Too Stingy and Ailurophobic to Have Treated Him, Black Dog Animal Rescue Instead Murders Eddie in Cold Blood and Then Hightails It to Alice Gibbs of Newsweek in Order to Have Her Promote Its and PETA's Cat-Killing Cult

Eddie Was a Vivacious and Healthy-Looking Cat

"I finally decided he came to us because he knew we would help him and Eddie needed us to help him not live anymore. He knew that we would do what was best for him."

-- Emilee Intlekofer of Black Dog Animal Rescue

During the early days of May a handsome blue-eyed male with a mixture of long white and tan fur mysteriously turned up out of the blue at Black Dog Animal Rescue at 2407 East Ninth Street in Cheyenne. At least that is the story that has been told by mama dog, Emilee Intlekofer, who subsequently named him Eddie.

"I opened the door, expecting him to take off. But he didn't," she later belatedly disclosed July 12th in her blog. (See "Old Man Eddie Walked Up to Our Door One Day and Surrendered Himself.") "I picked him up and brought him inside."

That was odd to begin with for several reasons. First of all, Black Dog is anything but a traditional shelter in that it, generally speaking, seldom takes in cats and dogs from either the street or owners who no longer want them. In fact, besides a handful of felines that live onsite in what it has dubbed as Kitty City, all of its animals come from other shelters and live with foster families in Laramie and Casper as well as Cheyenne.

"Our foster space is limited and we feel we can make the biggest difference for each individual pet in our program by limiting our intake to those who have already been in a traditional shelter and who were not adopted from there," the organization declares on its web site.

Secondly, it is peculiar to say the least that Black Dog selected Eddie from out of all the other homeless cats in Cheyenne as the object of all of its lies, intrigues, and machinations. "We tend to recognize the cats around here, but we'd never seen this particular one before," Intlekofer continued in her blog. "He was matted and emaciated, like someone had told him this is where he needed to come to be saved."

Black Dog was unable to locate an implanted microchip but was astute enough to have recognized that he had been sterilized. "We all fawned over him, gave him as much food as he wanted (which was a lot!) and marveled at the fact that he showed up seemingly out of nowhere begging to be rescued," Intlekofer added.

Considering that Black Dog has been in business since 2007, Intlekofer and her cronies are not quite as daft as they would have the outside world to believe. For instance, according to photographs posted online, Black Dog appears to be located in a sparsely populated, mixed-residential and commercial area which would be an ideal place for dumping an unwanted cat.

Secondly, when a blood test a few days later prompted Black Dog to peg his age at eighteen, it surely must have known that he was anything but a stray. Most notably, since many experts believe that the average life-expectancy of a homeless cat is only three years, it would have been almost impossible for Eddie to have survived for so long on his own.

Moreover, when elderly cats turn up at shelters and veterinarians' offices their implanted microchips and follow-up investigations quite often reveal that they have had multiple owners over the course of their lengthy lives. Although there are multiple reasons as to why cats like Eddie wind up in such sad predicaments, the most common is that they have outlived their guardians.

After that, theft and getting lost are the next most common reasons that cats become homeless followed by deliberate abandonments. (See Cat Defender posts of September 22, 2020, January 29, 2021, January 9, 2022, May 23, 2022, and January 9, 2023 entitled, respectively, "Snitch Is Found Alive Fourteen Years after His Disappearance but His Old Owner Refuses to Take Him Back in Spite of the Shameful Neglect Shown Him by His New Caretaker," "Mocha Is Saved from an Almost Certain Death at a Shelter by the Enduring Love and Compassion of Her Former Owner Who Had Not So Much as Laid Eyes on Her in Thirteen Years," "Marley Is Reunited with Her Family after Having Gone Missing Nine Years Ago but Her Deliverance Does Not Establish Either the Efficacy or Desirability of Microchipping Cats," "Tilly Is Returned to Her Owner after a Seventeen and One-Half Year Separation but Their Reunion Is Destined to Be, Sadly, a Brief and Bittersweet One," and "Flossie Endures a Rollercoaster Ride of Adversity in Order to Settle into Her Fourth Home and to Begin a New Life at the Age of Twenty-Seven.")  

Consequently, it would not have been uncommon for Eddie to have had several owners who not only still remembered him but had continued to grieve for his return over the years. For Black Dog therefore to have so readily derided him as a worthless stray was not only patently untrue but unjust as well.

