A Gaggle of Indolent Broom Jockeys with Too Much Free Time on Their Hands Go into League with a Morally Retarded Administrator in Order to Doom the Resident Felines at Florida International University in Miami

The Cat Killing Fields of the Modesto A. Maidique Campus at FIU

"Florida International University, in an attempt to control the stray cat population, called a company which then murdered them. FIU murdered cats. For no reason."
-- Meow@theFIUcats on Twitter, May 14, 2020

A long-standing hatred of cats and rank opportunism have combined to spell the end of the cats that used to reside on the Modesto A. Maidique Campus (MCC) of Florida International University (FIU) in the University Park section of Miami. Taking full advantage of the coronavirus pandemic which closed the school in mid-March, the administrators struck like a Central American death squad less than a month later when they called in a professional exterminator to trap and remove the cats.

They then were quickly taken to an unidentified veterinary clinic where they were systematically and efficiently annihilated shortly after their arrival. Their corpses were then likely either burned or nonchalantly tossed out in the day's trash. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, gone and forgotten, and with not so much as a trace of evidence left behind.

With the students and faculty members who had cared for them and their antecedents for more than twenty years AWOL, the defenseless cats never had so much as a prayer in Hades. For example, with no one around to feed and water them for at least a month, they likely by that time were starved half to death and that petit fait alone made their trapping a piece of cake.

Once securely caged, they were powerless to elude the deadly jabs of sodium pentobarbital that were wielded so expertly by the bloodthirsty veterinarians. Needless to say, their pleas for mercy fell upon the deaf ears of their cold-blooded executioners.

Pleased as punch with their own cleverness, the administrators congratulated and back-slapped each other in celebration of having successfully pulled off an en masse extermination for which they never will be punished. Few individuals associated with FIU therefore ever would have known or much less cared what had become of the cats if one of their killers had not paused long enough in order to have scanned a black female for an implanted microchip.

The chip revealed that the cat was named Fiu (pronounced "phew" and derived from FIU) and that she had been microchipped and sterilized at the request of an unidentified student by Good Karma Pet Rescue of Fort Lauderdale, forty-eight kilometers north of Miami, which operates a network of foster homes. Alerted by one of the veterinarians as to her desperate plight, Lizette Nunez of Good Karma quickly rode to Fiu's rescue on her white stallion.

"I was so furious," she later exclaimed to the Miami New Times on May 27th. (See "Records Show Florida International University Hired Trapper to Exterminate Campus Cats.") "I almost cost this cat her life by leaving her at FIU."

Unfortunately, it has not proven possible to ascertain what eventually became of Fiu. The best therefore that can be hoped is that Nunez belatedly learned a valuable lesson from her colossal mistake and did not return her to FIU.

Rather, what she so richly deserved was to have been placed in a home with a loving family far, far away from FIU. After all, in her brief lifetime she has endured enough trauma, distress, fear, and close calls with death to last her a lifetime.

Irrespective of what she ultimately did with Fiu, Nunez did not rest on her laurels but instead took the additional step of contacting Miami-Dade County Commissioner Danielle Levine Cava who in turn instructed her assistant, Maria Levrant, to look into the matter. It took some doing but in the end Kenneth A. Jessell, who not only serves as FIU's chief financial officer but also teaches finance at its College of Business Administration, was exposed as the chief architect behind the feline slaughter.

Confronted by Levrant, he at first apparently came clean. "He said they (had) hired a trapper to do this and that they would stop it immediately," she informed the Miami New Times. "It had already been happening for a few days and they wanted it done immediately."

FIU's candor proved to have been short-lived, however. "After we became aware of the incident that took place in April involving campus cats, FIU discontinued the relationship with the company that was originally hired to remove the cats from certain areas of campus, where they were entering facilities and becoming a hazard," the school stated in a May 16th press release. "It was never our intention to have the cats euthanized."

