long an unclaimed cat is held after it is picked up, but there is no annual cat tag to buy. Microchipping is still worth doing. It is how a found cat gets home, licence or not.

It means the cat lives in a volunteer spare room instead of a shelter kennel until adoption. Abandoned Cat Rescue works this way across Greater Moncton, and CARMA does the same after pulling adoptable kittens out of managed colonies. The payoff is information you cannot get anywhere else. Somebody has watched that cat around a vacuum, a resident dog, a freezing-rain night when the power flickered, and a five-year-old. A shelter room tells you far less, because most cats behave strangely in one and then turn into different animals three weeks into a quiet house.

A same-day pickup at P.A.W. is realistic if you find a cat you like, the paperwork clears and you brought a carrier. Foster-based groups run slower because they are volunteers with day jobs. Expect an application, some back and forth about whether the cat suits your household, and a week or more before the handover. That slowness is not disorganisation. It is the same care that produces the behaviour notes people want from a foster placement in the first place.

Yes, and rescues here expect it. Have written landlord permission or the relevant lease clause ready before you apply, because chasing a landlord for confirmation is the most common reason an otherwise simple adoption stalls for a week. Renting does not disqualify anyone. Being unable to show the cat is allowed does. If your lease is silent on pets, get something in writing from the landlord rather than relying on a verbal yes, since that protects you as much as the rescue.

An adult is the better bet for most Moncton households, and the fee gap barely reflects how different the workload is. A kitten at $295 costs $45 more than an adult and brings roughly two years of chaos, night sprinting and furniture testing. An adult arrives with a settled litter habit, a known personality and no interest in climbing your curtains. If you work full days or live in a smaller apartment in the downtown core, an adult or senior cat is usually happier and so are you.

Regularly, and it is worth taking seriously rather than avoiding. Cats who arrived together or bonded in a foster home often settle far faster placed as a pair, so rescues list them that way on purpose. Two cats double the food and the litter but barely change the gear, since they share the tree, the scratching post and eventually your bed. Two settled adults also entertain each other, which matters more than people expect during a long Maritime winter when nobody is going outside much.

You wait or you look at another cat, and it is not personal. Most rescues process one application per animal at a time, so a cat on hold is genuinely off the market until that falls through. The useful move is staying flexible about which cat rather than which rescue. Cats cycle through Greater Moncton organisations steadily, and the one that suits your household may be sitting in an Abandoned Cat Rescue foster home you have not contacted yet.

Treat it as a different situation than adopting, because it probably is. Many apparent strays are owned cats that slipped out, so check for a collar, get the cat scanned for a microchip at a Moncton clinic, and post locally before assuming it is homeless. If the cat is part of a colony rather than a lost pet, contact CARMA, which runs trap-neuter-return work across New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Do not bring an unknown cat straight into a home with resident pets. Untested cats can carry feline leukemia and other things that are hard to undo.

Kitten season. Unspayed cats cycle from spring into autumn, so litters land on rescues in waves rather than a steady trickle, and every unfixed cat outdoors compounds it the following year. That is why the surgery programs matter as much as the adoption work here. If you are looking for a kitten specifically, late spring through early autumn is when Greater Moncton rescues are fullest. If you are open to an adult, you can adopt any month of the year and you will have better information about the cat.