When Dean Nicholson’s cat Bubba escaped through his front door, he searched desperately to find her. He door-knocked, put up posters and spent $500 on a pet detective. A neighbour came forward as having trapped Bubba, with the responding ranger delivering her to the Lost Dogs Home.
Now, Bubba was a desexed, fifteen year old cat, who had come from a loving owner. Even though she wasn’t microchipped, she was clearly presenting as a lost pet. What would you think happened next?
A) The responding ranger door knocked the neighbours to see if anyone was missing her. Then, this elderly cat was photographed and her details placed online to make it easy for a searching owner to find her. Knowing that an owner would most likely be looking for this senior citizen, she was held over for a few extra days.
or…
B) She was killed on the same day she was brought in.
I’d like to say the answer was A. I’d like to say that the only safety net our pets have worked, and that this much loved family pet was returned to her family.
“She would sleep in my bed and wait for me when I got home,” Mr Nicholson said. “We were really connected.”
But of course, sadly the answer was, that Bubba was killed on intake.
According to the Lost Dogs’ Home, the cat was killed for ‘humane reasons’, with two vets assessing her before she was killed. The decision was made that she was exempt from the 8 day holding period due to illness and her life was promptly taken.
When Dean came forward, the blame was firmly placed on him for not doing enough to keep the Lost Dogs Home from killing his cat;
Darebin Council’s manager of economic development and civic compliance, Eddy Boscariol urged residents to microchip and register pets with up-to-date details to prevent such incidents occurring.
This cat was not a young street cat. This cat wasn’t starving or feral. This cat was an elderly, desexed pet who had only been missing a matter of hours. Microchip or no microchip she clearly had a family. To kill this cat on intake, and give her family no chance whatsoever to claim her is an abject failure of the Lost Dogs Home to save a saveable life.
Shame on you, LDH. How many more animals have to die? One extra dead cat is just a statistic to you, put yourself in the shoes of all the people whose animals have been lost due to your money-grabbing ways.
I’d like to know what the hideous fast-acting incurable illness was, personally. Because, hey, people give the Lost Dogs’ Home money with the idea that they are HELPING animals, not killing people’s much-loved family pets.
Also, shame on the not one, but TWO vets who made this decision. Where’s the accountability?
Will Graeme Smith be calling Dean to offer him hush money like he’s done before?
This is absolutely abhorrent.
This is not a welfare organisation, they are a disposal service.
Makes me sick.
That poor cat & his family. What a tragic way to end a 15 year partnership.
How can you recover from such a thing & how dare these vets decide to over-ride legislation & kill this cat on the day it arrived.
What is the illness they are citing?
They would have known this cat was an owned cat, looked after, fed & loved – just a senior.
What about the brand spanking new cat condos they have? Or are they reserved for young cats?
What a disgrace.
FAIL FAIL FAIL AGAIN LDH
It just never ends.
Here’s a crazy idea. Microchip your pets. Dont blame the organisation for the owners bad decisions. If the owner had been responsible and microchipped the cat, this situation would not have happened. Stop deflecting the blame
@Luke,
Even if it were effective to punish people through their pets…
(which it isn’t. If our desire is to protect pets by implanting microchips, it seems perverse to kill them to prove the point that they should have one)
… killing a pet who HAS an owner should be the antithesis of what an organisation who claims to protect pets should be about.
The only way this cat’s death could be justified, would be if the cat was assumed to be unowned and unwanted.
If so, on what grounds?
It was an elderly cat, so had obviously been living with somebody. It was desexed, so it had someone in its life who paid for vet work. Given the Lost Dogs Home claimed the cat was ‘diseased’ rather than ‘feral’ we can assume it was at least relatively friendly.
So a amicable, elderly, desexed cat shows up needing a ‘safety net’ and instead is offered death on intake.
How on earth did we end up with a system which fails pets so badly?
Who said they killed the cat to prove a point about microchipping? You’re really good at twisting the situation to suit your own agenda aren’t you? Look, reading through previous posts on this blog, I can see a crazy blogger from a mile away. Most posts are just a smear campaign. Are you happy living your life with such outrage all the time? Look this owner should have microchipped his cat. It’s that simple. Does every animal organization have the time and resources to investigate every back story of every animal. No. Honestly, grow up. Is it unfortunate? Yes. But the owner has no one to blame but himself. Again, microchip your pets people. The Lost Dogs Home didn’t fail the cat. The owner failed the cat.
@Luke
Yes, I’m outraged that our animal shelters – the ones we give literally tens of millions of dollars each year, through our council taxes, donations and fundraising on their behalf – fail 40%-90% of the time to save the lives they claim to be working to protect.
I’m sick of the discrepancy between shelters who save every single healthy treatable pet, and those who kill enormous numbers of pets, while blaming the community, rather than their own management.
I am not happy to stand by while pets die at the hands of the organisations who refuse to evolve and follow in the footsteps of communities who have eliminated killing for convenience.