It additionally was dishonest for the organization to have used his friendliness against him. For example, on March 22, 2008 an unidentified police officer in Cecil, Pennsylvania, accepted at face value the uncorroborated lies of a city resident that Roger Oldaker's beautiful ten-year-old Persian, Elmo, was rabid and then used that as an excuse for first trapping and then shooting him at point-blank range. 

Considering that Persians are expensive, high-maintenance cats that are easy to rehome, the officer surely must have known better from the outset but he was determined to use his gun on a defenseless cat. More importantly, he should not have used Elmo's friendliness as another convenient excuse in order to have murdered him any more than Black Dog nakedly exploited Eddie's congeniality against him. 

"He was not injured. He just didn't know where to run," Oldaker stated afterwards. "Another cat ran away, and the policeman said if my cat would have run, he would have let him go." (See Cat Defender post of March 31, 2008 entitled "A Cecil, Pennsylvania, Police Officer Summarily Executes a Family's Beloved Ten-Year-Old Persian, Elmo," and the Pittsburgh Post- Gazette, May 15, 2013, "Roger Oldaker.")

Like Elmo's executioner in Cecil, Black Dog had its own agenda right from the outset as to how it was going to deal with Eddie. "He was very sweet and readily accepted any attention we wanted to give," Intlekofer caroled to Alice Gibbs of Newsweek on July 16th. (See "Old and Ill Stray Cat Hands Himself to Rescue, Is Euthanized -- 'Best for Him'.")

In the immortal words of the walrus as he greased the skids for the oysters in Lewis Carroll's famous 1871 poem:

"'It was kind of you to come!

And you are very nice!'"

Besides, whether it is criminals who defame, abuse, and kill cats outside the law or the likes of Black Dog and the police in Cecil who do so safely, conveniently, and utterly ruthlessly while hiding behind its protections, it quite often seems to be those cats that are the friendliest and most socialized that are treated the worst. (See Cat Defender post of July 14, 2016 entitled "Missy, Who Was Too Kindly Disposed Toward Humans for Her Own Good, Is Memorialized in Wood at the Bus Stop That She Called Her Home Away from Home for Almost a Decade.") 

In reality, however, all cats venture through this perilous world alone, naked, and at the mercy of humans. In Eddie's case, once Intlekofer had broken her own rules regarding impounding cats and defamed him as a stray, an "old man," and as a "grumpy old man" his fate was all but sealed.

He accordingly could not possibly have wound up in worst hands. All that Black Dog needed in order to extinguish his fragile life was any kind of an excuse and it soon got one from a blood test. If the organization is to be believed, the test revealed Eddie to be eighteen years old in addition to being emaciated and with matted fur.

First of all, any cat that misses a few meals can become emaciated. Secondly, unless a cat is groomed every day its fur can easily become tangled and that is especially the case with those which have long manes. The remedy for both of those conditions is, quite obviously, plenty of good-quality food and daily groomings and most certainly not jabs of sodium pentobarbital.

Thirdly, although Eddie most assuredly does not look nearly as old as Black Dog claims, a cat's age is likewise not a valid excuse for killing it. Au contraire, advanced years are an indication of not only long genes but of a cat having been the recipient of conscientious care over the course of his lifetime by one or more doting guardians.

Of far greater concern, Black Dog declared that he was afflicted with the Feline Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (FAIDS), which is sometimes referred to as either the end stage of the Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) or as Feline AIDS. Although FIV is, admittedly, a rather convoluted matter, there is not any disputing that the disease has been plagued from its discovery by outrageous lies circulated by shelters and veterinarians which in turn have led to the wholesale extermination of millions of cats that were not only fully capable of living long, normal, and healthy lives but also of never endangering either the health of other cats or their caretakers.

Most Encouragingly of All, Eddie Had a Voracious Appetite

For starters, there are not any specific symptoms of the disease. Although it can weaken a cat's immune system and lead to, inter alia, a lack of appetite and weight loss (anorexia), a poor coat condition, inflammation of the mouth and gums (stomatitis), skin, urinary, intestinal and respiratory tract infections, persistent diarrhea, neurological woes such as seizures, behavioral changes, and depression, and eye trouble, those symptoms can and often do result from issues other than FIV.

