PETA Traps and Kills a Cat and Then Shamelessly Goes Online in Order to Brag about Its Criminal and Foul Deed
"The veterinarian immediately put the suffering cat out of his misery, giving him more comfort in his final moments than he had likely known for much of his life."
-- Alisa Mullins of PETA
"Our service is to provide a peaceful and painless death to animals who no one wants," PETA's head honcho, Ingrid Newkirk, declared a few years back. Even in making that frank, albeit morally reprehensible, admission she could not resist the temptation to once again shade the truth.
Actually, it is only live and breathing cats that get the old phony's goat. As a consequence, Newkirk and her two-million acolytes devote a disproportionate amount of their time and resources to combing the highways and byways in search of cats to kill.
One of the organization's recent murder victims was a forever nameless white-colored cat that it claims had an injured ear and was suffering from cancer. (See photo above.)
Although PETA is careful not to disclose the locale, it trapped the cat and took it to an unidentified veterinarian who promptly dispatched it to the devil. "The veterinarian immediately put the suffering cat out of his misery, giving him more comfort in his final moments than he had likely known for much of his life," the organization's Alisa Mullins, as proud as punch over the success of her evil deed, trumpeted in an August 24th press release. (See "A Kind End to a Harsh Life.")
First of all, a cancerous growth, unlike a bloody nose, is not detectable au premier coup d'oeil. Diagnostic tests are required for that and since PETA is such a miserly organization there is not any way in Hell that it ever would have footed the bill for them.
Secondly, although a cat's socio-economic status should not have any bearing whatsoever on its inalienable right to live, PETA had no way of knowing whether the cat was domiciled or homeless. After all, even a domesticated cat can look down-at-the-heel after a few days of roughing it.
The cat's mangled ear raises the prospect that he may have belonged to a managed colony. His ear could have been sliced up by a veterinarian in order to denote that he had been sterilized and afterwards became either infected or injured when it became snagged on some foreign object.
Since the foul deed already has been perpetrated, there is absolutely nothing that can be done for the cat at this late date. The only thing that can be hoped for it that either his owner or the caretaker of the colony will, against all odds, recognize his face and bring appropriate criminal and civil action against PETA.
It is, however, Mullins' assertion that the cat found more comfort while being murdered than he had known throughout his life that is the most revolting. Applied to human affairs, such spurious reasoning would imply that the victims of genocide ought to feel indebted to their murderers.
Much more mundanely, Mullins is guilty of wallowing in her own self-serving sottise without having had the benefit of knowing a blessed thing about either the cat's past or his current situation. For instance, he very well could have had a wonderful life before ending up on the street and even then he might have been doing all right except for a few rough patches here and there. Life is not always a bed of roses for either cats or humans.
Along about the same time that PETA was snuffing out this cat's life, journalist Jane Ganahl and Ken White of the Peninsula Humane Society in San Mateo were busy abducting and killing a senior cat named Marvin in Half Moon Bay. Although he had been living on his own in a parking lot for sixteen years, they got the wind up one day and unilaterally decided that he could not be permitted to go on living for so much as another day.
Like Mullins and PETA, they attempted to justify their abhorrent crime on the grounds that they cared deeply about Marvin. "He was failing, and this was the last gift from people who cared about him," White lied through his rotten teeth. (See Cat Defender post of September 28, 2011 entitled "Marvin Is Betrayed, Abducted, and Murdered by a Journalist and a Shelter Who Preposterously Maintain That They Were Doing Him a Favor.")
The cat killed by PETA needed food, veterinary care, and a bath and a good brushing, not an appointment with the hangman. His killing was murder, not euthanasia, and Mullins and her associates accordingly belong in jail.
The same holds true for the veterinarian who cruelly and unjustly took away his life. Moreover, he and all like-minded practitioners should have their licenses permanently revoked and never be permitted to practice veterinary medicine again under any circumstances. (See Cat Defender post of July 28, 2011 entitled "Tammy and Maddy Are Forced to Pay the Ultimate Price after Their Owner and an Incompetent Veterinarian Elect to Play Russian Roulette with Their Lives.")
Saving lives and doing a little pro bono work from time to time are alien concepts as far as most practitioners of veterinary medicine are concerned. Without so much as a moment's hesitation they will, however, kill off most any animal for a hefty fee.
In addition to being a vile and murderous organization, PETA also is stingy. Although it took in $34 million in 2009, it is not about to spend so much as a sou on treating, feeding, sheltering, and finding homes for cats.