And most of all, I want pet lovers to start to question the outcomes and performance of the organisations they support – we get the animal management system we’re willing to accept.
Your fundraising for the RSPCA NSW came up in my Twitter thread via a friend. I’m sorry if I offended you by asking whether you really wanted to put your efforts into supporting an organisation which fails in its stated aims 40 – 60% of the time.
But now you know. And you can’t unknow. So as an animal lover, what do you plan to do about it? Trek to support killing? Believe without question that the killing must continue?
Or dig a little deeper and find the community of animal lovers who want to see the killing end?
I hope for the animals’ sake, you’ll dig
While this story is sickening, whats even more appalling is that people are blaming the owner for this tragic loss, as though what happened to him wasn’t already bad enough. Fuck that. When my local SPCA errorneously killed an elderly pet dog they came out scraping and apologizing and promised that it would never happen again. But I don’t live in Australia, so what do I know. Maybe people there have a different idea of what constitutes accountability.
Microchipping is a key consideration in this case, but so is the FACT that animals are to be held 8 days at shelters to give the owner a chance to come forward.
Could this cat possibly have been so hopelessly ill/suffering that it was neccessary to KILL IT ON THE DAY OF ADMISSION?
Or was it just the easiest option as it was an older cat, the place was full & it’s the LDH?
This system is geared in favour of animals entering pounds. Until pounds are paid on their live-release metrics, nothing will change.
Yes, I will be choosing to continue to support them, because unlike your side of the argument, they don’t come across as an overly aggressive smear campaign (eg your latest wonderful photo)
@luke – see I would have thought it pertinent to choose who to support based on how much – – life saving vs killing – – they do.
But hey, if you’d prefer it be about presentation – then you will absolutely find what you’re looking for in the annual report of any of the high kill orgs in Oz – they’ve got plenty of lovely pictures and feel-good spin.
Shame about the lack of performance and all the dead pets…
Who said it was about pretty presentation? Lovely pictures and feel good spin have nothing to do with it. Your attitude is aggressive. Its that simple. Please stop twisting my words to try to make your point. It comes across as bitter and its rather sad. You can have so much compassion as an animal lover, yet be such a bigot in so many ways.
I don’t personally consider it aggressive to point out that the organisation you are working hard to support, is failing to live up to their end of the bargain – killing 40% of the dogs and 60% of the cats they take in.
I apologise without reservation – again – if you found it so.
As for the blog – if you don’t like reading about the kill rates of some of the popular animal welfare orgs in this country – or the policies and laws which fail pets and drive them by the thousands into shelters – then this isn’t the blog for you. And that’s totally fine also.
Vive et sine alios vivere
Reading the comments here is making me angry. I became aware of the importance of micro-chipping less than 10 years ago. As my little guys, at that time, were already getting older my vet said that it was only necessary if they were likely to get out and about. The trauma of the implant back then was deemed necessary in pups, kittens etc. Those of us with older pets took it in stride.
For you, Luke, to cast judgement on this guy and his feline friend is abhorrent. It is akin to saying that new initiatives in the care of eldery humans are the only way and, for anyone slow on the uptake, they are responsible for negligence if their kin become victims.
Remember – this cat was killed by the LDH – and was not a road statistic.
BTW my current rescue dog is micro-chipped, registered etc. If he was ever to find his way out into the world, I pray that he would not be picked up by the LDH.
With their disgusting record, I doubt that I would see him alive again. Also, alarmingly, his microchip is registered with them.
Should all pets be microchipped?
Yes.
Are all pets microchipped?
No.
This is why pounds are required to hold animals for 8 days to allow their owners the chance to find and collect them.
Whether the cat was sick or not, microchipped or not, shouldnt have mattered til next week when the pound was able to decide its fate after adhering to the legislature it is required to follow.
I had a staff member leave early today as her dog was waiting to be collected from the LDH (she had pulled of a remarkable escape and ended up with the rangers).
She said she wanted to leave with plenty of time to make her appointment “so they dont kill my dog”.
This is a microchipped, registered, desexed, vaccinated, well loved pet who had gotten out ONCE. Whose collection had already been organised.
That this is her owners response speaks volumes about LDH.
Our house was broken into and the back door was left open by the robbers. Our indoor only, female, de-sexed, microchipped and council registered cat got out the back door and could not be found. We contacted LDH to see if she had possible been found and handed in. I advised LDH that she was microchipped and was told that they dont scan cats for microchips and that we would need to come down and check the cages to see if our cat was there. Knowing their policy with euthenasia we went straight down there but she was not there, over the next 3 months i was forced to go down to LDH every week to check if my cat was there. She was finally found by a stranger 2 blocks away who responded to posters I had put up around the neighbourhood. I’m so glad this was how she was found as i fear that had she gone to LDH we would have never got her back.
I took the effort to get my cat microchipped just in case she ever got lost (as this is what a responsible pet owner does) only to be told by LDH that they dont scan cats for microchips. So I wonder are they really interested in finding the owners to the lost animals.