The Mass Murderers at the SPCA Are Operating an Auschwitz for Cats and Dogs in Lakeland, Florida

"... the unfortunate feline species seemed to be fair game for every kind of cruelty and neglect. They shot cats, threw things at them, starved them and set their dogs on them for fun."

-- James Herriot, Cat Stories

During the Middle Ages it was the Catholic Church which hunted them down and massacred them with impunity. Today, it is bird advocates who live by the creed that the only good cat is a dead one.

Wildlife proponents and just plain old inveterate cat-haters likewise never pass up an opportunity to do them harm. Despite all of the evil that those groups do, it is animal shelters which kill the most cats. 

In the United States it is estimated that they exterminate ten million felines and seven million dogs each year. More alarmingly, very few people care. A good case in point was Gary White's April 2nd story in The Ledger which, although intended to engender sympathy for the mass murderers who operate the SPCA's shelter in Lakeland, Florida, instead revealed the utter immorality, cruelty, and twisted thinking of all shelter employees. (See "Euthanizing Thousands of Animals a Year Takes Toll on Shelter Workers.")

Even if the kill rates provided by The Ledger are not gross undercounts, which is likely, the statistics are nonetheless nothing short of horrific. Although the SPCA did place 4,000 pets in new homes last year, it simultaneously exterminated 6,566 cats and dogs.

That is an average of eighteen exterminations per day! Polk County Animal Control admits to having killed another 14,000 pets last year, but the Humane Society of Polk County has refused to disclose how many animals that it killed. Veterinarians throughout the central Florida county of 500,000 residents also kill untold numbers of cats and dogs.

The SPCA enumerates disease, wildness, and overcrowding as justifications for operating its modern day version of an Auschwitz for pets. In other words, whenever it is convenient for it to kill a cat or a dog it does so in spite of the fact that it pretends to be a protector of animal life.

Sick and injured animals should receive medical attention and wild ones should either be socialized or sent to a sanctuary. Since overcrowding is a perennial problem at all animal shelters, the SPCA should spend its precious shekels on constructing expanded quarters rather than on deadly drugs and the training of exterminators.

For instance, the Lakeland SPCA employs eight technicians that it pays to undergo sixteen hours of training in order to be certified as mass murderers. The murder of an unnamed four-year-old injured black male cat by SPCA director Patt Glenn is illustrative of the types of senseless killings which the SPCA carries out eighteen times a day at its Lakeland facility.

The cat, totally innocent and minding its own business, was trapped at the Lakeland-Linder Regional Airport in the morning and immediately brought to the shelter. Upon arrival, Glenn tested his suitability for adoption by first thrusting an ink pen into his cage and then by holding up a gloved hand to the bars.

When, however, she attempted to remove him from his cage he bit her gloved hand. Based upon that solitary act of aggression as well as his truncated tail and a small wound below his left eye, she declared him to be feral and unadoptable. Although the test used by Glenn is pretty much standard at shelters all across the country, it is a nonsensical test without a shred of validity.

Cats are hunters by nature and any fool knows that they will attempt to grab anything thrust at them. Secondly, all imprisoned cats are justifiably frightened to death so it is to be expected that they will bite and scratch under such circumstances. 

Moreover, his previously incurred injuries should be treated, not used as an excuse to sign his death warrant. Life on the street is rough and he could have been injured in any one of a number of circumstances. 

Scratches, wounds, and other injuries do not necessarily mean that a cat is aggressive and unsociable any more than would the discovery of a man bleeding in the street imply the same; victims of violence bleed and bruise even more easily than do their attackers.

The SPCA, however, does not have any time or patience for such subtleties. The point is moot anyway because shelters do not have any right to kill cats or any other animals in the first place.

These so-called wildness tests are administered simply to provide the mass murderers with a rationale in order to justify their crimes. It is also important to remember that they earn a good living committing these crimes.

Having failed Glenn's bogus test, the poor cat is next anesthetized with a jab of ketamine to his flank. The cat's cage is then covered with a towel allegedly in order to shield him from seeing any "unfamiliar sights," but the more likely reason is that Glenn does not have the stomach to watch him slip into unconsciousness. 

While the drug is doing its dirty work, Glenn busies herself filling out the necessary paperwork for the political hacks at the Food and Drug Administration. On the form provided, she lists the date, drugs administered, and then writes "F" for feral as the reason for the extermination.