Testing has been problematical from the start. Most shelters administer a point-of-care test called an enzyme-linked-immunosorbent assay (ELISA) which can be run on either a cat's blood or saliva. In either case, such tests are anything but conclusive.

"If the initial ELISA test is positive, a more in-depth test is required to confirm the diagnosis," Alley Cat Allies (ACA) of Bethesda, Maryland, declares in an undated article entitled "Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV)" which can be found on its web site. "The veterinarian can send a sample to a laboratory, which will conduct a polymerase chain reaction (PRC) test or an immunofluorescence assay (IFA)."

Even then both the PRC and IFA tests must be sent to reliable laboratories for expert analysis. In Eddie's case, Black Dog has not disclosed what tests it administered to him.

Another problem that has arisen in the battle against FIV concerns the utterly bogus Fel-O-Vax FIV vaccine that was administered to cats in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom from 2002-2017. First of all, it afforded only limited protection for cats residing in North American and none whatsoever for those in the United Kingdom.

Secondly, it required annual boosters and as an adjuvanted vaccine it contained additives that stimulated the immune systems of cats which in turn led to the production of antibodies that were indistinguishable from those that materialize as the result of a natural infection. Thirdly, such inoculations are known to cause vaccine associated sarcomas (VAS).

Most importantly of all, since diagnostic tests were unable to distinguish between the antibodies produced by the vaccine and those that were produced by the body in order to fight off the disease that led to wholesale false positives. That in turn provided shelters and veterinarians with yet still another rather convenient excuse in order to indulge themselves in shedding additional innocent feline blood. (See Nancy Stillwell of PetMD, June 21, 2019, "What Is FIV and Why Is the FIV Vaccine No Longer Available?")

The dilemma is even more complicated than that. "Though this vaccine was discontinued in the United States and Canada in 2015, the American Association of Feline Practitioners says the antibodies it produced can persist for more than seven years in some cats. That means for several years to come, accurate testing for FIV will be complicated," ACA added in the article cited supra. "Previously vaccinated cats will remain among the cat population and could also travel from locations where the Fel-O-Vax is still in use to the United States and Canada."

Therefore, if Black Dog was even remotely correct about Eddie's age, he very well could have been either one of those cats or somehow came into close contact with one of them at some point quite recently. ACA feels so strongly about this matter that it even recommends that cats belonging to TNR colonies not be tested for FIV.

"In addition to low rates of FIV, low likelihood of transmission between neutered adult cats, and poor viability of the virus, the cost of testing makes regular community cat FIV tests irresponsible. Plus, these costly tests can provide inconclusive results," it added in the article cited supra. "Not only can testing needlessly endanger community cats' lives if their results are positive, it simply isn't worth the money spent."

It is superfluous to point out but that which holds true for community cats is equally applicable to cats like Eddie and, for that matter, all cats of whatever socio-economic class they may happen to belong. ACA's conclusions are therefore diametrically opposed to those of Black Dog. 

"A cat who tests positive for FIV at a veterinary clinic or shelter should not be euthanized unless she is already ill or suffering beyond what can be treated," the charity summed up. "FIV testing should be done with a plan to help the cat if she tests positive, not to end her life."

Above all, ACA strongly recommends that "all shelters should implement programs that help find homes for adoptable cats who test positive for FIV." Additionally, individuals who adopt FIV-positive cats as well as those who care for those belonging to managed colonies should endeavor to feed them a healthy diet, minimize the stress in their lives, and be on the lookout for the onset of secondary diseases that are difficult for their compromised immune systems to handle.

ACA's views on FIV appear to have won over a lion's share of the opinions expressed online pertaining to the disease. "A cat does not need to be euthanized simply because he is positive for FIV," Kate Eldredge Basedon wrote November 17, 2020 in the Daily Paws. (See "Everything You Need to Know about (the) Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) in Cats.") "As with any cat, euthanasia should be considered if illness is causing him to suffer."

"FIV is not a death sentence. And it doesn't necessarily translate into a significant health issue for cats," Nicole Azene of the Onalaska Animal Hospital, eight kilometers north of La Crosse, testified to the La Crosse Tribune on August 1st. (See "Know Your Pets: The Unscary Truth about FIV-Positive Cats.") "With good care, regular veterinary check-ups, and a stress-free environment, FIV-positive cats can lead a normal life-span and have an excellent quality of life."