Unlike just about all members of the Fourth Estate who consider it their sworn duty to protect and cover up for those institutions, entities, and individuals with beaucoup bucks, the Miami New Times to its credit did not take the school at its word but instead filed a public records request whereby it uncovered work order number 1235593 entitled "Nuisance Animals " which had been prepared by Hillary Buell Stauffer who, inter alia, serves as manager of the call center at Facilities Operations and Maintenance (FOM). The order accordingly names FOM as the customer and lists Arcesio Rubio as the supervisor of the department.

Specifically, the order states that on April 16th four opossums and three raccoons were trapped and killed. On April 17th, the carnage included five opossums, one fox, and two cats.

On April 18th, five additional opossums, a raccoon, and two more cats were rubbed out. A day later on April 19th, eight ducks and three additional cats were killed.

Fiu Escaped Being Annihilated but Where Is She Now?

Assuming that the work order is full and complete and nothing has been omitted, the trapper, Rob Hammer of Humane Animal Removal Services of Miami, inexplicably cooled his trigger finger until May 13th when he returned to MCC and killed an additional six ducks "at Flagler." While it is not known with any degree of certainty what that oblique reference refers to, the school's College of Engineering and Computing is located at 10555 West Flagler Street in Miami and that possibly could be one explanation. As far as it has been revealed, the cats residing at FIU's other location, the Biscayne Bay Campus (BBC) in North Miami, were not included in this mass extermination scheme.

Much more importantly, since dozens of cats were said to be residing at MCC it is difficult to believe that Hammer only trapped and removed seven of them. Although a handful of students reportedly took a few of them home with them when they left school in March, that would hardly account for the whereabouts of the vast majority of them.

Even absent the Miami New Times' unearthing of the work order it strains credulity that Hammer would have donated his services gratis or that he ever would have been granted entrée to MCC without FIU's wholehearted and enthusiastic approval. As if all of that were not damning enough in its own right, FOM not only has always hated the cats with a passion but the janitors have been lobbying hard for their scalps for at least the past twenty years.

"Facilities has always wanted cats off campus," local cat advocate Cindy Hewitt confirmed to the Miami New Times.

Yet, the department failed to respond to her offer back in 2000 not only to sterilize the cats but to place them in good homes off-campus. Clearly, nothing short of the cats' dead bodies ever would have satisfied the broom jockeys and their overwhelming craving for feline blood.

Whereas Jessell and FOM are clearly cat-haters, killers, and cowardly liars, Hammer is a sophist and a menteur à triple étage as well as being a cat killer. "(My client) says they don't want the cats back, that mandates that I get them euthanized," he dishonestly argued to the Miami New Times. "I can't take them elsewhere."

First of all in addition to his total disregard for all truth, morality, and logic, Hammer is nothing more than a cat and wildlife bounty hunter. Secondly, he could have spared the lives of the cats and other animals that he had trapped at FIU by releasing them at nearby locations.

"I will not kill a cat myself," he continued in that same vein to the Miami New Times. "I won't do it."

Au contraire, he merely traps them and delivers them upon silver platters to the veterinarians so that they then can in turn do his dirty work for him. In that respect, his lack of candor and all morality is on a par with that exhibited by the operators of shelters who publicly profess to be running no-kill operations while simultaneously farming out their killing to others to do for them. (See Cat Defender post of July 29, 2010 entitled "The Benicia Vallejo Humane Society Is Outsourcing the Mass Killing of Kittens and Cats All the While Masquerading as a No-Kill Shelter.")

After having gone through that self-serving song and dance routine, Hammer then turned around and made an astonishing admission. "I have a pellet gun," he confessed to the Miami New Times. "I'll shoot injured raccoons and iguanas but never a cat or dog."

First of all, air guns inflict an incredible amount of damage upon the animals that they are used against. Their manufacture and sale therefore should have been outlawed a very long time ago.

Secondly, the pain and suffering that the metal pellets that are fired from them inflict upon defenseless and totally undeserving animals is both intense and prolonged. Thirdly, more than one pellet is quite often required in order to kill even a small animal.