Instead, it summarily executes approximately ninety-eight per cent of the cats and dogs that it impounds at its facility in Norfolk, Virginia. Thousand more never even make it to its shelter because PETA kills them inside its vans and then dumps their corpses.
For example, on May 19, 2005, June 2, 2005, June 9, 2005, and June 15, 2005 the police in Ahoskie, North Carolina, retrieved the corpses of eighty-two dogs and seventeen cats from a Dumpster behind a Piggly Wiggly supermarket where they had been dumped by Andria Hinkle and Andrew Cook of PETA. In January of 2007, they were tried for animal cruelty in Hertford County Criminal Superior Court but were convicted of only one count each of littering. (See photo immediately below of them celebrating their victory.)
"There were no intentions of cruelty, only good intentions to help animals which these two young people have dedicated their lives to," Daphna Nachminovitch, supervisor of PETA's motorized death squads, declared with a straight face after the verdicts were read. (See Cat Defender posts of January 29, 2007 and February 9. 2007 entitled, respectively, "PETA's Long History of Killing Cats and Dogs Is Finally Exposed in North Carolina Courtroom" and "Verdict in PETA Trial: Littering Is a Crime but Not the Mass Slaughter of Innocent Cats and Dogs.")
Nachminovitch is every bit as big of a liar as Newkirk and Mullins in that the only assistance that PETA ever provides to cats and dogs is a one-way, no return ticket to Hades.
As for those owners and shelters who are so uncaring as to surrender animals to PETA, all that they receive in return is more lies with a free snow job thrown in as an added bonus. For example, in North Carolina PETA told shelter operators that it would secure good homes for the animals that it took off of their hands and to substantiate that claim it took photographs of them gamboling in fields of flowers which it then mailed back to the shelters.
Of course, the animals were long dead before the shelters ever received the staged photographs. PETA thus was allowed to indulge in its murderous rampages whereas the operators of the shelters were relieved of the burden of caring for their impounded animals. Whether the shelters believed PETA's blatant lies or simply did not care one way or the other is a debatable point.
Adding insult to injury, the stiffs who sit on the North Carolina Court of Appeals threw out the littering convictions of Hinkle and Cook on April 15, 2008. So in the end PETA got off scot-free. (See the News and Observer of Raleigh, April 15, 2008, "PETA Workers Cleared of Animal Cruelty (sic) Convictions.")
The wholesale and indiscriminate en masse slaughter of cats and dogs is nothing new as far as PETA is concerned. In fact, it has been the business model employed by Newkirk ever since she operated a shelter in Washington way back in the 1970's.
"I went to the front office all the time, and I would say, 'John is kicking the dogs and putting them in freezers.' Or I would say, 'They are stepping on the animals, crushing them like grapes, and they don't care'," she admitted to The New Yorker on April 4, 2003. (See "The Extremist: The Woman Behind the Most Successful Radical Group in America.") "In the end, I would go to work early, before anyone got there, and I would just kill the animals myself. Because I couldn't stand to let them go through that. I must have killed thousands of them, sometimes dozens every day."
Based upon that confession, she should have been arrested on the spot and put behind bars for the remainder of her life. She is not only a morally warped sadistic mass murderer but poses an imminent danger to all cats and dogs.
Secondly, since she was in charge of the shelter it was her responsibility to train and discipline the staff. Since she failed to do that, she should have been promptly fired along with the imbecile who hired her in the first place.
PETA's inveterate hatred of cats and ingrained cheapness is further attested to by an e-mail letter that he organization's Teresa Chagrin sent to Hancock County Administrator Chuck Svokas on December 13, 2010. In it she extolled the virtues of a two-hundred-fifty milliliter bottle of sodium pentobarbital which she claims is more than sufficient in order to do away with eighty-three cats.
She went on to point out to the West Virginian politician that the cost of the deadly barbiturate was "extremely minimal" when compared to the price of rabies vaccinations, property damage, and feline predation of wildlife. (See Wheeling News-Register, December 16, 2010, "PETA Peeved at Hancock County's Feral Cat Problem.")
Although she is far too dishonest ever to admit it, what Chagrin really meant to say is that it is far cheaper to operate an extermination factory than it is to feed, water, shelter, medicate, and procure homes for cats. After all, the needs of the vanquished are indeed few.
Oscar Wilde once defined a cynic as someone "who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing" and that description certainly applies in spades to PETA. Contrary to what it and just about all American veterinarians and practicing physicians wholeheartedly believe, a price tag cannot be placed on either animal or human life.
