While Spencer Sleeps...

first off, thank you for a Spencer picture.

Secondly - NO ONE will live up to your standards. It will never happen. No one would never live up to mine, either.

But the G-d's honest truth? Those are probably VERY VERY VERY loved furry babies.

And that is worth more than all of the raw diet we could give them.

{{{hugs}}}

I think Shelli makes a good point.
To be perfectly cold about this, as long as there are far and away more cats than there are homes to take them in, you can be only so picky about placement. The fewer cats, the harder people will be willing to try to meet qualifications.
But, maybe this family just needed some specific education and the email will go a long way. I thought I was doing a fantastic job of feeding my cats until I started to read your nuitrition information. I know now that I have a lot of room to improve (and hope to start taking more and more action to do so)
Here's another thought. I was watching the tape from "Seeds of Compassion". That was a program held in Seattle 2 years ago by some of our local visionaries. They hosted the Dahli Lama, Bishop Desmond Tutu and other leaders from the community, many but not all, affiliated with other religions. The theme was the importance of compassion across all sectors of society.. in our children, in the workplace, in government, in medical settings. And how do we develop it, how do we teach it, how do we get better at it? One of the panel spoke about the importance of animals in our lives, that it can be a very good way for a child to learn to practise kindness to animals in the home, to animals on the street. I look back and realize how important it was that my mother had very strong feelings about what we owed to animals and passed that on to me. How I passed the same values on to my child when he was a toddler and how he still treats animals kindly. How I share my opinions with my stepsons and daughters-in-law about how a child must not be allowed to chase a cat who wants privacy, how a child must be supervised around an animal to learn a gentle touch, that an animal has a right to scratch if it's wish to be left alone isn't heeded. And every act of compassion, of empathy, is a seed that grows our awareness and makes us incline toward deeper compassion. We become more concerned about the health, welfare, comfort of our pets. The more we learn and do, the more we want to learn and do. So I seek to improve my animal's diets and living conditions even though I've already got animal who receive compliments from the vet about their condition and demeanor.
Where I'm going is, I don't think we even want to demand that each person who adopts comes complete with a Phd in compassion. Provided they are in good mental health and reasonable intelligent, as their relationships with animals progress they will become increasingly concerned about the creatures and also the humans around them.
That said, for YOU after giving these particular cats so much care over the past few months, you could hardly be blamed for being very protective. You earned that with tears and hard work. But maybe, things are going to turn out better than you think. And if you want to keep in touch with the new families and model a little compassion.. what can it hurt?