Have you ever heard of shelter staff being blackmailed to take in animals that a person wishes to give up?
This has happened to Sue Sewell, Chairman of Hull Animal Welfare Trust, Hull, UK. Her rescue center is full or almost at capacity and therefore sometimes she has to turn people away.
The staff say that they are being emotionally blackmailed into taking kittens. One visitor threatened to put four kittens into a bin bag unless the rescue center accepted them. Shockingly bad behaviour, I’d say.
“On Friday, a lady told us she’d put her cat and four kittens in a bin bag if we didn’t take them in.”
Sue Sewell said that pet owners are becoming increasingly abusive when told that the shelter is at capacity. This is an unpleasant trend. It reinforces what we already know: the irresponsible people who are more likely to abandon unwanted kittens to shelters are also more likely to be unpleasant. The problems that we have with pet ownership are caused by a minority of people.
In another related UK pet story, a survey by MSD Animal Health found that 77.5% of cats in the UK are not vaccinated against illness. Personally, I find this a surprising statistic.
Another statistic hints at the reason behind the high percentage of unvaccinated cats. Eighty-six percent of pet owners said they would vaccinate their pet if a disease was present in the area where they lived. This is a risky decision because it may be too late to vaccinate. Vaccinations are meant to be preventative measures. Perhaps they don’t understand vaccinations.
The stats indicate to me that people want to save on veterinary expenditure and risk the health of their cat in doing so. Often pet owners are unprepared for the true cost of looking after a companion animal. The failure to spay and neuter resulting in unwanted kittens (as shown in this article) is another example of how irresponsible people force the burden of their misdeeds on others at shelters.
This is a profound problem in society as it undermines the whole process and concept of the domestication of cats and dogs.
Sue makes a plea in the video to cat owners to neuter their cats.
No, Jim.
You are a perpetrator of vermin birds who keep me awake, leave droppings on my car and porch, and generally annoy the heck out of people who don’t want nests in their trees.
Even though my first line is to protect cats, you have no idea of how many neighborhood children I stop from using slingshots or BB guns to clip off birds or how many adults I prevent from taking brooms and swatting bird nests to the ground.
And you refusing to face-up to reality and facts is precisely why this is going to keep happening. 🙂 YOU perpetuate the problem! You ARE the problem! Until you start to promote responsible pet-ownership you can blame yourself for every dead-cat article on the internet. Your fault! 🙂
Well said Alison. You have hit the nail on the head!