St. Louis shelter slams ‘bullying tactics’ by Cardinals over Rally Cat ownership

This Rally Cat saga has officially turned the corner from an adorable, spontaneous event to a growing controversy that could make the St. Louis Cardinals look like bad guys.

After running onto the field during a Cardinals game, getting lost, and getting found, Rally Cat is now recovering in a shelter before it is adopted to a loving home. The latest update, for those following this very important Rally Cat tale, was that the team claimed it would get to keep the cat after it was recovered and done with a period in quarantine.

In fact, the Cardinals already had a nice welcome home ceremony all lined up for when they finally had the animal in their possession.

But now, things are taking a turn and not everything may be what it seems.

In a forcefully worded yet factual message on their Facebook page, St. Louis Feral Cat Outreach is now claiming that the Cardinals never communicated with them about Rally Cat’s adoption plans and that no home has been chosen.

The organization expressed outrage about a team representative going to the media with allegedly false claims and said “It seems inconsistent with ‘The Cardinals Way’ to make such false statements.” Meow!

The SLFCO’s statement also adds some additional perspective from the shelter’s side of things, with details about its volunteer-only staff and lack of resources. Though this could easily be a tactic to engender sympathy for the shelter, depending on how this miscommunication really went down, it’s also effective as they slammed the team’s ‘perceived bullying tactics’ and said that no meeting between the two sides had even taken place.

Both sides are standing their ground as to whose cat this is, and if this escalates any further it could start backfiring on one or either side if they seem to be caring about their bottom line more than a homeless animal. Or the many homeless animals in the shelter, for that matter.

The claws are out, though, and right now it’s between a powerful team and a volunteer-based shelter that takes innocent animals off the streets. One side is starting off as the far more sympathetic party.