Shelters kill for many reasons, but the reason most often cited is for space. They claim not to have enough room for all the animals that are surrendered, especially open admission animal control facilities. Tours of these shelters show the opposite, which is that many cages are left empty purposely to make cleaning easier on staff. At the City of Los Angeles Animal Services Department a veterinarian was fired for trying to utilize all cages, due partly to complaints from staff that he created too much work by keeping animals alive (Winograd, “Redemption” 157). When it comes time to decide which animals will be killed to open more cages, the animals selected are easy to predict. Feral cats, aggressive dogs, “bully” breeds of dogs, shy animals, sick animals, animals too young to be without their mother, black cats, large dogs, old animals, animals that are not house or litter trained, and any other animal not deemed perfectly adoptable are the first to go. This ignores the simple fact that there are options for these animals, such as networking with breed rescues, TNR groups, utilizing foster homes for young, sick, or shy animals, and training animals in the shelter. Some groups refer to “kennel stress” as a reason for euthanasia, which is a behavior developed in the shelter as a direct result of improper housing and socialization (Leigh and Geyer 61). Killing an animal because it does not adapt well to living in a cage and being ignored for large portions of the day is horrendous. Shelter killing is a social problem because it is the public and the staff of these shelters that enable the murder of innocent animals to continue. It is only when everyone embraces the no-kill shelter model that we can reach a time when there are no more homeless pets.
The single most important component of the no-kill system is spay/neuter. The average unspayed feral female cat has 22 kittens per year, six of whom will be female and survive to an age where they can reproduce. Each of those six will produce their own 22 kittens per year, which is 132 kittens in a single year from one unspayed female (Johnson 1). Note that those are feral cats, so in domestic animals the numbers will be even higher due to a lack of natural predators. Thankfully, no-kill shelters have created many programs to stop this cycle. The target of these low-cost spay/neuter programs are people without the money to visit a veterinarian unassisted, so the fear that offering these programs will take business from veterinarians is unfounded. Examples of these programs are Best Friend Animal Sanctuary’s The Big Fix mobile spay/neuter clinic, which neuters up to 50 animals daily (No More Homeless Pets 1) and Tait’s Every Animal Matters clinic, which neuters 12,000 Connecticut animals annually (TEAM 1). Shelters that cannot support their own clinic often network with veterinarians to offer lost-cow or free spay/neuter to their adopters.
When a feral cat enters a “traditional” shelter its chance of surviving is nonexistent. Every feral cat to enter a shelter without a trap-neuter-release program is killed. Feral cats are wild animals unsuitable for adoption because they are unsocialized with people, but this does not mean they don’t deserve life. TNR is the process by which feral cats are trapped humanely, neutered, vaccinated, tested for disease, and released into colonies where they are cared for daily. The feral population is then gradually decreased by attrition. This approach has been used in all parts of the country to save feral cats. In West Valley City, Utah the euthanasia rate was reduced by 40% the same year they began using TNR (Monroe 1). In Cape May, New Jersey, TNR has been used for the last ten years to reduce the feral cat population from 450 to only 100 cats (Robinson 1). Stanford University had over 1,500 feral cats living on the campus as of 1989. Thanks to the TNR efforts supported by students, faculty, and members of the community there are now 200 cats on the campus. If TNR had not been implemented, the original 1,500 cats would have been taken to the Santa Clara Animal Control facility and killed. (Stanford Cat Network 2).
No-kill sheltering, despite the name, does not guarantee that no animals will be killed. All healthy or treatable animals will be saved, but animals that are suffering from health issues that cannot be treated or are irredeemably vicious will be euthanized by definition, meaning for the good of the animal. The key to deciding which animals cannot be saved lies with assessing every animal as an individual. This issue was brought to a head in 2008 when a dog fighting kennel was raided in North Carolina. All 145 pit bulls taken from the facility, including 70 puppies, some of which were born after the raid, were killed without being assessed. This course of action was supported by the Humane Society of the United States and PETA, groups who were swiftly called out and presented with evidence by Best Friends Animal Sanctuary as to the potential for rehabilitation of fighting dogs (Best Friends 1). Best Friends took 22 dogs from Michael Vick’s dog fighting operation and successfully rehabilitated them on the National Geographic program Dogtown. This group of dogs, known collectively as the Vicktory dogs, has proven without a doubt that fighting dogs can be saved. Many of the Vicktory dogs are in foster homes and two have been trained as therapy dogs (Saving the Michael Vick Dogs). The 145 dogs killed on the recommendation of the HSUS could have been saved and could have done good in the world had they only been assessed fairly. This especially applies to the puppies who hadn’t even been born in the fighting kennel and had never known abuse.
The no-kill equation has been proven to work across the country. Under Richard Avanzino, the San Francisco SPCA killed zero healthy cats and dogs. The Tompkins County SPCA in upstate New York became the first rural community to become entirely no-kill in 2001. In 2008, 92% of animals entering the Charlottesville Humane Society in Virginia were saved. In Reno, NV, the fastest developing city in the country, the save rate for dogs in 2008 was 92% and 83% for cats (Winograd, “It’s A Wonderful World” 3). No-kill is possible in every type of community, but only if all aspects are embraced.
As for Jethro and Carrie, both are doing wonderfully. Jethro recovered from his wounds and lives with a man who loves him dearly. His owner carries him into the shelter to visit the people who saved his life. Carrie lives in a feral colony with five other cats. She can often be found sitting on top of her dog house, waiting for her caretaker to arrive with breakfast. Both of these animals would have been killed immediately in a “traditional” shelter, but because they were found by a no-kill shelter they not only live, but they are loved and treasured by their caretakers. We could save those other four million animals murdered every year because they aren’t perfect, just by implementing the no-kill model. These animals deserve the chance of a happy life and not dying under the label of ‘unadoptable’. They were not born to please us and should not die because they have failed to do so.
Works Cited
Best Friends Staff. Coaltion Challenges Outdated Policy. December 2008.
Johnson, Karen. “A Report on Trap/Alter/Release Programs”. Stanford Cat Network. 1995.
Leigh, Diane, and Marilee Geyer. One at a Time A Week in an American Animal Shelter. New Delhi: No Voice Unheard, 2005.
Monroe, Estelle. “Living in the Gray Zone”. Best Friends Magazine. December 2003.
No More Homeless Pets Utah. The Big Fix. 2009.
Robinson, Becky. Alley Cat Allies. 2008.
Saving the Michael Vick Dogs. Dogtown. Darcy Dennet. National Geographic. September 5 2008.
Stanford Cat Network. Stanford Cat Network. 2002. < Catnet.standford.edu>
Tait’s Every Animal Matters. Tait’s Every Animal Matters. 2008.
Winograd, Nathan J. Redemption The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America. New York: Almaden Books, 2007.
Winograd, Nathan J. “It’s A Wonderful World”. No-Kill Conference. Washington DC. May 5 2009.