Clearly, no one other than a diabolical monster would ever use one of these weapons against any animal. (See Cat Defender posts of May 7, 2007, September 27, 2010, March 9, 2012, March 12, 2012, and April 2, 2015 entitled, respectively, "British Punks Are Having a Field Day Maiming Cats with Air Guns but the Peelers Continue to Look the Other Way," "Caged, Shot Thirty Times with an Air Gun, and Then Tossed into a Bay to Drown, Lovey Is Rescued in the Middle of the Night by a Good Samaritan," "An Amateur Ornithologist Guns Down Hartley with an Air Rifle, Feigns Remorse, and Then Cheats Justice by Begging and Lying," "The Sick Wife Defense Works Like a Charm for Cunning Patrick Doyle after He Traps a Cat and Then Shoots It with an Air Rifle while Still in Its Cage," and "A Cornishman Shells Out £10,000 on Private Peepers in Order to Track Down Farah's Killer but Once Again Gets Stiffed by Both the Police and the RSPCA.")

The Proud Architect of the Slaughter: Kenneth A. Jessell

Finally, Hammer claims that the only cats that he has had killed are those that are homeless. That, too, is more of his self-serving malarkey in that neither he nor the veterinarians who do his dirty work for him can ever be certain that they are not killing some owner's beloved companion.

That is because many owners do not collar, tattoo, or microchip their cats. Much more importantly, a homeless cat has just as much of a right to live as does one that is domesticated.

As if all of that were not enough to make a hippopotamus gag, Hammer's web site positively reeks of more of the same sottise. "We offer euthanasia of colony cats. We only provide this service if you are the owner of the cats," it declares. "For instance, you have witnessed them being born and grow (sic) up on your property, and/or you feed them on a regular basis for not less than three months. Or if you have power of attorney of an estate on which the cats reside who's (sic) owner surrenders all rights to you."

Stripped of all its highfalutin rhetoric, such a declaration amounts to little more than a carte blanche assertion of a right to kill cats with impunity. Moreover, it does not appear that Hammer even bothered to so much as to follow his own guidelines when he trapped and had the FIU cats killed.

For example, no one even remotely connected to FIU has ever acknowledged owning the cats. Secondly, no one from the school has publicly acknowledged witnessing their births. Thirdly, it is highly doubtful that such stingy shekel counters as Jessell and Rubio ever tossed them so much as a crumb from their opulent tables.

"When there is no longer regular feeding and proper maintenance for a healthy environment for these cats, this (murdering them) may be the most humane alternative," Hammer concludes. "Although we highly encourage the alternative option of adoption whenever possible."

C'est-à-dire, whenever there is a fast and easy buck to be made by killing cats Hammer is all in favor of it and that is demonstrated by the fact that not so much as an iota of either compassion or an abiding respect for their inalienable right to live is to be found in any of his unctuous gruntings. What he is really saying is that as far as he is concerned adoption is a last resort.

In spite of all of that, his propaganda offensive has been so successful that he has even bamboozled old Hewitt into swallowing it hook, line, and sinker. "I've always found (Humane Animal Removal) ethical," she imbecilely screeched to the Miami New Times. "They're transparent about outcomes and give people the option to sterilize cats and then return them."

On the contrary, Hammer never gave the students and faculty members who had cared for the campus cats for so many years any say whatsoever in what eventually happened to them. Rather, he simply sold them down the river to Jessell and FOM.

It is far from clear when exactly Nunez of Good Karma learned of Jessell and FOM's killing spree but by at least mid-May their crimes had at long last been fully exposed on Twitter. "Florida International University, in an attempt to control the stray cat population, called a company which then murdered them," an unidentified individual wrote May 15th on Meow@theFIUCats on Twitter. "FIU murdered cats. For no reason."

The only thing that individual got incorrect is that FIU was not attempting to "control" the homeless cat population on campus but rather to eliminate it entirely. If it ever had wanted to simply control its growth it would have taken up Hewitt on her generous offer back in 2000.