Such a policy also relieves the mental midgets at PETA from coming to terms with difficult moral conundrums and, just as importantly, ensures that none of them ever will be forced to look upon any cat as an individual, sentient being endowed with legitimate rights and needs. Like the practitioners of genocide, Newkirk and PETA do not think anymore of perpetrating mass slaughters of the innocent than they do about draining their bladders.
Chagrin's scurrilous missive, and the hundreds like it that PETA floods the web with each year, unmasks the totally fraudulent organization as being every bit as obsessed with maligning and killing cats as ornithologists and wildlife biologists. Like them, the higher-ups at PETA sit glued to their computers day and night in an all-out quest to identify, smear, and throttle cats and the groups that champion their cause.
Such a policy aligns PETA with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies within the bloated federal bureaucracy and demonstrates conclusively that it is anything but the radical animal rights group that it and The New Yorker claims; au contraire, it is every bit as conservative and bedrock establishment as the wildlife biologists, ornithologists, Animal Control officers, and conventional shelters that it strives so hard to emulate. After all, any group can kill cats, fan the prejudices of the unenlightened, and suck up to those in power.
Based upon the foregoing, it should not come as any surprise that PETA is violently opposed to the feeding of homeless cats. "If there are feral cats in your neighborhood, please don't prolong their agony by simply putting out food and hoping for the best," Mullins implores the heartless and uninformed in the press release cited supra.
In addition to being a totally morally repugnant philosophy, it is interesting to note that Mullins does not advocate that individuals refrain from feeding birds, wildlife, and dogs. Likewise, although it claims to be opposed to vivisection, factory and fur farming, the exploitation of animals in sports and entertainment, hunting, and a host of other evils, PETA never publicly has advocated that any of the animals so horribly abused by those commercial concerns be starved to death. It is only cats that it has singled out as not being fit to be fed.
From attempting to starve to death homeless cats PETA now has graduated to advocating that their domesticated brothers and sisters, along with dogs, be compelled to become vegetarians. "Most dogs' and cats' health improves on a vegetarian diet, but occasionally an animal may not thrive, so use common sense if this occurs," PETA recently postulated on its web site in an undated posting. (See "Meatless Meals for Dogs and Cats.")
As per usual, the cat-hating blowhards at PETA do not present one scintilla of scientific evidence in order to substantiate their ludicrous claim that obligate carnivores can thrive on a meatless diet. The organization's often repeated mantra that "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment" obviously does not include either respecting the sanctity of their fragile lives or their genetically determined dietary needs.
As far as it is known, the only cat who prefers a vegetarian fare is a black and white former stray named Dante who lives with his owner, Becky Page, in Tasburgh in Norfolk. (See photo above of him chowing down.)
"I tried feeding him meat, fish, everything else that cats like, but he turned his nose up," Page told London's Mirror on April 14, 2009. (See "Meet Dante, the UK's Only Vegetarian (sic) Cat.") "Just when I thought nothing would work, he wolfed down a plate of veg I was going to throw out."
In spite of Dante's preference for melons, bananas, broccoli, rhubarb, asparagus, aubergine, and Brussels sprout, it would be incorrect to label him as a vegetarian. "I have to smuggle bits of meat among the veggies so he gets all the nutrients he needs," Page continued. "But sometimes he spots the meat and leaves it. He has a unique appetite but he's certainly healthy."
Dante's fondness for fruits and vegetables can be explained by the fact that as a kitten he nearly starved to death and therefore was forced to eat almost anything that he was able to procure. Contrary to popular belief, cats will eat almost anything that either necessity or their upbringing dictates.
Kittens, for example, who grow up in households where they are permitted to cadge food from the table have been known to develop a taste for such oddities as, inter alia, oatmeal, cereal, bread, cake, cheese, pizza, pasta, and even fruit and vegetables. The fact that they can be conditioned to eat carbohydrates certainly does not mean that such a diet is good for them. After all, a good portion of what most humans ingest is anything but beneficial to their health.
"This is extremely rare," Maggie Roberts, a veterinarian with Cats Protection in Chelwood Gate, Sussex, told the Mirror in the article cited supra. "Cats are obligate carnivores and cannot be vegetarian (sic)."
Ottawa veterinarian Marie Haynes took PETA to task on August 16th on her web site, Ask a Vet Question.com, by pointing out that cats have neither the molars and premolars necessary for grinding up food nor the enzyme amylase in their saliva that is needed for breaking down starches. (See "Should Cats Be Vegans?") They have a little bit of it in their intestines but not a sufficient amount in order to do the job.
