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CELPIP Practice Reading: Reading for Viewpoints ID: #63178 Easy What My Forty-Dollar Cat Taught Me

Read the following blog post from a website.

Nine years ago I adopted a skinny grey cat from our city shelter for forty dollars. I was renting a basement suite, working two part-time jobs, and I could not have paid much more. That cat is asleep beside my keyboard as I type this. So when the shelter board here in Saskatoon began debating higher adoption fees to cut down on returned animals, I wanted to understand both sides before I made up my mind.

Esme Plamondon, the shelter director, argues for a higher base fee. According to her kennel logs, animals come back less often when adopters hand over real money rather than a symbolic sum. “When the fee is almost nothing, people adopt on a Saturday whim and bring the dog back by Wednesday,” she told the board. The fee also pays for spaying or neutering before each animal goes home. Her staff already lose hours to every returned pet, she says, and those hours cost more than the increase would raise. Her one condition is that every adopter still goes through a home checklist.

Tobias Wiebe, who coordinates foster homes, warns that a flat increase would shut out renters and newcomers, people who often keep an animal for its whole life. In several nearby cities, he says, the fee already slides up or down with proof of income. “Price out careful people with little money and you don’t cut returns, you just get fewer kinds of homes,” he told the board. His own proposal is a middle fee, with waivers that are simple to understand. Niamh Castellano, a veterinary technician, says the price matters less than the conversation at the desk: a family that leaves without advice on feeding, housing and the return policy is likely to struggle whatever it paid. She accepts that the shelter needs the money, but she wants counselling time guaranteed before any fee goes up.

Councillor Darius Amundsen wants any fee pilot to report return rates every month for each fee level. He says the board must be able to reverse the change if the numbers stay flat. Here is where I come down. Plamondon’s logs deserve a serious look, but my forty-dollar cat is proof that a cheap adoption is not always a careless one. I would back Wiebe’s sliding scale, Castellano’s counselling time and Amundsen’s monthly numbers, and I plan to say so at the next public meeting of the board.

Using the drop-down menu (▾), choose the best option according to the information given on the website.

This blog post is about 1.
.

Who most clearly argues that a flat fee increase would shut out renters? 2.
.

Esme Plamondon’s position would most likely be supported by 3.
.

What outcome does Darius Amundsen’s condition call for? 4.
.

The blogger’s main purpose in writing is to 5.
.

The following is a comment by a visitor to the website page. Complete the comment by choosing the best option to fill in each blank.

My sister runs a small animal rescue two hours north of here, and she has seen both kinds of adopter: the careful family with little money and the weekend buyer who brings the puppy back. Esme Plamondon reminds us that the fee also 6.
, which people honestly tend to forget. The foster coordinator would rather see 7.
, and I think that could work here. Niamh Castellano has a point: a family will struggle if it leaves without 8.
, and my sister sees that pattern at her rescue more than once a year. It is also worth knowing that 9.
, which I did not know before reading the post. I smiled at the part where the blogger 10.
, and I hope that story reaches the board.

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