"I think it's disgusting, just because we don't know a lot of the answers," Oliver Bronstein nonsensically chimed in on Twitter.  On the contrary, killing the cats was immoral and should be illegal as well; disgust has little or nothing to do with the matter.

Whereas it is conceivable that the students and faculty members who were supposed to have been caring for them did not always do a perfect job of cleaning up after them, that still does not constitute a valid excuse for killing them. Besides, wildlife is known to pollute far more streams and landscapes than cats and that more than likely was what was occurring at FIU as well. (See The Washington Post, September 29, 2006, "Wildlife Is Major Water Polluter, Studies Say.")

 Hillary Buell Stauffer Prepared the Work Order to Kill the Cats

The most likely reason that FIU had the cats and wildlife extirpated is that Rubio and his minions were too lazy to clean up after them. After all, being a janitor on a college campus is a good-paying job with numerous fringe benefits and such an arrangement tends to make even those individuals on the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder indolent and, at times, mean-spirited.

Also since their overlords, the professors and administrators, are so notoriously bone-lazy themselves it is highly unlikely that they are going to expect very much in the way of exertion out of their underlings. Being a janitor at FIU accordingly likely consists of little more than lounging around all day and night while doing nothing more strenuous than eating, sipping coffee, sunbathing, and mindlessly gossiping and bitching about one thing or another.

It additionally is interesting to note that of the twenty-seven janitors who work under Rubio that only two of them, Paulette Wilson an Daniel Bullard, have non-Hispanic surnames. That in itself constitutes a prima facie case of ethnic discrimination and therefore is a subject worthy of being investigated by the New Miami Times and other outside, disinterested parties.

Somewhere along about the same time as the story of the carnage appeared on Twitter, Regina Ostrowski started a petition on change.org entitled "Stop Florida International University from Killing Community Cats and Wildlife." As of July 28th, however, it had garnered only two-thousand-forty-one signatures in spite of FIU having in excess of fifty-eight-thousand students. It thus seems clear that although they may care dearly about black and Hispanic lives, only a handful of them care so much as a tinker's damn about the sanctity of animal life.

Old Thingamajig Jessell may very well be a cowardly and sniveling moral retard but he certainly is savvy enough in order to correctly divine any changes in the political trade winds and accordingly to chart a different course whenever expediency so dictates. "We are committed to doing no more trapping and will develop a comprehensive plan together with Miami-Dade County and other interested parties to take care of the animal situation on campus, including cats that are abandoned by their owners," he announced out of the blue May 27th on Twitter. "We are sorry for what has taken place in the past and are committed to doing better in the future."

Jessell's mea culpa is so woefully inadequate that it would be hilarious if his and FOM's despicable crimes were not so unpardonable. Specifically, neither he nor FOM are capable of giving back to the seven dead cats their lives which they so cruelly and unjustly ordered to be snuffed out.

The same holds true for the fourteen opossums, four raccoons, fourteen ducks, and one fox that they are known to have killed. The actual number of their victims could very well be substantially higher.

On June 4th, Jessell and FIU proudly announced that they had entered into a Faustian bargain with Miami-Dade County Animal Services (MDCAS) to trap, sterilize, and vaccinate not only those cats remaining at MCC but those either living at or visiting BBC as well. In order to expedite matters, MCDAS was expected to have dispatched one of its mobile sterilization clinics to the two campuses.

"We have heard from many people in our community and beyond who have offered to help us address the animal situation on our campuses, which includes cats that have been abandoned by their owners," Jessell said in a press release of that same date. (See "Florida International University, Miami-Dade Animal Services Team Up to Neuter and Vaccinate Feral Cats on Campus.") "We are grateful to Miami-Dade County Animal Services for stepping up and working with us to carry out a comprehensive and humane plan that will help address the health and safety issues the cats present, while also raising awareness to prevent the future abandonment of cats."

Like just about every syllable that flies off of Jessell's forked tongue, nothing that he said in that press release can be taken at face-value. First of all, he stubbornly continues to refuse to acknowledge the inalienable right of all cats not only to live but also to be free of verbal and physical abuse.

