Sunday Afternoon Boaters Pluck Splat Out of Clouter Creek after She Is Thrown Off of the Mark Clark Epressway Bridge in Charleston

"She already made it this far. (She) ought to make it all the way."
-- Karen Allen

Cats and kittens are abandoned on bridges every day. Some of them never even make it over the railing and are instead mowed down by motorists either too uncaring to swerve in order to avoid hitting them or just for sport.

For those that somehow manage to escape ending up as viande a pneus, all that usually awaits them on the opposite side of the railing is a watery grave. Splat the Cat is one of the lucky ones who defied the million to one odds against her and survived a plunge off of the Mark Clark Expressway Bridge (Interstate 526) in Charleston, South Carolina.

For her salvation she has kindhearted Karen Allen to thank. She and her husband, Dennis, were motoring on Clouter Creek on July 18th when they saw Splat come flying off the bridge. The tiny kitten hit the water and started swimming as hard as she could for the shore.

Since she was swimming against the current, however, she may not have made it if Allen had not intervened. Without so much as a moment's hesitation, she took out a fishing net and scooped Splat out of the drink and to safety. (See photo above of Splat with her rescuers.)

Amazingly enough, Splat came through her death-defying ordeal without any apparent physical injuries. That is even more remarkable in light of the fact that she already was malnourished as the result of her previous owner's attempt to starve her to death.

"I don't know how she's alive," Allen marveled to The Sun News of Myrtle Beach on July 20th. (See "Kitten Tossed Off Bridge Gets a Second Chance.") "I didn't think she was going to live."

Initially, Allen took Splat to her office located in the Daniel Island section of Charleston but she later handed her over to the Feline Freedom Coalition (FFC) in Ravenel. The game plan calls for her to be cruelly and inhumanely interned there for six weeks while the big shots reportedly look high and low for diseases and socialize her.

That is total nonsense! Splat obviously is as healthy as a horse and kittens do not need to be socialized. Even Allen admits that she is well-behaved, quiet and docile.

Besides, diseases can be detected during a routine office visit to a veterinarian. The real danger is that she will contract some deadly disease as the result of either the overcrowding or unsanitary conditions at FFC.

While they have her at their mercy, FFC will sans doute cut out her ovaries, implant a cancer-causing worthless microchip, and administer all sorts of unnecessary and often harmful vaccinations.

Should she somehow make it through all of the FFC's probing and invasive procedures, she likely will be put up for adoption at PetSmart in West Ashley. The adoption fee will be stiff. After all, someone has to pay through the wazoo for Splat's room and board as well as for all of the unnecessary veterinary procedures.

The picture that emerges from all of this is not a pretty one. Groups such as FFC look upon rescued cats as investments to be added to their portfolios. In much the same way that individuals slap a fresh coat of paint on old jalopies and houses that they are trying to sell, they needlessly and cruelly manipulate cats in order to enhance their retail value.

Thus, the more unnecessary surgeries and procedures that cats are put through, the greater the return on their investment. Worst still, in a society oblivious to the difference between animate beings and inanimate objects, these naked exploiters are allowed to get away with their abuses and mutilations.

Being that the animal rescue business is such a disgusting racket, the emphasis always is on agendas and making money. The health, well-being, and feelings of cats and other animals count for little or nothing.

FFC's hidden agenda is not difficult to fathom. Its number one objective is to subjugate all homeless cats and their caretakers under its fascist thumb.

In order to achieve that objective, it is attempting to get all volunteers to idiotically register their colonies with it. As an inducement to play along, it is giving away cheap kibble that it in turn has bummed from PetSmart and other charities.

In return the volunteers will be forced to provide FFC with the locations of their colonies and the number of cats contained therein as well as sterilization details. Shortly thereafter, FFC is sure to sell out the colonies and their caretakers to birders, wildlife biologists, and governmental officials intent upon doing them harm.

That is precisely the slimy little game that Bryan Kortis of Neighborhood Cats in Manhattan plays with such elan. (See Cat Defender post of June 15, 2009 entitled "American Bird Conservancy, The New York Times, and the Humane Society Form an Achse des Bosen Against Cats.")

This is a diabolical scheme that spells doom for all homeless cats and therefore should be violently resisted by all volunteers. In short, let the pimps and frauds, such as FFC, Neighborhood Cats, and the Humane Society of the United States, find some other means of making a dishonest buck.

Besides, neither the cats nor the volunteers have anything to gain by knuckling under to these groups. The volunteers know the score and are doing the very best job that they can under extremely difficult circumstances. That is the way things have to be in this miserable old world; nothing is free and everyone must acquire their own funding through their own efforts.

