Getting to Zero (G2Z) claims to be more ‘comprehensive’ than No Kill, and that they “require all stakeholders to be proactive… ‘positive’, ‘practical’, ‘hands-on’ and ‘optimistic’.”
As the WA rep for G2Z, the Cat Haven should be leading the way in ‘proactive’ thinking – namely taking a ‘minimum harm’ approach to animal sheltering. So when they were asked to help with a mulit-generational colony that was being cared for by a group of concerned cat lovers and gradually being trapped and rehomed by local animal welfare organisations, the obvious approach was to collaborate with these stakeholders to bring about positive outcomes for these cats.
Well, not so much. What they actually did was launch a public assault on the colony, advertising its location to every half-wit and cat-hater with a shovel, applaud themselves for their efforts at ‘Facebook advocacy’ in the local media, trapped the cats with no long term plan for their treatment or welfare… then killed every single one of them them.
lil’ Kitty and six of her colony family are now dead. The reason given?
Cat Haven WA ~ “JOONDALUP RESCUE UPDATE: We have just been told by our vets that all seven cats rescued from the site yesterday were severely infested with ringworm and feral. Unfortunately, all animals have been put to sleep on humane grounds and to protect all healthy animals at the shelter, as ringworm is highly infectious.”
Despite knowing the remaining cats were being fed and were likely to be suffering all the same ailments as their now dead counterparts – the second night the Cat Haven arrived at the Joondalup site to trap again. Here is photo of them arriving, shining their headlights into the traps of other cat welfare groups who had arrived early to save cats… ironically, from The Cat Haven.
Sensing they’d lost control of the situation and concerned how even more dead cats would look to their supporters, the Cat Haven did what it should have done all along – it engaged those groups already on the ground. However there is a catch;
Cat Haven WA ~ “We will however ask for progress reports on all animals if we are to fund their treatment and reserve the right to publish the progress reports.
Won’t that be lovely – despite lil’ Kitty and his six colony family members being dead because they were ‘unsavable’ in the eyes of the Cat Haven, the Cat Haven may yet get a ‘good news’ story out of it because other groups don’t deem these cats as beyond compassion.
Look, these cats are either feral and unsavable, or they’re not.
– If they ARE feral and unsavable (untreatably suffering with a poor prognosis for rehabilitation), then the Cat Haven had no choice but to euthanise all of the cats it trapped, and to suggest that other groups keep these feral and unsavable cats alive is inhumane.
– If they were in fact savable, and other groups are being engaged to help on the ground to rescue the rest of the colony, the killing of lil’ Kitty and the rest of his family was in fact unnecessary, as they were savable (not untreatably suffering with a poor prognosis for rehabilitation) and could have stayed where they were until treatment from other groups was able to be offered to them.
So Cat Haven – which is it?
They want us to forget about lil’ Kitty and his family now. They want everyone to ‘work together’ and to throw some money at the groups on the ground in the hope they’ll keep quiet about their appalling fuck up. They want to continue to be allowed to portray themselves as a compassionate leader, while peddling the outdated notion that killing is kindness. They want to be celebrated on social media channels, posting photos of themselves trapping and ‘rescuing’ cats – even when this ‘rescue’ will almost certainly result in that cat being killed.
There is two choices for the modern cat shelter in this new transparent world. You either save the lives of cats and reject the notion of killing for convenience and reclaim your compassionate mission – engaging cat lovers to help you. Or you acknowledge that you are little more than a extermination company working on behalf of government agencies. But you can no longer be both.
(Click here to see a video of one of the ‘feral’, ‘unsavable’ Joondalup colony in care).