From there she went on to arrive at the only morally acceptable and just solution as to how that society should treat cats that suffer, or are even suspected of suffering, from FIV. "Adopting an FIV-positive cat is a humane act of love and compassion," she added to the La Crosse Tribune. "These cats deserve to be seen for who they are: friendly, affectionate, and playful pets who simply need a chance to thrive in a loving home."

Feline AIDS, or end stage FIV, is a concern but it is far from clear as to why it should be treated any differently from either the Initial Infection or Asymptomatic phases of the disease which precede it. That is especially the case given the difficulty in distinguishing between them.

"The most common cause of death in cats with FIV is old age," the Seattle Area Feline Rescue in Shoreline, nineteen kilometers north of Seattle, declares in an undated article entitled "Facts about FIV-Positive Cats." "FIV-positive housecats rarely show any symptoms of the disease and usually live long, happy lives. When complication(s) do arise it's generally in cats who have been fending for themselves outdoors over a long period of time and are not in good health overall."

In Eddie's case, Black Dog rather conveniently fails to disclose what, if any, symptoms of Feline AIDS he was exhibiting that made it mandatory that he had to be immediately killed off. Au contraire, it readily has admitted that he had a voracious appetite and that quite often is the best indicator of the health of a cat; it is when a cat stops eating that it is time to get really concerned about his health.

Secondly, after he had been groomed his long fur looked to be glossy and healthy. Thirdly, his blue eyes were lively and alert and in the photographs taken of him he appears to have been vocal and enthusiastic.

Not about to be undone by discovering that she had a healthy cat on her hands, Intlekofer racked her warped gourd until she finally was able to come up with another excuse in order to have Eddie killed. "His platelets were as low as they could get and without a blood transfusion he wouldn't survive," she eventually got around to claiming in her blog.

Whereas thrombocytopenia, the medical term for low platelets, is sometimes accompanied by FIV, the primary clinical symptom of the disease is abnormal bleeding. Another symptom is the appearance of small red dots called petechiae on a cat's eyes, gums, and skin.

     Emilee Intlekofer Is Cheap, Delusional, and Lethal to Cats 

Yet, Black Dog fails to make any mention whatsoever of Eddie either bleeding or suffering from petechiae. Likewise, he readily responded to the food and the opportunity to rest that the organization afforded him and thus appeared to have been energetic and far from suffering from either lethargy or any weaknesses which are two additional clinical signs of thrombocytopenia.

Normally, the first order of business for any halfway competent veterinarian, as opposed to the myriad of charlatans who are only in the game in order to collect a quick and easy killing fee, is to ascertain the underlying cause of thrombocytopenia and then to treat it. In addition to either severe or prolonged blood loss, the condition can be triggered by either the destruction of platelets by a cat's overly active immune system or the failure of its bone marrow to generate a sufficient number of them.

Based on all of that, Krista Williams, Amy Panning, and Ernest Ward of VCA Animal Hospitals of Los Angeles recommend in an undated article that in addition to the initial Complete Blood Count that supplemental blood tests be administered as well as the taking of bone marrow samples. If internal bleeding is suspected, they further counsel that radiographs and ultrasounds be ordered. (See "Thrombocytopenia in Cats.")

Dr. Leah Cohen recommends that a urinalysis and a serum biochemistry test also be administered. Much more importantly, unless a cat is hemorrhaging she advises that only the underlying cause of thrombocytopenia be treated. (See PetPlace, June 29, 2015, "Thrombocytopenia in Cats.")

If however a cat is losing an inordinate amount of blood, either a complete blood transfusion or a transfusion of platelet-rich plasma may be the only way in order to save its life. Yet, Black Dog has not said anything that would tend to indicate that Eddie was anywhere nearly that ill.

On the contrary, if the organization had been willing to have performed the prerequisite diagnostic tests in order to have ascertained the underlying cause of his thrombocytopenia it is entirely possible that it might have discovered that it was his immune system that was destroying his thrombocytes and that situation likely could have been stabilized with corticosteroids, intravenous fluids, and supportive care. Deplorably, Intlekofer was far too cheap, lazy, and ailurophobic to have done even that much for him.