Looking on the bright side, things could have turned out considerably worse for Splat in that Allen initially intended to turn her over to the knackers at Charleston County Animal Control who kill just about every cat given to them. Mercifully, she had a change of heart.

"She already made it this far," Allen told The Sun News. "(She) ought to make it all the way."

Caring for a cat is not fundamentally any different from anything else in life in that morality, like charity, begins at home. Individuals who care about cats must take personal responsibility for their well-being; fobbing off responsibility on others is a cruel and inhumane abdication of duty.

No animal rescue group is to be trusted. They are all inveterate liars, cat-killers, and shekel chasers. That is what Kimberley Marshall recently learned the hard way. (See Cat Defender post of July 29, 2010 entitled "Benicia Vallejo Humane Society Is Outsourcing the Mass Killing of Kittens and Cats All the While Masquerading as a No-Kill Shelter.")

Providing shelters with money in order to purchase food for surrendered cats does not work either. That is what Donna Pruitt of Sugar Land, thirty-one kilometers outside of Houston, discovered to her eternal sorrow last month after she relinquished two stray kittens to Animal Control.

After feeding the kittens on her front porch for a fortnight, she dropped them off at Animal Control at 9 a.m. on July 8th and was told to come back at noon in order to retrieve her pet carrier. Apparently the staff was cleaning cages and moving the inmates around and therefore did not have anywhere to house the kittens except in her carrier. She gave the staff an "Andy Jack" in order to buy food for them and then left.

When she returned at 11:45 a.m. she was told that the kittens had been killed almost as soon as she was out the door. This was in spite of procedures in place which mandate that all surrendered animals be held for at least seventy-two hours before being killed. Moreover, shelter officials are supposed to telephone their previous owners before killing them so as to give them an opportunity to retrieve them.

"They had my phone number, as I had left it when I dropped the kittens off. They had our $20," Pruitt told The Fort Bend Star on July 14th. (See "Baby Kittens Put to Sleep in Error.") "Shouldn't that have bought me an explanation or at least a call before they murdered the kittens?"

Apparently not. Also, there is nothing in the record to suggest that Animal Control has even returned her money.

The city of Sugar Land has promised to take unspecified "administrative action" against the murderer which, in all likelihood, means no action at all. Even more disturbing, it is difficult to believe that this was an isolated incident as opposed to the norm. (See photo above of the staff at the shelter.)

As for Pruitt, she cried all the way home from Animal Control and claims that even now she breaks into tears just thinking about the awful thing that she did. Furthermore, she states that she would have found homes for the kittens if she had had "any glimmer of an idea" that Animal Control was going to kill them.

The lesson to be learned from both Pruitt's and Marshall's trying ordeals is that it is often too late to save cats once shelters and rescue groups take possession of them. Despite that harsh reality, there apparently are a considerable number of well-meaning individuals who fall prey to the killers' sophistry.

Of course, the vast majority of individuals who surrender animals to shelters are so glad to be shed of them that they could care less what happens to them. They therefore gobble up with a pitch fork the lies so liberally dispensed by shelters.

There is an old saying that whenever a person saves the life of another that person then is responsible for that life from now on and the same rationale applies in spades to cats. Despite her good work in fishing Splat out of Clouter Creek, Allen erred grievously in handing her over to FFC.

Since she was unwilling to give Splat a home, she should have taken personal responsibility for placing her with another family. It might not be too late, however, for her to atone for her earlier mistake by going to FFC and ransoming Splat's life.

Above all, no one ever should give a cat to either a shelter or a rescue group because it is a sure-fire death sentence in most instances. Even those few cats that are allowed to continue breathing face a lifetime of hardship as the result of the wholesale mutilation and abuse that they suffer at the hands of shelters and rescue groups. Restrictions placed upon their adoption, such as that they be confined indoors for life, are yet still another blatant form of animal cruelty.

It does not make any material difference how sterling a reputation shelters and rescue groups may have, how much moola they rake in courtesy of their various scams, or how eloquent and persuasive their talking heads can be, they are all cat killers, exploiters, and subjugators.

An analogous situation exists within the social welfare system. When an individual, child, or family becomes down-and-out they are fobbed off on shelters, orphanages, soup kitchens, churches, synagogues, and old folks' homes.

These are black holes where the vulnerable are preyed upon as opposed to being helped. Consequently, it is not surprising that very few of these unfortunate individuals ever get back on their feet again.

Photos: The Sun News (Splat with the Allens) and City of Sugar Land (Animal Control personnel).