# Poor Little Kitten



## Mitts & Tess (Sep 4, 2004)

A friend I TNR with have a debate going on are there more good people and few horrible people. I lean towards the side of good but then have some bad days and think all of humanity is screwed up.


We are trapping at the community garden in our town. Today one of the voluteers found a kitten with its tail cut off and a can duct taped on its head. He got the can off and the kitten took off. He couldnt find it. Im assuming this kitten will not make it. It turned my stomach hearing about it.


It was reported to the police. But now we have to keep a closer eye on our traps were setting there. If there isnt a special place in he ll for people who abuse animals then Im going to be really pi$$ off. Ill have wished I took the situation in to my own hands to do pay back.


----------



## Pawsitively Nicole (Feb 12, 2011)

It seems like when trying to help and save animals you run across so many individuals that are so cruel. Sometimes I feel like there are no good people left any more. That's one reason I like places like this, cause even though we don't all agree on everything the truth of it is we all love cats and want what's best. It gives me hope, because you run into so many people where what is best for the cat could matter less to them.

I am so angry to hear about what happened to that poor kitten. I don't understand it, but people get so defensive when others try to do good and sometimes sabotage the effort. I don't understand why some people punish cats for an overpopulation problem that man themselves have made. I hope with all my heart that someone wonderful found that kitten and scooped him away to happiness.

I had a stray colony of 5 cats here. 4 of them were beautiful lynx point Siamese and one a pretty copper tabby. They were very friendly and obviously a dumped litter forced to grow up outside. I began to work on trapping them, getting them fixed, and trying to adopt them out. There were 2 females and 3 males. The little tabby and lynx point were pregnant. The lynx point looked ready to burst so she was the first one I caught. She gave birth to 10 kittens 2 days later. People saw me capture her. They lined up along the street (the cats lived at an apartment complex) and cheered good riddance, glad to see the nuisance gone, etc. I decided to get the tabby female next. Somebody got a hold of her and whacked off part of her tail  Then she disappeared, along with 2 other cats from the colony. This all happened the week I began to capture them. I got one more lynx point male off the streets but never saw any of the others again. I asked around hoping for answers. That's when I learned of the abuse these cats suffered. Stories of throwing things at them, trying to break glass over their heads, spraying them with water, all in an effort to make them go away. All people told me was that the cats were gone and that's all they cared about, I never got an answer as to what happened to the other 3. People were mad at me for trying to help them.

There are so many reasons why people abuse these poor helpless cats. But thank goodness for people like the ones on this forum. There are good people out there and they are making a difference  I truly believe in my heart there are more good people the bad people. You just don't seem to hear about them as often for some reason.


----------



## catloverami (Jul 5, 2010)

A colony of 25-30 TNR feral cats in _Scarborough's Bluffers Park_ in east the part of Toronto has just about been all been wiped out due to people who did not like the cats there by baiting the area for coyotes. Those that were rescued are not doing well. Sad situation.

The Fixer: Sorry end to Bluffers feral cats - thestar.com


----------



## Whaler (Feb 13, 2011)

Mitts & Tess said:


> A friend I TNR with have a debate going on are there more good people and few horrible people. I lean towards the side of good but then have some bad days and think all of humanity is screwed up.
> 
> 
> We are trapping at the community garden in our town. Today one of the voluteers found a kitten with its tail cut off and a can duct taped on its head. He got the can off and the kitten took off. He couldnt find it. Im assuming this kitten will not make it. It turned my stomach hearing about it.
> ...



i don't know how many CatForum users watch the show Dexter but it is stories like this that make me feel like i am going to turn into Dexter but instead of doing it his way i would go after the people that do this type of thing.


----------



## JohnMT (Jun 30, 2010)

It's hard to say really one way or another. Some days I'll see stuff that makes me lose faith in humanity..others I'll see a good example of a good person. I'd say it's about 50/50..

There are countless stories I could go on and on about regarding people mistreating cats, abandoning cats, and all of that. My sister, who worked at a no-kill shelter I'm sure has tons of them too. I couldn't work at a place like that... I'd love to....but I'd end up knocking someone out if I had to hear some of the things my sister heard from owners dumping their cats at that shelter. 

So many people seem to think of cats as disposable pets that they can toss away when they aren't interested in them anymore. And a good chunk of people seem to think of cats as something they can mistreat. I even had a police officer tell me "It's just a cat" while I was arguing with him over an incident several months ago. 

That said, I'll give the most recent example I can think of...which actually involves a dog, not a cat. Sorry it's kind of a long story..but it still really bugs me..

The most recent example of a "bad person" who should never have pets came when I was at the vet with one of my cats who had developed conjunctivitis seemingly out of nowhere. I took her to the emergency vet (she's all better now thanks to her ready-whip with clavamox topping) and while I was in the waiting room I overheard the receptionist trying to convince a lady on the phone that her dog did NOT have rabies, and did NOT need to be put down. If she was really worried about the dog having rabies, they could quarantine it for 10 days for cheaper than it would cost to have the dog put down. 

Basically what had happened was the lady put a friends kid next to her 2 year old boxer. The kid must've grabbed the dog or done something to make the dog upset. The dog bit the kid on the arm lightly in response. It did not break the skin, and the parent of the kid wasn't even worried about it enough to take the kid to the doctor.

The owner of the dog on the other hand apparently wanted revenge since this dog had embarrassed her in front of a friend... so she wanted the dog euthanized, and was claiming that it was rabid. 