Secondly, he continues to broadly malign them as creating health and safety concerns without offering up either specifics or so much as a shred of evidence to support his allegations. Thirdly, in doing so he continues to refuse to acknowledge the ascetic benefits that they bring to his campuses, the valuable companionship that they offer students and faculty members, and their well-known ability to relieve stress.

Fourthly, he omits any reference whatsoever as to what is going to become of the opossums, raccoons, foxes, ducks, and other wildlife that visit FIU's twin campuses. Presumably, FIU will continue to kill them on sight.

As far as the school's present and future feline residents are concerned, little if anything has really changed in that Jessell has not backed off one iota from his hateful killing agenda. On the contrary, he and FIU have merely replaced Hammer with MDCAS as their designated triggerman.

An Excerpt from the Work Order Detailing Some of the Killings

Most alarming of all, those cats that are deemed to need "additional medical attention" will be shanghaied off campus to MDCAS' Pet Adoption and Protection Center in Doral, twenty-seven kilometers northwest of Miami, where in all likelihood they will be summarily executed. Included in that contingent of the damned will be those cats that MDCAS deems to be either unsocialized, violent, or too costly and troublesome to medicate. Scores of others will be killed simply because the agency either does not like their looks or it feels that it will not be able to sell them back to the public for a nice profit.

Those cats deemed to be healthy will be, supposedly, released from MDCAS' mobile sterilization van and returned to campus. Anti-cat dumping signs additionally will be erected around the school.

The most egregious and therefore unjust aspect of this entire scheme is the total exclusion of any halfway legitimate feline protection group, such as Alley Cat Allies of Bethesda, Maryland, to look after and to stand up for the cats' legitimate right to live. Absolutely nothing therefore has really changed at FIU in that just as those cats that were trapped and killed by Hammer in April had been left totally to the mercy of the veterinarians, those that are now being trapped have been left to MDCAS' sole discretion as to whether they are going to live or to die.

Once again FIU has sold them down the river and that is clear for all to see in MDCAS' enthusiastic willingness to go into cahoots with Jessell and thus to put the final nails in their coffins. "TNVR (Trap, Neuter, Vaccinate, Return) is an integral component of Miami-Dade (County) Animal Services' no-kill mission and provides effective strategies for humanely managing community cat populations," the organization's Alex Nunez stated in FIU's June 4th press release. "We welcome the opportunity to partner with FIU to TNVR campus cats."

According to one set of statistics, MDCAS slaughtered an astounding ninety-five-hundred cats at its shelter in 2011. Following the implementation of TNVR in 2013, that number plummeted to twelve-hundred in 2015.

Although that certainly constitutes a big improvement, it does not mean that there are not still serious problems with Nunez's rhetoric and policies. First of all, any shelter that still kills that many cats annually should not be allowed to get away with calling itself a no-kill facility. Secondly, it is far from clear if MDCAS finances and staffs the TNVR programs that it credits with reducing the carnage at its shelter or if they are instead paid for and maintained by volunteers.

Thirdly, it is utterly disgraceful that FIU with its US$216.3 million endowment and an annual operating budget of US$1.5 billion is allowed to cadge handouts from the taxpayers. Plus, all that moola is in addition to the US$23,496 (US$12,503 after scholarships and grants are deducted) that it rakes in from each of its fifty-eight-thousand-seven-hundred-eighty-seven students in tuition each year.

Since the school quite obviously has money to burn, it accordingly should not be allowed to get away with defaming, abusing, and killing cats and wildlife on the public's dime. Equally outrageously, there is not anything in the public record to even remotely suggest that it ever has spent so much as a lousy sou from its own bulging coffers in order to feed, water, shelter, medicate, sterilize, and to find loving homes for any of the dozens, if not indeed hundreds, of cats that have resided at FIU over the years. It is the same story all over the world in that those individuals and institutions with the deepest pockets invariably seem to always have the shortest arms.

