What gives a taxpayer funded animal shelter the right to abuse and/or kill pets? Is it the law of Finders Keepers?
“We got ’em now so we can do whatever we want to ’em”?
There are laws to protect pets from abuse and killing by private citizens. Should animal shelters and their workers be exempt from those laws?
Susan Boyer is an employee at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg AC & C shelter. She has been in the press, defending the actions of the workers who abused pets at the shelter:
“There was not one bit of animal cruelty involved with that,” Susan Boyer, a vet technician at the shelter, said. “I can say that 100 percent.”
Boyer has worked at the shelter in some capacity since the mid-1980s. She said the pictures of sedated cats posed with cigarettes and knives are examples of “bad judgment” by good workers.
“I compare that to if you’ve ever put your dog or cat in a Halloween costume,” Boyer said. “You’ve done the same thing.”
Graham is our beloved 11 year old Beagle who has undergone surgical cancer treatment more times than I care to recall and for whom I lovingly prepare homemade food and treats. She has a bed in every room in the house, including our bed. I have taken lots of photos of her over the years to share with family and friends because she is a light in our lives. A couple of those photos appear on this blog.
The cats in the abuse photos were at the shelter because they were in need of protection. That’s why all animals are at shelters. If they were feral, they needed appropriate veterinary care, ear tipping and neutering before being returned to their colonies. Hopefully the shelter works with colony caretakers to expand the number of managed colonies in the community. If the cats were feral, they would have been frightened beyond imagination to be in the shelter environment. I say again, they were in need of protection.
According to Ms. Boyer, if I wake Graham up from a nap, put her in a Halloween costume and snap a photo for a keepsake, I am doing the same thing as drugging a frightened cat I’m being paid by taxpayers to protect, posing him for a degrading photo, posting it on Facebook for a laugh, then killing the cat and tossing him in the freezer to await, I assume, the Dead Cat Man who rummages through cat carcasses at NC shelters and picks out which ones he’ll pay the shelter $5 apiece to take to his dissection specimen business. Although Graham can not speak, I dare say she would object to the comparison. I know I do.
As Graham’s owner, I have the right to dress her up in a costume for a picture if I so choose. (She may of course decline to cooperate.) By what right do shelter workers drug, pose for photos, then kill homeless cats?
Excerpts from Ms. Boyer’s recent Letter to the Editor appearing in The Charlotte Observer:
The feral kitten was not tranquilized; it was being held for a photo ID.
If this is accurate, I interpret this to mean that all feral kittens are treated in exactly this manner for photo IDs. That is, they all have pens jammed in their mouths, paws placed upon the pen, and are positioned over the kill log. Disgraceful. By what right does the shelter treat kittens this way?
The feral cat was tranquilized, along with probably 10 other feral cats that day, to allow for nail trimming, vaccinations, etc.
If accurate, the shelter is tranquilizing batches of feral cats to give them pedicures and vaccines before they are killed. Does the Dead Cat Man pay extra for cat carcasses with recent nail trims? Are all sedated cats posed in life-devaluing ways for laughs or was this the one and only time anything like this ever happened? By what right does the shelter treat feral cats this way?
Yes, those feral cats were eventually euthanized. Maybe if more cat rescue groups got involved, there would be other options.
Blaming the public – really? Maybe if the shelter chose to neuter and return feral cats to their colonies instead of posing them for “funny” pictures and then killing them, more people might be interested in managing feral cat colonies in the area. By what right does the shelter kill feral cats?
Here is a video of Ms. Boyer addressing the Cabarrus Co Commissioners Meeting this summer. In her comments regarding the use of the gas chamber vs. killing of shelter pets by injection, she describes the latter as a “morale booster” for shelter staff. She also claims to have personally killed more than 10,000 pets. By what right is an animal shelter employee allowed to kill over 10,000 pets?
We are a no kill nation of compassionate pet owners who love and respect our pets. We object to anyone comparing us dressing up our beloved pets for Halloween to abusing and killing feral cats in a shelter. We are calling your bluff on needless animal shelter killing and abuse. We know better. Join us.