I've done quite a bit of research on the danger of rabies in the U.S. since I spent a fair amount of time trying to catch a couple possible feral kittens and their mother mostly by hand (and some other very odd methods) last summer. I also have one very large feral colony almost in my back yard that a neighbor manages very well (they participate in the TNR). I live in the trees with all sorts of neat little critters roaming around too. If you have the animal that bit someone, there's no reason to kill it. You can simply have it quarantined if you really are worried about it, and if it shows no signs after 10 days, its no big deal. The changes of a domesticated animal in the US giving rabies to someone is nearly non-existent. 

So, I was sitting in the waiting room listening to this unfold on the phone (just one end of the conversation though) and just thinking to myself, their dog is just a couple of years old, had it's rabies shot when they got it, there's no way in **** that dog has rabies. I was hoping the receptionist (plus the vet giving her some info) would talk the lady out of killing her dog.

So the phone call ends, my cat gets her eyes checked out, and a prescription. I head out into the waiting room to pay, and I see a lady walking up to the vet door outside with her husband, a 10-ish year old kid, and a dog who isn't on a leash. The lady sees me in the waiting room and goes into super-drama mode. She storms inside demanding someone give her a leash for her rabid dog...even though the dog had followed her family to the vets door without a leash, and without incident. It was obvious the lady wasn't really worried her dog was rabid, she was just putting on a show at this point. 

So she drags the poor dog inside...hands the leash to her lump of a husband and proceeds to lecture the receptionist on how she knows this dog has rabies. The dog sees me and starts wagging it's little tail since it's someone new to sniff. The dog walks over to me, and I'm usually pretty good at determining if an animal has bad intentions or not...this one was not a threat at all. The lady flips out and yells at her husband to "Get that dog away from him!". After that she proceeds to argue with the receptionist and vet about rabies some more, and how she "looked it up on the internet" and this dog definitely has rabies. It was a disgusting display right there in front of her young kid... she was insisting that her dog be put down, beheaded and then the head shipped off to be tested for rabies... right in front of her kid, while ignoring what the head vet and owner of the biggest vet office in our city had to say.

When I got home that night it was bugging the **** out of me. The dogs eyes and the look it gave me when it was just coming over to sniff me was stuck in my head. I finally thought of something I could do to try to help this poor dog. I called the vet and asked them to tell that lady that I would pay for the boarding of the dog, and take the dog off of her hands so she didn't have to deal with it any more or pay any money for anything involving the dog. It was really hard not to offer to also pay to have the owner euthanized instead... I'm sure the receptionist would've cracked up about that.

I called the vets office back the next day to see if they'd heard back from the lady or not. Unfortunately the last thing they heard from the lady was after she talked to the vet again that night. She came back and picked up her dog, and did not schedule to have it euthanized (at least not at that vet). It was kind of out of their hands at that point. My hope is she calmed down finally or her kid talked some sense into her and they decided to let the dog live. 

I remember that night talking to my sister about this, who worked at a no-kill shelter and has seen her fair share of human nastiness... I believe I said something along the lines of "sometimes I really hate humans...". It still bugs me that I don't know for sure what happened to that poor dog... The look that dog gave me when it tried to sniff me is kind of burned into my memory 

Sorry for the long rant/story.. I know there are a lot of good people out there too who would never mistreat an animal... look at this message board for example! The bad ones always stick out in my mind though...there seem to be so many of them out there...


----------



## Pawsitively Nicole (Feb 12, 2011)

JohnMT what a sad situation  Someone like that doesn't deserve to own a pet!

I understand, I could go on and on with situations of abuse I encountered when working at the shelter. It seems like shelter work is one of those places where you constantly uncover the bad and don't hear about the good nearly as often (kinda like the news lol). I guess it's cause shelters deal so much with the unwanted and neglected pets and not the happy pet owners.

I only ever encountered one case of someone wanting a cat for another *animal* to abuse. Yes, this was a serious adopter. He said his cat was a bit crazy, and he would walk by and stuff and the cat would just attack him. He showed me these huge scars on his legs and the puncture wounds on his arms. These were very serious, damaging attacks. And this guy actually found this behavior funny! But he was tired of being injured. So he wanted to adopt a cat from the shelter that could be the punching bag for his current cat, he used those words, that would stand up for itself and not run away (cause his cat would find that cowardly) but not fight back either and just take the abuse (if it fought back he was certain his cat would kill it). He was certain that if the adopted cat would not run but not fight back either that his cat would just knock it around a bit but not hurt it, leaving his cats needs satisfied and it no longer attacking humans. Plus he wanted a cat that would cuddle with them since the current cat wouldn't. To be certain we said "So you want to adopt a cat so that your current cat can abuse it and not you?" He said "Yes."

He didn't get a cat, and was shocked that he was denied 8O


----------



## tigressbythetail (Dec 1, 2010)

After the persecution of so many cats for witchcraft during the medieval period, the bubonic plague wiped out 25 million people in Europe. Let that be a lesson for all the cat haters out there. 

A plague upon all their houses!


----------



## Mitts & Tess (Sep 4, 2004)

JohnMT & Pawsitively I hear ya! Im still reeling from the kitten with its tail cut off and a tin can duct tape to it head. I check off in the humans are horrible column. then my friend called me. She was at our vets office that day. A border patrol woman carried in a dog that was skin and bone. He was out in the middle of no where when she came across him when patroling for illegals coming over the border. ( I groaned to myself for even answering my cell phone to hear this one)

 My friend stood there and listened to the story behind finding the dog. My friend stepped forward and said she would like to help this dog and wrote out a sizable check to help it get back to health and adopted out at the clinic.

I put a check in the humans are good column for that one.


----------



## Whaler (Feb 13, 2011)

stories such as yours Mitts & Tess are the reason (as well as all of the great people at this site) why i have not lost faith in humanity as a whole. i feel that the bad outnumber the good but with the small army of good people keeping up the fight i hope that one day we will outnumber them.


----------