Whereas information contained online concerning FIV and thrombocytopenia is, admittedly, normally a poor substitute for the verdict of an attending practitioner, the problem with the latter is finding one that is competent, honest and, above all, places the life of a cat ahead of lining either his or her own pockets. Even so, Intlekofer's own words and the photographs that she has voluntarily shared online point to the inescapable conclusion that the only reasons that Eddie is not still alive today is that she and Black Dog were not only too stingy to have spared his life but that they did not believe that his life, and perhaps those of all cats, was worth saving in the first place.

"We're a realistic bunch and we knew we couldn't use our limited resources to give a stray, eighteen-year-old cat a blood transfusion on the off chance that he would survive," she proudly confessed in her blog "So, at our vet's recommendation we chose to humanely euthanize him."

Not only that but she chose to have taken his life without so much as a second thought. "After we (were) presented with his diagnosis and prognosis from our veterinarian, it wasn't really that difficult of a decision to make," she freely acknowledged to Old Gibby and Newsweek.

In light of that disclosure, it would be enlightening to know which came first: Intlekofer's counting of her beloved shekels or her veterinarian's doomsday diagnosis? The strong suspicious is that the former came first and that the diagnosis was later concocted as a justification for her shameful cheapness as well as the commission of her totally unforgivable crime.

Her twisted thinking and total lack of morality readily brings to mind what Miguel de Cervantes once said about individuals who think and behave as she does. "Too much sanity may be madness, and maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be."

Oblivious to all other considerations, this Janus-faced, colossal fraudster ever so slyly betrayed Eddie and the trust that he had placed in her and her staff and paid a morally retarded veterinarian to kill him. She then sans doute had one of her subordinates to casually toss out his remains in the trash.

Furthermore, she is not merely an old hand when it comes to murdering cats but a self-righteous one to boot. "I've made this (kind of decision) enough to know that it was the right thing to do," she bragged in her blog.

Like all cat-killers, Intlekofer delights in misusing and abusing language. First of all, what she did to Eddie was not euthanasia; on the contrary, it was cold-blooded, premeditated murder!

Secondly, there is absolutely nothing that is even remotely humane about lethal injections. (See Cat Defender posts of April 8, 2018 and July 31, 2015 entitled, respectively, "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" and "The Cold Blooded Murder of Spitz Once Again Exposes the Horrifying, Ugly, and Utterly Appalling Truth about Not Only Shelters but Callous Owners and Phony-Baloney Animal Rights Groups as Well.")

It therefore can only be devoutly wished that some day the high and mighty Intlekofer will have the tables reversed on herself. Maybe she will become sick, homeless, or end up in jail and either her physician or gaoler will befriend her, shoot her a load of bullshit about how much she is loved, and then, when she has her ugly head turned, give her a deadly jab of barbiturates right in her fat ass. 

Her corpse then should be deposited in black trash bag and left out at the curb for the benefit of the flies. It then should be collected by the garbagemen and left at the nearest landfill in order to rot. That is precisely what she and all of her fellow cat killers so richly deserve.

Thirdly, Intlekofer is, quite obviously, a notorious shekel chaser. That is so much the case that she is completely lacking in all morals and intelligence; instead, she only has an abacus.

Too bone-lazy in order to turn so much as a hand at any kind of honest toil, she and her colleagues at Black Dog instead live off of the adoption fees that they collect from the cats and dogs that they sell back to the public, donations, and grants from foundations. Their offices a 2407 East Ninth Street are only open 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and just about all the work appears to be performed by unpaid volunteers and fosterers who shelter, feed, and care for the organization's cats and dogs.

According to its web site, however, Intlekofer has a staff of five at her beck and call as well as a seven-member board of directors. It therefore is a sure bet that she and those twelve other individuals are anything but unpaid volunteers.

Much more troubling, Charity Navigator, which only examines the finances but not the other policies of the organizations that it scrutinizes, has given Black Dog a rating of only sixty-five per cent and has stated on its web site that it "needs improvement." Since the organization has publicly admitted that it was too cheap in order to have saved Eddie's life, it only seems fair to demand that Intlekofer, her staff, and the board of directors disclose their salaries, medical benefits, and all other perks of their employment. Moreover, since Intlekofer can hardly be trusted to ever come clean, a legitimate outside auditor should be hired in order to take a long, hard look at Black Dog's finances.

Perhaps most outrageously of all, Intlekofer was not about to pass up an opportunity in order to cash in on her killing of Eddie. In fact, she not only expects the public to pat her on the back like a good little dog for committing her heinous crime but also to generously reward her financially.

