Dallas Pound Oops-Kills a Bucket of Kittens

When a volunteer saw a man trying to surrender a bucket full of orphaned, one week old kittens to the Dallas pound, she stepped in with an offer to help.

[Volunteer Carla] Adkins says she intervened. “I told the guy I’m going to go ahead and post this online and see if I can find a nursing mom real quick,” Adkins says. The intake worker agreed to let Adkins submit the kittens to Dallas Animals Services under her own name and address. The intake worker, Adkins adds, appeared to understand that she would hunt for a foster home.  “He said, ‘You’re going to try to find a rescue for these cats?’ And I said yes,” Adkins says.

Ms. Adkins says she went out to her car and began posting on Facebook about the 7 kittens.  Within 4 hours, she had a foster lined up but it was too late:

“The kittens were euthanized because they had a poor prognosis,” the shelter’s operations manager, Dr. Cate McManus wrote in an email to Adkins. “This heat is deadly to these little guys. They dehydrate so quickly.  I am so sorry. If your foster is interested I can divert the next set of healthy neonates to them. We are always looking for nursing moms.”

The heat.  So deadly.  You know what else is so deadly to these little guys?  Fatal Plus.  Plus they were dehydrated and until someone invents a thing called fluids, there’s no hope.  Oh but hey, if you want the next batch of kittens that comes through the door, let me know and I’ll hold off on killing them.  Kittens, so delightfully interchangeable.

Also, there’s more killsplainin’ (and if anyone understands this, please provide a translation):

Dallas Animal Services Director Jody Jones and  McManus told the Observer that the intake worker failed to indicate to the vet team that foster arrangements were being made. Jones expressed regret that Adkins didn’t receive a phone call before the kittens were killed. “Carla did offer the capacity to network those kittens; she should have gotten that phone call, and we’re devastated that we failed her and those animals,” Jones said. The intake employee, Jones says, “certainly could have been more proactive in helping us” find a new home for the cats, though the employee blamed Adkins for the misunderstanding.

“He thought Carla was just mentioning she was going to try and network the animals, and left it at that, as opposed to feeling that she was going to find a place for the animals,” Jones said.

Oof.  The intake worker didn’t tell the vet not to immediately kill the kittens because he thought the volunteer was making some effort to save them.  Which is totally different than feeling that same thing.  And he wasn’t proactive.  And my head hurts.

The intake worker was not a city employee but came from a staffing agency.  He won’t be doing his thinking and feeling at the pound in future.

McManus would like the irresponsible public to know that this is the first time the Dallas pound has been caught killing pets whom rescuers were trying to save since the last time they got caught in January.

McManus and Jones apologized at a news conference at the time [of the January killings] and said they would give staff additional training to ensure that animals with foster homes are no longer killed.  “In a situation where animals … had a foster or adoption home in place, that information should be in the computer,” McManus told reporters.

I guess additional-additional training is needed.

(Thanks Clarice for the link.)