So, in addition to being cowardly, opportunistic, underhanded cat defamers, haters, and killers, FIU also is cheap, stingy, and a welfare bum to boot. It therefore is not the least bit surprising that those individuals responsible for these heinous crimes never will be held accountable in a court of law and that is, arguably, the most outrageous and perverse form of privilege imaginable.

Nothing positive therefore can be said about the abhorrent conduct of Jessell and the broom jockeys. The same holds true for Hammer and MDCAS who are merely opposite sides of he same blood-stained coin.

The worst rotters in the bunch, however, are the unidentified veterinarians who actually performed FIU's and Hammer's liquidations for them. Even though it never has been publicly disclosed what percentage of an average veterinarian's income is derived from killing cats, such dirty and immoral work surely must constitute a substantial part of it.

That petit fait alone tells a thinking person all that either he or she ever needs to know about the practice of veterinary medicine. (See Cat Defender posts of December 22, 2011, March 19, 2014, and April 8, 2018 entitled, respectively, "A Rogue TNR Practitioner and Three Unscrupulous Veterinarians Kill at Least Sixty-Two Cats with the Complicity of the Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals," "The Cheap and Greedy Moral Degenerates at PennVet Extend Their Warmest Christmas Greetings to an Impecunious, but Preeminently Treatable, Cat Via a Jab of Sodium Pentobarbital," and "A Rare Behind the Scenes Glimpse at the Ruthless Murders of Two Cats by an Indiana Veterinarian Exposes All Those Who Claim That Lethal Injections Are Humane to Be Barefaced Liars.")

Even those cats and kittens that the practitioners do not actually whack with their own bloody, moneygrubbing hands, they condemn to early graves by categorically refusing to treat them. (See Cat Defender post of July 16, 2010 entitled "Tossed Out the Window of a Car Like an Empty Beer Can, an Injured Chattanooga Kitten Is Left to Die after at Least Two Veterinarians Refused to Treat It.")

MDCAS Has Now Taken over the Killing of FIU's Cats from Hammer 

Finally, even Nunez of Good Karma Pet Rescue as well as those students and faculty members who had been looking after the cats prior to the campus lockdown must be added to the roll call of shame. All of them cowardly and inexcusably abandoned them in order to save their own worthless hides.

The cats accordingly were left without food, water, companionship, and so much as a solitary soul to safeguard their vulnerable lives. From that moment onward their fates were sealed.

Even though their cold-blooded murders have been largely all but forgotten by this time, it is not too late for those students of good conscience who will be returning to campus later this month to demand some measure of accountability from Jessell, Rubio, and FIU. First of all, FIU must disclose the total number of cats and wildlife that were killed by Hammer and the veterinarians.

Secondly, it is imperative that the surgery itself be publicly identified and the licenses of its paid killers to practice veterinary medicine be immediately revoked. Thirdly, MDCAS must be pressured  into disclosing the names, descriptions, and ultimate disposition of every cat that it has trapped at FIU.

Fourthly, every cat either residing at or visiting MMC, BBC, and elsewhere at FIU needs to be photographed and either collared and tagged, tattooed or microchipped. Fifthly, and most importantly of all, the cats' caretakers must assume legal ownership of them because that is the only way that they can ever even begin to hold the likes of FIU, MDCAS, and Hammer accountable under the law.

FIU's cold-blooded killing of its cats is an all-too-common occurrence on college campuses all across the United States and, sans doute, elsewhere as well. For instance, its modus operandi appears to have been taken chapter and verse from Eastern University in St. Davids, thirty kilometers northwest of Philadelphia, when it, too, sneakily had its campus cats rounded up and systematically exterminated during Christmas break of 2006.

The only real difference between the two mass slaughters is that Eastern inveigled the Delaware County SPCA of Media, twenty-one kilometers south of St. Davids, to do its dirty work for it. Every bit as morally incorrigible today as it was back then, this so-called animal protection group is still busily committing the same atrocities. (See Cat Defender post of March 19, 2010 entitled "Trapped and Killed by the Delaware County SPCA, Keecha's Life Is Valued at Only $1 by a Pennsylvania Arbitration Panel.")