"We are so close to reaching our US$30,000 goal, ninety per cent of the way there, you can visit our fundraising page...If you could please take the time to get us the rest of the way by asking everyone you know to contribute (to) that one last push," she pleaded July 12th in an untitled article that was posted on Black Dog's Facebook page. "Think of Eddie, most wouldn't have taken a chance on a clearly old and sick cat, but our hearts told us to take the risk. We want to listen to our hearts every time, and the only way to do that is through your support."

Elmo Was Trapped, Shot, and Killed by a Cop in Cecil, Pennsylvania

Hah! What an outrageous load of baloney! Intlekofer and Black Dog do not have hearts. Besides, in spite of admitting to having at least US$27,000 in cash on hand, what did they ever do for Eddie other than to have provided him with some food and water and a place to rest up for a day or two? That must have cost the cheapskates a whole dollar or two and they likely are still squealing at having been forced to part with even that much of their precious hoard.

Yet, they expect to be richly rewarded for their beau geste as opposed to being arrested and jailed for betraying and killing Eddie. Clearly, Intelkofer is not merely a cat murderer and a barefaced liar but demented as well.

If thus seems perfectly fair to conclude that she and her cronies are a pack of lazy-ass blowhards who have figured out a way in order to make huge amounts of money by shortchanging and killing cats such as Eddie. In the animal rights field, the only known legitimate players are the volunteers who practice TNR.

They feed, water, shelter, and medicate the cats under their care out of their own pockets. They are not afraid of a little hard work and, above all, nobody has ever seen or heard them badgering the public for money like a gaggle of down-at-the-heel Bowery bums, which is always the case with Intlekofer and her gang. 

To put the entire moral conundrum into a nutshell, it is morally indefensible for any society to allow the likes of Intlekofer, Black Dog, and all veterinarians to line their pockets by killing cats. Much more importantly, such individuals and organizations are moral degenerates and criminals and should be treated as such.

Their conduct is made all the more abhorrent by the petit fait that they are fully capable of operating their shelters and rescues by following the same business model as TNR practitioners. C'est-à-dire, instead of being criminals and bums, Intlekofer and her cronies could take night jobs and fund their advocacy efforts out of their own labors.

They however staunchly believe that they are too good to work and if they have to murder untold numbers of cats each year in order to live high on the hog so be it. On the other hand, any halfway decent human being would be more than willing to clean toilets at Mickey D's for chump change if it meant not having to kill cats such as Eddie.

Furthermore, it is absurd to believe that any rescue group that was founded with the explicit purpose of saving dogs would ever be capable of giving a cat so much as a halfway decent break. That ingrained prejudice can be seen every time that conflagrations erupt at shelters, veterinarians' offices, and pet stores and staffers never fail to get their canines safely out alive while they callously leave scores of cats behind to be burned alive.

This anti-cat bias is anything but hidden. For example, shelters and surgeries will quite often post photographs of their staffers on their web sites and invariably ninety per cent of them are shown holding dogs; only rarely are any of them shown holding a cat. For that reason alone, owners should only take their beloved companions to feline practitioners.

In the case of Black Dog, Intlekofer and two of her staffers are depicted on its web site holding dogs; nobody has a cat. Likewise, four of the seven members of its board of directors are pictured with dogs but none of them has a cat.

Secondly, in the "Happy Tails" section of its web site, Black Dog boasts of having found homes for six dogs but only two cats. Furthermore, the charity clearly fudges on its kill rate.

In 2022, it claims to have had a live release rate of ninety-eight per cent but such statistics are meaningless because they only include those animals that the likes of Intlekofer subjectively deem to be adoptable. In most instances that excludes homeless, unsocialized, and traumatized cats, dogs that bark and bite, and cats like Eddie that shelters like Black Dog are too cheap to treat.

Additionally, in 2022 the organization claims to have transferred eight cats and one dog to other shelters but it neglects to disclose what ultimately became of them.

In 2020, it claims to have had a live release rate of ninety-nine per cent but once again it neglects to disclose the final disposition of the thirteen cats and four dogs that it transferred elsewhere. As far as 2018 is concerned, Black Dog has only revealed that it adopted out five-hundred-twenty-six animals and had a live release rate of 95.9 per cent.

In 2016, it claims to have taken in eighty-eight cats and to have found homes for eighty-five of them. Altogether, it admits to having had a kill rate of 2.7 per cent.

