Advice needed: We don’t want our fosters going to an on-the-spot adoption event.

It’s our first time fostering, and we really need to know if we are being unreasonable/misinformed, and if not, how best to handle it. My partner and I found a pregnant mother cat back in December and have been fostering her (and the six kittens she had while with us) for our local shelter ever since. We never wanted a cat and aren’t in a position to keep them long term due to or dogs, but we have genuinely come to love them. We have put in so many hours and thousands of dollars (we have paid for everything except vet care out of pocket) for these babies, and all we want is for them to end up in the best possible home.

When we asked about the adoption process early on, the shelter explained their standard adoption procedure, which included an initial application, then a meeting with mama and entire litter in our home, then a final application for the cat/kittens desired. It sounded like it involved a lot of vetting, and they suggested they would probably get multiple applications per kitten as there are not many kittens this time of year in our area, and ours are healthy, raised in doors, and highly socialized to people.

Kittens are now 9 weeks old and they just told us they’d like to take them to an adoption event next week where they expect they will be adopted and taken home on the spot. We’re extremely uncomfortable with this. It doesn’t seem possible there’d actually be any real vetting done at a less than half day event and it feels like they won’t have nearly as broad an audience of potential adopters. And we also won’t get to participate and provide any feedback on adopters. The whole thing just seems way less likely to get them to the best possible home than the shelter’s standard process.

We let them know that it’s really no trouble for us to continue to host them if they want to do the standard adoption process, but we haven’t heard back yet. Are we just being overly anxious? Do these kinds of events actually do any vetting? We just want what’s best for them.