The Nameless Four-Year-Old Male Being Murdered by the Lakeland SPCA

Finally, she proudly initials her handiwork and daydreams about the fat paycheck she is going to receive. Three minutes later, the cat is out cold and although his tiny eyes remain open, his pupils are dilated.

Glenn squeezes his toes in order to make sure that he is unconscious and then prepares a syringe of sodium pentobarbital. Before polishing off her latest victim, she pauses to belatedly scan the cat for a microchip.

In the unlikely event that one be found, she would perhaps revive him. This is, of course, not only cruel and inhumane but stupid as well.

The cat should have been scanned upon arrival but Glenn and her staff had most likely already made up their minds to kill him from the outset or they were either too lazy or too chicken to scan a cat not under sedation. Sadly, in this instance, no microchip was found so Glenn plunged a needle full of sodium pentobarbital directly into his tiny heart and held it there until it stopped beating and he stopped breathing. 

She could have just as easily looked for a vein but mass murderers want to inflict as much pain as is possible upon their victims. If the truth be known, she probably gets a kick out of killing cats.

The cat is then stuffed into a black trash bag, refrigerated, and later dumped at a landfill, out of sight and out of mind. To Glenn and her co-workers exterminating cats and dogs is really no different than slicing up vegetables and tossing the waste into the trash.

They are, in reality, far worse than the Adolf Hitlers and Pol Pots of this world. The SPCA derives its name from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals which was founded in England in 1840.

On April 10, 1866, Henry Bergh founded the American SPCA (ASPCA) which, although headquartered in New York City, has chapters around the country. Most organizations which operate under the SPCA moniker do not have any affiliation with either the Royal SPCA or the ASPCA, but are instead either independent organizations or private groups which contract out their services to local municipalities.

Similar arrangements exist in many foreign countries. The Lakeland chapter was founded in 1979 by volunteers and today operates on a combination of private donations and public funding. 

On its web site it states: "We are focused on reducing pet overpopulation and indiscriminate breeding to eliminate the euthanasia of thousands of unwanted pets annually." It is conspicuously silent, however, on the immorality of murdering animals.

The lives of animals will never be protected until fraudulent animal rights groups such as the Lakeland SPCA are exposed for what they are and forced to answer in a court of law for their crimes. Secondly, the responsibility for the care and protection of all animals must be taken away from the politicians and their bought and paid for stooges (Animal Control, SPCA, etc.) and instead placed under the control of genuine animal defenders.

Any person or group who refuses to acknowledge the inalienable right of all animals to life and liberty is a fraud. There is not anything positive that can ever be said about the corporate media and The Ledger's cavalier treatment of shelter animals is another disgusting example of the harm done by capitalistic propaganda.

The Ledger, of course, is not alone in trumpeting the cause of shelter workers at the expense of defenseless, innocent animals. For instance, last September the Washington Post published an article defending the mass murderers at the Loudoun County Animal Shelter in Virginia. (See Cat Defender post of September 30, 2005 entitled "The Morally Bankrupt Washington Post Pens a Love Letter to Shelter Workers Who Exterminate Cats and Dogs.")

Jumping on the bandwagon, The Austin Chronicle last November published an article defending the exterminators at the Town Lake Shelter. (See Cat Defender post of November 23, 2005 entitled "A Texas Newspaper Defends Pet Genocide by Publishing Graphic Photos of Shelter Workers Exterminating a Dog.")

From this it is clear that the capitalist media share the SPCA's opinion that homeless pets are nuisances that should be gotten rid of as expeditiously as possible. They are accordingly ready, willing, and able to lend their considerable resources and influence to mass murderers everywhere.

It is therefore not surprising that neither The Ledger, the Washington Post, nor The Austin Chronicle have ever expressed an iota of compassion for the millions of animals slaughtered at shelters each year. Patt Glenn and her cohorts do not deserve sympathy; au contraire, it is the four-year-old black cat that they murdered who is deserving of the public's compassion.

He did not commit any crime other than that of daring to be born and even that was not his fault. Nor, did he receive any due process.

Instead, he was rounded up and exterminated by the monsters at the SPCA who were cheered on at each step of the way by the The Ledger. It is too late for him now as he lies decomposing in a landfill with his brothers and sisters of the feline world; all that remains of him are the memories and his photograph.

He will not have died in vain, however, if cat and dog lovers unite and demand an immediate end to pet genocide.

Photo: Pierre DuCharme of The Ledger.