Carbohydrates therefore pass through cats' short digestive tracts without being absorbed. Furthermore, undigested carbohydrates alter the bacteria in their intestines and thus make it difficult for them to even properly process proteins.
Healthy cats also need the animal-derived amino acids taurine and arachidonate in addition to vitamin B12. If these amino acids along with arginine, methionine, cysteine, and tyrosin are lacking in their diets serious health problems and even death can occur.
Since PETA sans doute is acutely aware of the negative health consequences associated with feeding cats meatless diets, its attempt to transform them into vegetarians only can be regarded as another sinister ploy designed to do in the species. It also once again highlights the folly of those individuals and groups who compromise with the species' sworn enemies.
Being that mulehead Mullins is so fervently committed to starving homeless cats to death it logically follows and she and PETA are adamantly opposed to both TNR and no-kill shelters. "Trap them and bring them into your home; take them to a reputable open admission shelter (not to a so-called no-kill shelter that warehouses frightened, unadoptable animals in cages for years); or take them to a veterinarian for a peaceful release from a world that has turned its back on them," she counseled in the press release cited supra.
If all of that were not odious enough, Mullins is such a delusional egomaniac that she expects the public not only to go along with her sophistry but to feel sorry for her to boot. "I've personally done all three, and the last option, while the hardest on me, was the easiest on the cat," she concludes in an utterly amazing display of twisted logic and morality.
First of all, if cats could talk like Saki's Tobermory it is doubtful that a single one of them would approve of either her nonsense or malice aforethought. Much more pertinently, no one cares what she thinks; it is the needs of cats that are paramount and not hers and PETA's.
In an amateurish attempt to justify her hideous crimes, Mullins goes on to allege that homeless cats are infected with every known disease under the sun, preyed upon by motorists and other ailurophobes, and often either starve or freeze to death. Since she has so cleverly dismissed all other alternatives, it follows that she now expects everyone to immediately vacate the playing field and to leave matters in the hands of PETA's exterminators.
"TNR may prevent future generations of cats from suffering the hardships of life on the street, but they (sic) fail to address the misery experienced by cats trying to eke out an existence in alleys and behind Dumpsters," she bellowed in another of her anti-cat screeds posted October 24, 2010 on OpEd News.com. (See "Don't Turn Your Back on Feral Cats.")
Everything that she and PETA have to say about TNR and homeless cats is pure fabrication. In particular, cats that belong to managed colonies are fed and watered daily, provided with winterized shelters, vaccinated, and taken to veterinarians when they become ill. The world has anything but "turned its back on them."
Even cats that do not belong to managed colonies usually make out all right. Kindhearted individuals feed them and there usually are buildings that they can get underneath in inclement weather. Furthermore, since they are territorial they quickly learn to avoid the dangers that exist in their environment.
According to several studies cited by Alley Cat Allies (ACA), less than one per cent of homeless cats need to be killed due to illness, trauma, and infectious diseases. Moreover, research does not support PETA's claim that homeless cats are more prone to disease than domesticated ones. (See "Feral Cat Health Analysis: Living Healthy Outdoors" at www.alleycat.org.)
ACA's assessment of the healthiness of homeless cats is attested to by veterinarian Shelia Dobson of the Kansas City area who is on record as saying that homeless cats are every bit as healthy as domesticated ones. (See Cat Defender post of May 16, 2006 entitled "Kansas City Vets Break Ranks with AVMA to Defend Cats Against Bird Advocates, Wildlife Proponents, and Exterminators.")
Because of their sedentary lifestyles and as the result of being cooped up all day and night in polluted houses and apartments, it could be argued with some force that indoor cats actually are far less healthy and physically fit than their outdoor cousins. (See Cat Defender posts of August 22, 2007 and October 19, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Indoor Cats Are Dying from Diabetes, Hyperthyroidism, and Various Toxins in the Home" and "Smokers Are Killing Their Cats, Dogs, Birds, and Infants by Continuing to Light Up in Their Presence.")
Obesity and cancerous implanted microchips also are taking a heavy toll on domesticated cats. (See Cat Defender posts of September 21, 2007 and November 6, 2010 entitled, respectively, "FDA Is Suppressing Research That Shows Implanted Microchips Cause Cancer in Mice, Rats, and Dogs" and "Bulkin Contracts Cancer from an Implanted Microchip and Now It Is Time for Digital Angel and Merck to Answer for Their Crimes in a Court of Law.")