Moreover, the utter baloney that administrators at Eastern concocted in order to justify their crimes would have done Jessell and FOM proud. "Keeping the cats on campus would be irresponsible and inhumane," Bettie Ann Brigham, vice president of Student Development, pontificated to the student newspaper, The Waltonian, on February 7, 2007. (See "Eastern Cats Will Meow No More.") "Our primary concern is student safety."

Considering that an unspecified number of the cats already had been intentionally drowned on Eastern's sprawling ninety-two acres of wetlands and woodlands, she instead should have been focusing all of her attention on protecting them and combating animal cruelty as opposed to joining forces with their sworn enemies and killers. In doing so, she demonstrated conclusively that respecting and preserving feline lives was the furthest thing from her warped noggin.

It was Donna MacIntosh of Plant Operations, however, who way back then set the gold standard for Rubio and his fellow broom jockeys at FIU to emulate. "I feel that Plant Operations did the best we could and gave the cats the best chance for survival by taking them to the SPCA," she blew it out both ends, supposedly with a straight face no less, to The Waltonian. "They told me they would accept the cats and they would be evaluated and put up for adoption depending on their adoptability and health."

Being the clever lass that she is, MacIntosh already not only had her rejoinder all thought out but also a few crocodile tears at the ready just in case her outrageous lies ever were revealed to the public. "It is unfortunate that the cats were euthanized," she summed up to The Waltonian. "We had hoped for a much better outcome."

Shelters and veterinarians are all the time feeding that kind of rubbish to individuals who surrender cats to them. Plus, those individuals doing the surrendering know that it is a pack of lies but they simply do not care. All that they want is to be rid of their unwanted cats and kittens.

Moreover, kittens and cats dumped at shelters are quite often killed even before their owners are out the front door. For example, at 9 a.m. on July 8, 2010 Donna Pruitt surrendered two kittens to Animal Control in Sugar Land, thirty-eight kilometers south of Houston.

One of Eastern University's Long Dead but Not Forgotten Cats

In doing so, she gave the shelter US$20 in order to purchase food for them. When she returned at 11:45 a.m., she was informed that staffers had whacked them almost as soon as she had departed the building.

"They had my phone number, as I had left it when I dropped the kittens off," she later groused to The Fort Bend Star on July 14, 2010. (See "Baby Kittens Put to Sleep in Error.") "They had our $20. Shouldn't that have bought me an explanation or at least a call before they murdered the kittens?"

When it comes to cats, shelters, Animal Control, veterinarians, and phony-baloney feline protection groups, such as the Delaware County SPCA and MDCAS, can never be trusted under any circumstances. The only way that cats can be protected and kept safe from harm is for their owners and caretakers to keep them out of these wretched institutions and away from consummate cat killers, such as cops, who work hand-in-glove with them.

Their ability to wield pistols, air guns, and lethal injections is surpassed only by their unmatched proclivity to dissemble and to lie. (See The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 11, 2011, "Shelter Shock: Cats Can Get Sick from Stress. One Proposed Remedy? Keep Them Out.")

As far as it is known and to their credit, none of FIU's students cooperated in any fashion with Jessell and FOM in the killing of the cats. Deplorably, the same most definitely cannot be said of those who attended Eastern in that it was precisely Chelsea Zimmerman of The Waltonian who sicced Brigham, MacIntosh, and their subalterns on the felines in the first place.

Tant pis, rather than exhibiting so much as an iota of remorse for her perfidy, she actually was rather proud of herself. "I will miss the cats but as my heart is breaking, I know that what I did was best for them," she shamelessly declared to The Waltonian. (See Cat Defender post of February 12, 2007 entitled "The God-Fearing Baptists at Eastern University Kill Off Their Feral Cats on the Sly while Their Students Are Away on Christmas Break.")

