"Come back in a couple of weeks, and we'll talk then," the woman at the animal rescue chirped.

The short version of this story is my husband and I had been trying to adopt kittens from a local rescue. What should have been a straightforward process instead turned into a year-and-a-half-long binge of rejections, capped off by this woman refusing to even have a conversation with us.

Instead, we got placating bromides ("Sure, adoption saves lives, but no"), some teasing ("Well . . . I was going to say, maybe . . . but no"), and finally, the proverbial straw, cooed at my husband as if he were five years old: "I get it: You want a little friend."

The sheer humiliation at being denied wasn't what nearly drove me mad, though. It was the escalating disdain in her voice. Sixteen months of these thwarted attempts left us so thoroughly defeated that we had already done the unthinkable: We shopped.

We did not do it lightly. We wanted two kittens, and thought maybe we could adopt them together. First we signed up for Petfinder and Adopt-a-Pet alerts, only to click on emailed links taking us to pages that read, "Looks like this pet has already been adopted!" We visited shelters and adoption fairs and submitted many applications without receiving responses.

Eventually, I tossed away hope of adopting a pair of cats concurrently and placed a deposit on a Maine Coon kitten with a breeder, meant as a birthday gift for my spouse. In the meantime, we decided to give the feline rescue websites one more look. That is how we found Clyde. According to his online profile, this 4 1/2-month-old ink spot with harvest moon eyes lived for belly rubs. Perfect. We wanted two kittens, and we could still adopt one. Right?

What drew us to this rescue — other than Clyde's adorable picture — was its stated emphasis on engaging in conversations with potential adopters. It also had a policy of only adopting out kittens under six months old in pairs or to homes with another kitten or young cat. Since we had another cat joining us in two and a half weeks, as well as decades of experience as feline caretakers, we thought they would be willing to discuss our situation.

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We were wrong.

As soon as I told the woman at the front desk that our other kitten had not arrived yet, nothing else mattered. We never got to discuss our qualifications or present our list of references, including our veterinarian. She wasn't interested to know that Clyde, appraising us from his teeny terrarium, was a near-doppelgänger for the 16 1/2-year-old companion I had lost a few months before.

Later, I vented about my saga to my friend Bonnie (not her real name), and she confirmed what I felt: "This is absurd," she fumed. As it turns out, she knew the place well.

Then, after a pause, came her offer. "Look, do you want this cat?" Bonnie has a reputation for getting things done. She is that friend with a friend who knows a guy. "You know what?" I blurted. "Yes, I do."

Thus, the slight that almost became my Joker origin story instead ignited a kitty heist.

Clyde at the vet (Melanie McFarland)Look, I did not expect any of this. The last time my husband and I adopted a pair of kittens, which was way back in 2007, the process was simple. We saw a photo of a little mogwai on a neighborhood rescue's webpage, visited the next day and walked out with him and his brother. From that day onward, we loved Ike and RayRay intensely until they died, separately, of old age.

Now, I have a saved document of answers to adoption questionnaires that is so elaborate, one would think I was applying for graduate school. All of this trouble is over my efforts to obtain one of the internet's most adorable mascots.

Has cat adoption changed so dramatically? Apparently so — and not just for me. Finding someone with a discouraging yarn tied to a poor adoption experience doesn't take much effort. Getting them to open up about it, however, is tough. Few of those to whom I spoke wanted to go on the record. None who did want to be identified by their last names, which is remarkable given that this is a story about trying to adopt cats and kittens, not spilling state secrets.

This also reveals a level of nervousness that should not be attached to feline rescue, which is an admirable cause. To suggest otherwise — to be clear, we are not — is to risk the wrath of, well, you name it. Animal lovers, passionate pet owners, fault-finding friends, anyone may come for you bearing digital torches and pitchforks. In the age of internet harassment, everyone feels vulnerable.

But maybe not as much as someone might feel if they were declared an unsuitable adopter for reasons that don't quite add up.

If my husband and I were fine spinning the wheel of chance, our search would have been much briefer. Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace could have supplied us, lickety-split. There are also many more rescues than there were two decades ago, thanks to the trend of animal welfare's decentralizing, expanding beyond brick-and-mortar agencies to include networks of rescues and volunteers fostering adoptable animals in their homes.

I have a saved document of answers to adoption questionnaires that is so elaborate, one would think I was applying for graduate school.

According to Shelter Animals Count, which tracks animal sheltering data in the U.S., the nation's rescues outnumber dedicated shelters, with 9,514 rescues to the 4,915 shelters in its database. Experts might call that a good thing, since most rescues work with fosters, and it's healthier for adoptable felines to be cared for in private home settings than kenneled for long periods.

Bonnie had come by her two quite easily. A friend unexpectedly hosted a vagabond queen who birthed a litter in their place. One of those kittens became hers. The other hails from a Mexico-based rescue Bonnie follows on Instagram. All she did was respond to a tragic video expressing her concern, and the next thing she knew he was on a flight to the Pacific Northwest: "Heeere's Johnny!"

