I get a lot of questions about animals on a wide variety of topics and I try to answer each and every one. When they have wider appeal, I’ll post my response. (If you would like to ask me anything, you can do so in the comments of my Facebook page or through the No Kill Advocacy Center, my organization.) This week, I was asked about the limits of community cat sterilization, specifically about cats…
PETA and the Norfolk, VA, pound team kill many community cats and kittens the minute they enter the “shelter.” PETA claims killing is a last resort; that all the animals they take in are irremediably suffering and that the killing they do meets the dictionary definition of “euthanasia.” It is a lie. In addition to putting to death the vast majority of cats they take in, they also round up to kill healthy community cats…
Last week I reported about all the kittens PETA rounded up and took to the Peninsula Regional Animal Shelter in Newport News, VA, to be killed. PETA logged them as “live releases,” but only two (out of 20) were spared. Among the dead were unweaned neonatal kittens, six week old kittens, eight week old kittens, four month old kittens, seven month old juveniles, one year old juveniles, and adult cats. They were listed as having…
Yesterday, the Los Angeles City Council, America’s second largest city, “re-committed” to achieving a No Kill community. They claim they will have a 90% or better live release rate for dogs and cats by the end of this year. Let’s take a moment to celebrate what it means. First, it shows how far the No Kill movement has completely set the agenda on sheltering at the highest levels. Ten years ago, we demanded a 90%…
PETA is using donations given to them under the mistaken belief that the organization will use those donations to save lives to have healthy cats and kittens poisoned, instead. Among the dead are unweaned neonatal kittens, six week old kittens with no health problems, eight week old kittens, four month old kittens, seven month old juveniles, one year old juveniles, and healthy adult cats. In 2016, PETA took in 1,069 cats. It put to death…
Everyone is familiar with the old quip that there are three types of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. Statistical manipulation is very easy: It’s all about the assumptions and inputs one uses when crunching numbers. In order to honestly and accurately determine how well or how poorly a shelter is performing—the percentage of animals who are leaving out the front door in the loving arms of families, rather than out the back door in…
In response to a question about whether to adopt a cat from a No Kill shelter or one that kills, The New York Times’ ethicist—citing PETA, HSUS, and the ASPCA—tells its readers that, “I myself have concluded that it can be O.K. to kill creatures” and that No Kill is a “noble aspiration” at best, but more likely leads to “warehousing.” He then suggest that readers do more research. It is an oxymoron for someone…
After PETA took Maya, a family’s beloved dog, and killed her, the Virginia legislature overwhelmingly passed SB 1381 to make clear that a “private shelter” was not a tool for PETA and others to kill animals, but had to be “operated for the purpose of finding permanent adoptive homes and facilitating other lifesaving outcomes for animals.” Unfortunately, the proposed regulations written to implement SB 1381 will allow PETA to continue killing upwards of 96% of…
Despite its name, PETA is an unethical organization: it rounds up and kills community cats, it fights shelter reform, it lies to people to acquire their animals to kill, it defends abusive shelter practices, and it puts to death thousands of animals — including healthy puppies and kittens. In short, they are contemptuous of our collective values. It is no surprise then, it would hire lawyers who also demean themselves unprofessionally and contemptuously. As many…
How does a city bring hundreds of high paying jobs, raise millions in sales taxes, and revitalize small business? It stops killing animals at the pound. This month, the Ozark, AL, city council passed an ordinance prohibiting the shelter from killing healthy animals, repealing a law allowing healthy animals to be killed after 48 hours and requiring them to be killed after 30 days, and providing exceptions for “critically ill or injured” animals after evaluation…