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Chapter 51. Damage Done
"Look, there's a cardboard box outside and I think I saw something move inside!"
Judy Koretz called my attention to the dirty parcel laid outside the glass delivery door at Petco.
We were setting up our Saturday adoptions. I was placing two of our cats in cages.
Already, onlookers were gathering around to see what animals we were bringing in. I looked in the direction Judy pointed to.
"Oh, shit. It looks like someone dumped a cat outside. We need to go out and check," I said to Judy.
I asked Anne to continue setting-up, while Judy and I went out to investigate the mysterious box.
It was tied up with twine, but as soon as we got to it, a couple of heads tried to poke through the flaps. "Oh my God, there's at least two cats here!" I complained to Judy. Quick, we need to get them inside,"
By the weight of the box, there were more than two cats.
Once inside Petco, we opened the box to find four young, skinny, scraggly black and white cats with some kind of sticky gunk all over them. There was also a rumpled piece of paper with scrawled words on it:
"No tke care of anymore. Nice cats. Have flees. We give Raid. Please find home."
"They gave the cats, Raid?" Judy exclaimed in horror. "No wonder they look so sick!"
Raid was an insecticide dangerous to pets.
The cats were friendly, but in terrible shape. They could not be shown for adoption. They needed urgent medical attention.
Situations like this are a special problem for small rescue groups trying to do adoptions out of stores. We are limited in space and fosters to put animals -- especially animals we are not prepared for.
But, it was not the first time members of the public had used our store adoption sites as convenient dumping grounds for animals that could not be kept:
Once, when at Pet Stop, a woman dropped off two cats at the store a half-hour before we were due to show cats. She told the store manager, Melissa, she was "fostering" the cats for us. When I showed up to Pet Stop that day, Melissa said, "Your foster dropped off two cats a short while ago. They are in the back."
I had never seen the cats in my life.
In that case, the cats were older, but in good health. There was no note to explain the person's unethical and irresponsible actions. Through desperate pleading, I was able to place the cats. But, I also gave Melissa instructions that under no circumstances was she to accept cats again without checking with me first.
Another time at Petco, a woman asked Suzanne to "keep an eye" on her cat while she did some shopping. Suzanne, being naive and trusting, agreed to let the cat stay in a carrier near her, while she helped set up our adoption display.
When I came into Petco with some of our cats for adoption, I asked Suzanne who this cat was that was placed next to her. "Oh, the owner will be back in a few minutes," Suzanne smiled and told me confidently.
"Are you kidding? Suzanne, how could you be so naive!"
I was obviously upset as once again, we had an unexpected cat to desperately try and find something for. Moreover, there was no information on the animal.
There were times when Suzanne's Pollyanna view of the world simply bemused me. But, this time I was truly irked. "You should have called me before allowing someone to dump an animal on us!"
"I didn't think she was going to 'dump' the cat," Suzanne said defensively. She seemed like a nice woman."
Suzanne was a little embarrassed, but it was obvious my lecture wasn't going to change her. Hopefully, she got a little more discerning. About six months following this incident, Suzanne became pregnant and she and her husband bought a house upstate. She had been a loyal and reliable volunteer for a number of years, if not at times, a bit too trusting (in my view) of others.
Fortunately, the friendly black cat abandoned by the woman that day, eventually got adopted.
But, the incident, nevertheless served to fuel my basic skepticism of things and situations and people I couldn't be sure of.
And that is, in fact the real problem when people pull stunts like these. Rescuers have to be careful not to publish personal addresses and to some degree, have to be almost paranoid about "doing animal favors" for others. One never knows when others are trying to dump or otherwise manipulate.
While we had been lucky in the past to place the cats that had been unceremoniously dropped on us, the four Raid-dosed cats abandoned that day outside of Petco were not so fortunate. Despite our attempts to treat them at the vet, two died. The other two remained in foster for almost a year as their near-death experience left them with some serious neurological problems. Eventually, the foster person agreed to "adopt" the two cats as they were not placeable.
But, the down side of that circumstance, was that I lost Danielle as a foster for other cats.
Those who think they have accomplished something "clever" or humane by somehow tricking or otherwise abandoning animals on no-kill rescue or shelters should think twice. In some cases, no-kill shelters/rescue may have no alternative but to send the animals to the pound.
But, in the cases where they take and eventually place the animals, damage has been done psychologically to the ability to trust and help others. And that ultimately hurts everyone, including, and most of all, the animals.