And yet, for some of us, decentralization has made adoption more complicated. Since there are no set of agreed-upon policies or best practices related to the adoption process, we're very much at the mercy of the individuals between us and the cats we want.

Three decades of caring for cats made us adamant about supporting our local animal welfare organizations. Community rescues are on the frontlines of curbing overpopulation and working to improve the health of pet communities. Each animal placed in a loving home frees up resources for others that still need them. Hence that popular plea to obtain pets from a rescue or shelter instead of a breeder or pet store: "Adopt, Don't Shop."

Despite the way I was treated by that cat rescue, I have tremendous empathy for anyone who works in animal welfare, especially after chatting with those who generously agreed to speak with me. That is why I don't identify it or any other rescues in this story, aside from those whose representatives offered their insight.

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But despite the push by many organizations and people to simplify animal adoption, there remain those so determined to protect cats and dogs that they unintentionally make their definition of perfection an enemy of the greater good.

What began as an exercise in curiosity and self-examination — Is it me? What are we doing wrong? — became a journey through the myriad barriers imposed by rescues despite the consensus among organizations such as the Humane Society of the United States and Human Animal Support Services (HASS) that these previously acceptable requirements are now considered outdated.

Some are expectations potential adopters have been conditioned to expect as standard, including and not limited to phone calls to their landlords; potential home visits to assess their living spaces; unnecessarily probing questions about their income, work and housing status; and applications loaded with "trick" questions.

Others, like the basic philosophy behind this rescue's reason for denying us Clyde, are rooted in reasoning endorsed by animal behaviorists: Raising two kittens together is healthier for their development and makes life easier on their caretakers because they expend their surfeit of energy on each other instead of their humans' ankles and hands.

For every organization or person working to simplify animal adoption, there are those that unintentionally make perfection an enemy of the greater good.

But said rescue also referenced a clinical-sounding malady known as "single kitten syndrome," a behavioral term that did not exist two decades ago.

I suspected it was a crock, so I began by turning to the feline fanatic's go-to expert in times of bewilderment and crisis: cat behaviorist Jackson Galaxy. Best known for hosting Animal Planet's "My Cat From Hell," Galaxy has a robust library of instructional and advisory YouTube videos and a gift for putting stressed-out cats and people more at ease. He has also been a shelter and rescue advocate for more than 30 years.

Originally, I wanted to ask Galaxy to explain "single kitten syndrome," having noticed that he did not drop the phrase in most of his videos. I could only find one instance, dating back to 2021, and I wanted to find out whether that was intentional. (In short, yes.)

But Galaxy hit pause on that conversation as soon as he heard how long my quest for kittens had dragged out. "You were trying to get a pair of kittens for a year and a half?" he asked, looking genuinely baffled. "Why? What happened? I gotta know this."

Once I filled him in on the tale of being denied my "little friend," Galaxy noted that my "single kitten syndrome" situation was simply another type of adoption barrier, such as the ones mentioned above.

"I can't believe we're still having to do this," he said. "But, I guess, on the other hand, it shouldn't surprise me."

My experience, while not singular, was certainly unusual. In more than a dozen conversations and message exchanges with people who had memorably adverse adoption attempts within the last couple of years, I learned that the time between the start and end of most animal companion searches tends to be much shorter. If one rescue did not have what someone was looking for, they either found what they needed elsewhere or simply gave up.

A CatCon attendee visits the adoption fair at CatCon LA 2023 at Pasadena Convention Center on Aug. 5, 2023 in Pasadena, Calif. (Sarah Morris/Getty Images)A prevalent tale of adoption difficulty begins with an overly complex application process and concludes with a demoralizing dismissal.

Sam, a 37-year-old D.C. resident, was cut off cold by a rescue when he shared that the cat he and his wife were seeking to adopt would have outdoor roaming privileges. This wasn't the correct answer in the rescue's view, and that was that. No counseling was offered as to why.

This came after filling out an application that asked Sam to describe his daily schedule, living arrangements and "any 'major life changes' that we're expecting over the next 5-10 years (!)," he told me in an email, adding he was also told to expect a post-adoption home visit. They ended up not adopting a cat at all.

"I understand the motivation behind these practices, and I believe they have the animals' best interests at heart," Sam said. "But I do wonder if these agencies, through their overly burdensome processes, are making matters worse by turning off people from adopting who would probably be good, responsible pet owners.

"If there are animals who are staying longer in kill shelters as a result, then I think it's indefensible," he added.

In another part of the country, Erin's rejection stamp came after she and her husband spent a couple of hours filling out an application for a rescue in Connecticut hoping, like me, to adopt a black cat, as they always do.

She was ready to be an open book. But this rescue, like the one Sam dealt with, expected applicants to provide an exhaustive account of their qualifications, something that can feel like trudging through "The Stand" as opposed to a breezy skip through Catster.

"In the past, I've had to talk about our experience with cats that goes........

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