Thank you for all you do for Georgia, Laura. Our rescue pulls from many Animal Controls in GA. We don't euthanize for FIV or FeLV. In fact we have an entire house we rented to house all the FIV kitties. One of our volunteers nicknamed it "The House of Love". We have adopted some of them out. We do pull some "pretty" cats that we know will be easy adoptions, especially if they are already fixed. If a cat is going to be an easy adoption, & make us a few dollars it helps defer some of the costs for the animals who cost us a lot - and we have many of those. We certainly don't ask for vetting to be done. We also have many special needs cats & have taken elderly cats, abused cats, 3-legged cats, etc.. The one cat I have on My FeLV Cats Face Book page was pulled by our rescue from an AC. We think he was beaten with a baseball bat. We do take some owner surrenders. I guess we get them before they go to AC. We also try to help people as best we can to keep the cat they are trying to surrender if it is through no fault of their own.
Beth Dont Litter, Fix Your Critter! www.Furkids.org --- On Sat, 4/10/10, LauraM <[email protected]> wrote: From: LauraM <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Felvtalk] on shelters and rescues To: [email protected] Date: Saturday, April 10, 2010, 8:15 PM I have actually had rescues ask me - or our shelter's volunteers - to pay (out of our own pockets) to alter and combo-test cats before they take them. Do they reimburse us? Of course not. We finally told one rescue that we were not wealthy people and we just couldn't do it. They will not pull from us unless we pay to have the cats vetted, then they sell those cats for $150 and pocket every dime. Now that's a crappy rescue. There are some baaaaad shelters here in GA. I won't mention any names, but there are several I've heard of that IMMEDIATELY take owner surrendered animals to the back and put them down. Those pets never even get a chance to be adopted. It may be different in other areas of the country, but most GA shelters have high euthanasia rates relative to adoption rates. There are no no-kill county shelters in GA; to label a shelter as "bad" because they are forced to euthanize is just unfair. Nobody wants to do it; everyone is miserable and snippy and cranky on euthanasia day, even the ones who have to take antidepressants as a result. We only euthanize one day a week, our director puts down as few animals as possible, and some days we've been back at capacity by the end of the day, the turn-ins are so bad. Intakes are high - several times we've had 30 or so owner-surrendered animals come in within just a couple of hours. Adoptions are slow, nobody wants cats or larger dogs, only small dogs, puppies and sometimes kittens (mostly at Christmas). Just today we had 8 cats turned in - one is diabetic and was surrendered because the owner didn't want to pay for insulin shots. Pathetic. She just kept screaming at me, "I can't afford to take her to the vet! I can't pay for it!" I charged her a $40 euthanasia fee - we will try to get that cat out of there, but that owner needed to pay for something. One day somebody turned in 15 cats because they were moving. It's so discouraging, they keep coming in and coming in, and we've been getting pregnant cats and kittens like crazy over the past 2 months, and this kitten season will be a bloodbath. This is the time of year when I have to imagine a zipper over my mouth because I get so fed up with these people, nasty stuff just slips on out. Our director will not euthanize cats with FeLV and FIV. We adopt them out. He knows that I have cats with both and he knows that they can have a great quality of life. Sorry for venting, I just get tired of being told - from both the public and from people in rescue - that "you kill animals there." If they have a solution for dealing with all the so-called strays and owner surrenders and accidental litters, we would be happy to hear about it. _______________________________________________ Felvtalk mailing list [email protected] http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org _______________________________________________ Felvtalk mailing list [email protected] http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org