Not all universities get rid of their campus cats on the sly like FIU and Eastern. Others, for instance, do the same thing with much fanfare and a good deal of pride. (See Cat Defender posts of September 11, 2006 and July 31, 2008 entitled, respectively, "The Selfish and Brutal Eggheads at Central Michigan University Target a Colony of Feral Cats for Defamation and Eradication" and "Cal State Long Beach Is Using the Presence of Coyotes as a Pretext in Order to Get Rid of Its Feral Cats.")

Perhaps even more long lasting than the actual killings themselves are the anti-cat propaganda campaigns being waged across campuses by ornithologists, wildlife biologists, and environmentalists. (See Cat Defender posts of July 18, 2011 and October 9, 2015 entitled, respectively, "Evil Professors Have Transformed College Campuses into Hotbeds of Hatred Where Cats Routinely Are Vilified, Horribly Abused, and Systematically Killed" and "A Lynch Mob Comprised of Dishonest Eggheads from the University of Lincoln Issues Another Scurrilous Broadside Against Cats by Declaring That They Do Not Need Guardians in Order to Safeguard Their Fragile Lives.")

Those same groups of virulent cat-haters have additionally infiltrated institutions, such as the Smithsonian in Washington, where they have quickly shown themselves not to be the least bit hesitant about taking the law into their own hands. (See Cat Defender posts of July 12, 2011, November 18, 2011, and January 6, 2012 entitled, respectively, "The Arrest of Nico Dauphiné for Attempting to Poison a Colony of Homeless Cats Unmasks the National Zoo as a Hideout for Ailurophobes and Criminals," "Nico Dauphiné, Ph.D., Is Convicted of Attempting to Poison a Colony of Homeless Cats but Questions Remain Concerning the Smithsonian's Role," and "Nico Dauphiné Is Let Off with an Insultingly Lenient $100 Fine in a Show Trial That Was Fixed from the Very Beginning.")

In Australia and New Zealand defaming and killing cats has grown into such a lucrative enterprise that seemingly every professor, politician, bureaucrat, media outlet, and exterminator in both countries has jumped on the bandwagon. (See Cat Defender post of November 18, 2016 entitled "A Clever Devil at the University of Adelaide Boasts That He Has Discovered the Achilles' Heel of Cats with His Invention of Robotic Grooming Traps as the Thoroughly Evil Australians' All-Out War Against the Species Enters Its Final Stages.")

As if all that were not bad enough, professors torture millions of cats and other animals to death each year in their research laboratories and at their veterinary schools. Included in that toll are countless felines that are abused and killed during the professors' cloning and genetic manipulation experiments. (See Cat Defender post of March 31, 2020 entitled "Stoic Little CC May Have Graced This Vale of Tears for Only Eighteen Brief Years but the Moral Conundrum That Surrounds the Cloning of Cats Lives on after Her.")

Even when the schoolmen's crimes against cats and other animals are omitted from the equation the universities still come off as smelling more like sulphur than a rose. For instance, the sky-high tuition that they nowadays charge is saddling students with a mountain of debt as well as bankrupting the federal treasury.

Factor in their notoriously corrupt athletic programs, the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal and, now, their crass attempt to charge every bit as much for their online classes as they do for traditional in-class instruction and the picture of them that emerges is one of a gang of sleazy capitalists who are willing to do almost anything for a lousy buck. Business nevertheless remains brisk on all college campuses so apparently birds of a feather do flock together.

Looking ahead, it will not be for any of those unsavory practices or even because of its huge enrollment and impressive bottom line that FIU is destined to be renowned. Rather, its claim to infamy is going to be its appalling lack of respect for all animal life coupled with its marked disdain for the truth, integrity, and all morality.

Photos: Florida International University (MCC, Jessell, and MDCAS' mobile sterilization unit), Lizette Nunez of Good Karma Pet Rescue (Fiu), Linkedin (Stauffer), change.org (work order), and Chelsea Zimmerman (one of Eastern University's long-dead cats).