There are, quite obviously, numerous problems with its selective reporting. Most notably, where are its statistics for the years of 2017, 2019, and 2021?

Even more egregiously, kill and live release rates are meaningless unless they are tallied by individual species. For instance, it is well known that Animal Control, shelters, and foster-based rescues such as Black Dog perennially impound a far greater number of cats than dogs.

Accordingly, by lumping adoption, kill rates, and live release rates together dishonest groups like Black Dog are able to cleverly camouflage the far greater number of cats that they whack each year. For instance, any rescue that saves one-hundred per cent of its dogs but only fifty per cent of its cats is thereby able to boast to the public that it saves seventy-five per cent of all the animals that it impounds.

As if her dirty deed were not reprehensible enough in its own right, Intlekofer exposed her warped and thoroughly rotten soul for all the world to behold when she lamely attempted to justify it. As Lewis Carroll might have added:

"'The time has come,' the walrus said, 

'To talk of many things:

Of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing wax --

Of cabbages -- and kings --

And why the sea is boiling hot --

And whether pigs have wings!'"

"I finally decided he came to us because he knew we would help him and Eddie needed us to help him not live anymore," is how that she began her nonsensical defense in her blog. "He knew that we would do what was best for him. He came to us for help. And we helped him."

Nobody except a megalomaniac and a confirmed cat-hater would ever be caught uttering such outrageous balderdash. First of all, Eddie likely turned up at Black Dog because he had been dumped outside its portals or nearby.

George's Life Was Spared by Pets at Home and the Margaret Green Rescue

Secondly, he most assuredly was looking for food and shelter, not a deadly jab of sodium pentobarbital. Thirdly, cats have almost no comprehension of death.

"Knowing only their lives as they live them, cats are mortal immortals that think of death only when it is nearly upon them," John Gray wrote in his much celebrated 2020 book, Feline Philosophy. Cats and the Meaning of Life. "It is not hard to see how that they came to be worshipped."

As it has been more than abundantly demonstrated by his hardy appetite, the excellent condition of his coat, and his spirit, Eddie was anything but knocking on death's door. If he had been, he surely would have crawled off somewhere by himself instead of calling upon Black Dog for help with dying.

Why, the very idea that he sought out Black Dog in some sort of twisted suicide plot is too absurd to be taken seriously by anyone in possession of so much as half of a brain. For Intlekofer to have dreamt up such sottise proves conclusively that she is either a fabulist or crazy and probably guilty of both charges.

"And, honestly, most of all, I am happy that we were able to take his hunger, exhaustion, and pain away," she continued to ladle on her lies in her blog. "Without our facility, staff, and access to quality veterinary care what would the last few weeks of this sweet boy's life have looked like? I am glad we will never have to know."

That is more of her self-serving rubbish. First of all, the only thing that she and Black Dog took from Eddie was his precious and irreplaceable life.

Secondly, she has not produced a scintilla of evidence that he was in any kind of pain. He may have been hungry and tired when he arrived at Black Dog but the former was easily remedied with food and the latter by rest.

Thirdly, even if he had been in pain it could have been easily managed with an application of painkillers and antibiotics if not indeed completely eliminated by locating and treating the source of it. Fourthly, the only thing that Black Dog's unidentified veterinarian did for Eddie was to draw blood and then to kill him and most anybody on the face of the earth could have done that much for him.

Fifthly, as far as Eddie's prognosis was concerned, if Black Dog had been willing to have given him either a blood or platelet transfusion, placed him in either a permanent home or in foster care, and to have started him on a good quality diet he very well might have lived another ten years. He might even have survived for an extended period of time without a transfusion.

Sixthly, Eddie most assuredly had an owner up until recently and Black Dog should have run his story with an accompanying photograph of him in the local newspaper as well as on local television stations so as to have provided that individual with an opportunity to have come forward and ransomed his life off of death row. Even if that had not been the case, there was always the possibility that perhaps some other private individual would have volunteered to have adopted him and to have footed the bill for his treatment.

Intlekofer was not only too cheap, lazy, and uncaring to have done even that much for him but she also was not about to have allowed anyone else to have intervened on his behalf either. Rather, he had to be gotten rid of immediately.

"It was just so incredible how he showed up out of nowhere and brought himself to us, a place that could help," she added to her pal, Old Gibby of Newsweek, in the article cited supra. 

