Abandoning kittens is official “shelter” policy
News and headlines for July 27 - August 9, 2024
In other news: Abandoning kittens is official “shelter” policy in Prince George’s County, MD. Happy birthday to The No Kill Advocacy Center. The short life and tragic death of Chai. Codifying euphemisms. Do you have what it takes to save lives? You can get younger by eating a plant-based diet. Turkey passes dog “massacre law.” Puppy chews off his own leg at a neglectful pound. Massachusetts moves toward protecting elephants and other “exotic” animals. A powerful tool in animal protection.
These are some of the stories making headlines in animal protection:
Abandoning kittens is official “shelter” policy
The Prince George’s County, MD, pound is telling people to abandon kittens on the sidewalk. According to a local cat rescue group:
A volunteer brought us these six week old kittens and told us PG County animal shelter turned them away and directed the volunteer to release them back outside, unvaccinated and unspayed and neutered.
How could this be?
Confused, we called the shelter to clarify that this volunteer didn’t mishear anything. A shelter representative told us it was true. Per a new internal policy, PG County animal shelter is turning away friendly stray cats, no matter age or temperament, telling people to put them back outside unaltered and unvaccinated.
Yes, this includes the six week old kittens in this photo, pregnant and unspayed female cats, and everyone in between. They are expecting volunteer groups to pick up the slack.
While closing one’s doors to animals in need may not undermine an animal’s right to live, it ignores an animal’s right of rescue. It also breaks up families by simply releasing animals back on the streets without trying to find their existing home, an action at odds with a shelter’s mission.
Though staff at PG County should be terminated for implementing it, groups like Austin Pets Alive, Best Friends Animal Society, Maddie’s Fund, and the National Animal Control Association (NACA) also bear much of the blame. They peddle recommendations for shelters to turn needy animals away, turn people (including potential adopters) away, water down definitions of No Kill, fight progressive laws and other efforts to save more lives, and defend regressive and abusive pound directors.
Created by Ellen Jefferson and Kristen Hassen of Austin Pets Alive, in concert with others, “Human Animal Support Services” results in kittens, like those above, being abandoned on streets and sidewalks. To learn more about how HASS undermines animal protection, threatens the gains of the No Kill movement, and puts animals at risk of harm, including death, and how you can defeat it in your community, click here.
Happy birthday to The No Kill Advocacy Center
This month, The No Kill Advocacy Center turns 20. And we are asking supporters to celebrate with us by sending just 20 dollars. The nationwide embrace of the No Kill Equation — our proven and revolutionary approach to lifesaving — is responsible for a 95% decline in U.S. killing from its high point. It has been called “the single biggest success of the modern animal protection movement.”
The short life and tragic death of Chai
“On June 4, 2024, Chai, a brown and white ‘pitty-mix,’ was surrendered to Columbus Animal Care & Control in Georgia. The reason for surrender was listed as ‘no room.‘ After her family left, Chai watched the door, waiting for them to return. They didn’t.
“Still, she was one to two years old and had her whole life ahead of her. And through the agency that is supposed to give dogs like Chai a second chance when things go wrong, she could find a worthy family — one that would give her the life she deserved. This was especially true for a dog like Chai, described on her paperwork as ‘affectionate’ and ‘playful,’ and good with everyone: cats, dogs, men, women, kids, and strangers…
“Unfortunately, that didn’t protect her from being killed by pound staff — and killed in a manner that was unprofessional, uncaring, cruel, and potentially illegal…
“[S]taff botched what appears to be six attempts to inject her with a lethal dose of barbiturates… before resorting to intracardiac injection — heartsticking her — a process that involves plunging a syringe through the chest wall and several layers of muscle into a dog’s heart. An animal killed by a heartstick feels extreme, severe pain (due to the amount of nerves) and then suffers a heart attack.
“To get to the heart, the needle would have to penetrate the skin, body wall with costal musculature, costal pleura, pleural cavity, pericardial pleura, fibrous pericardium, serous pericardium, pericardial cavity, epicardium, myocardium, endocardium, ventricular chamber, and if the lung is penetrated, the needle must pass through the pulmonary pleura and lung tissue itself. It is so painful that Georgia law only allows it to be done when the dog is unconscious. (GA Code § 4-11-5.1(a)(3).)”
Codifying euphemisms
Shelter (noun): a refuge; a place giving temporary protection from danger.
They can call it “euthanasia” instead of killing, but it is still killing. They can call themselves a “shelter,” but when they act like a pound, they are a pound.
A shelter is a refuge, a haven. By contrast, a pound is “an enclosure maintained for confining stray or homeless animals.” To impound means to “imprison.” Act like a dog catcher, and you are a dog catcher. And there isn’t a euphemism they can think of to enshrine into law that will apply a thick enough gloss to cover up the unvarnished and ugly truth.
Do you have what it takes to save lives?