PETA also makes much ado about homeless cats being preyed upon by ailurophobes and that, admittedly, is a major problem but the same holds true for domesticated ones as well. Generally speaking, homeless cats with a healthy fear of humans suffer less horrific abuse than do trusting, socialized cats. (See Cat Defender post of September 22, 2011 entitled "Neanderthaloid Politicians in Lebanon, Ohio, Wholeheartedly Sanction the Illegal and Cold-Blooded Murder of Haze by a Trigger-Happy Cop.")
TNR programs also have the added advantage of being fully funded by volunteers and therefore do not cost the taxpayers a solitary cent. That is likely one of the principal reasons that conventional shelter operators, like PETA, are so stridently opposed to them.
Groups such as Neighborhood Cats in Manhattan and the Humane Society of the United States in Washington are attempting to usurp the prerogatives of the volunteers and thus bring the colonies under their control. Should they ever succeed, they in quick order will sell the cats down the river. (See Cat Defender post of June 15, 2009 entitled "American Bird Conservancy, The New York Times, and the Humane Society Form an Achse des Bösen Against Cats.")
It stands to reason that the rogue band of cutthroat killers who comprise the ranks of PETA additionally would be strenuously opposed to no-kill shelters. While there can be no denying that the movement is rife with impostors, it nevertheless is a step in the right direction. (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.")
The task confronting the advocates of no-kill is to expose and weed out the pretenders and thus restore credibility to the movement. No-kill should mean exactly what the name implies and nothing less.
TNR colonies, barns, adoption, legitimate no-kill shelters and, if nothing better is available, a policy of live and let live all are preferable to the onerous and morally repugnant trap and kill policies practiced by PETA and conventional shelters. "...it is in no animal's best interest to be killed," ACA responded on its web site last October to Mullins' October 24th broadside defaming homeless cats. (See "Alley Cat Allies' Response to PETA: Feral Cats Deserve to Live.")
A sixth option in the form of retirement communities for elderly and sick cats and dogs also is now available in a few select communities. Capacity is extremely limited and all funding must be raised privately but they nonetheless are a step forward in providing cats and dogs with the compassion that they so richly deserve.
It was in recognition of that glaring need that the Deutscher Tierschutzbund of Bonn last month awarded its Deutschen Tierschutzpreis for 2011 to Klein'en Gnadenhof of Letschow. Located just outside the former Hanseatic city of Rostock in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Klein'en Gnadenhof is a four-thousand square meter rural sanctuary that houses twenty-five cats and twelve dogs that are either elderly or sick.
It has been in business for ten years and is operated by Christel and Manfred Klein. (See photo of them above.)
"Wir schenken alten, verletzen and unheilbar kranken Hunden und Katzen wieder Lebensqualität," Christel told the Schweriner Volkszeitung on September 19th. (See "Preis für 'Gnadenhof' aus Rostock.") "Ich konnte das Leid der Hunde und Katzen nicht mit ansehen."
That certainly comes as a refreshing breath of air after listening to PETA's incessant drumming that all homeless cats must be killed on the spot. So, too, is the Kleins' decision to invest the €3000 that came with the award on enlarging the facility so as to accommodate additional needy animals.
Although the Kleins recognize that cats and dogs, like humans, are entitled to their Lebensabend, that does not stop them from killing them off in droves once they become incapacitated. In that regard, their sanctuary is not all that much of an improvement over PETA's Norfolk facility.
"Selbst alte und kranke Tiere geben uns Menschen viel an Liebe zurück," Christel pointed out to the Schweriner Volkszeitung in the article cited supra. If she and Manfred truly believed that and the rest of their highfalutin rhetoric, they would immediately renounce killing and simply allow nature to take its course.
In conclusion, PETA is nothing short of a malignant cancer that slowly is undermining the legitimate animal rights movement. With its hands fouled by the blood of the tens of thousand of cats that it has killed and with nothing but lies and a perverted, abhorrent immorality gushing forth from the lips of its members, it has retarded the animal rights movement by at least one-hundred years.
At best, the organization is a caricature of a legitimate animal rights group and as such is worthy of only scorn and ridicule. At worst, it is a deadly killing machine that needs to be confronted, exposed, and thwarted.
Photos: PETA (murdered cat), Cal Bryant of the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald (Hinkle and Cook celebrating), Mirror (Dante), and Dirk Eisermann für Funk UHR via Bild (Christel and Manfred Klein).
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