She is right about that in that Eddie's showing up out of the blue and especially on Black Dog's doorstep is just too pat to be believable. That is to say, it almost appears that Intlekofer and her cronies were in search of a feline victim in order to promote their cat-killing cult and Eddie, like Elmo, just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It accordingly is entirely possible that they could have picked him out from all the homeless and free-roaming cats in Cheyenne, whacked him, and then ran to Old Gibby in order to have her and Newsweek champion their dirty work. In that respect, it is suspicious that from start to finish that Intlekofer never once so much as considered any option for Eddie other than the gallows.

Seventhly, Intlekofer is once again lying through her rotten teeth when she claims that "most (rescue groups) wouldn't have taken the chance on a clearly old and sick cat." Au contraire, quite a few of them do so every day of the week.

For example, in September of 2014, an eleven and one-half year-old orange male named George walked into a Pets at Home retail outlet in Liskeard, Cornwall. He not only was emaciated but his teeth were so rotten that he could barely masticate whatever food that he was lucky enough to have procured on his own.

After having provided him with some much needed nourishment, employees of the pet store contacted Margaret Green's Wingletang Rescue and Rehoming Centre for Dogs and Cats in Tavistock, twenty-nine kilometers northeast of Liskeard in Devonshire, which came and collected him. "It was quite a shock to see how skinny George was when he first arrived here," Deana Perrin of the rescue said. "His teeth were also in a terrible state which would have meant eating was difficult and very painful for him."

Instead of cruelly and unjustly snuffing out his precious life as Black Dog was later to do with Eddie, Margaret Green removed his teeth and placed him on a soft food diet. After that he not only was pain-free but he also put on weight.

"It was obvious that George had been in a home at some point as he had a mark around his neck where a collar had been," Perrin pointed out. "At some point his collar must have been excruciatingly tight as the skin around his neck is completely bald."

In an effort to locate his former owner, Margaret Green did not hesitate to run a photograph and a story about him in the local press. When that effort failed to have borne fruit, the charity reversed direction and at last word was attempting to place him with a family in a rural setting.

Because of his friendly demeanor and love of cuddling, George soon became a big favorite of both staffers and volunteers at Margaret Green who, best of all, stated that he was more than welcome to remain with them for how ever long it took to find him a new home. (See Cat Defender post of March 23, 2015 entitled "Old, Sickly, and on the Street, George Accidentally Wanders into a Pet Store and That, in All Likelihood, Saved His Life.")

Being the shrewd propagandist that she is, Intlekofer was not about to pass up an opportunity in order to shed a few crocodile tears for Eddie. "...I cried over Eddie. It took me a couple of days to reconcile his death even," she wrote in her blog.  "A stray cat I knew for barely a moment."

Sophie Still Had Plenty of Life Left in Her

Once again it is illustrative to quote the sentiments expressed by the walrus and the carpenter regarding the deadly trick that they played on the oysters:

"'I weep for you,' the walrus said:

I deeply sympathize.'

With sobs and tears he sorted out

Those of the largest size,

Holding his pocket handkerchief

Before his streaming eyes.

"'O oysters', said the carpenter,

'You've had a pleasant run!

Shall we be trotting home again?'

But answer came there none --

And this was scarcely odd, because

They'd eaten every one." 

"There are times when doing the best for an animal makes you want to cry, but we will always remember out sweet Eddie, who knew how to ask for help from the right people," Intlekofer wrote on Facebook.

She continued in that same vein to Old Gibby of Newsweek. "He made such an impact on us in the short time he was with us," she declared.

In addition to her cold-blooded murder of Eddie and the utterly ludicrous justifications for it that she has attempted to bamboozle the public into accepting, it is interesting to note how that this story came to see the light of day. Normally cat-killing monsters such as Intlekofer perpetrate their heinous crimes far from the maddening crowd and keep quiet about them. 

"I have held onto this story for a while. So long in fact, I moved 'Eddie's story' from one weekly to-do list to the next," she wrote in her blog. "But, I am glad to be finally sharing it with those of you that mean the most to our organization."

It certainly does not take any genius in order to figure out that a consummate shekel chaser like her could only be referring to the private donors and foundations who keep her and her cronies in clover. Therefore, it is imperative that she publicly identify those individuals and foundations that are so lavishly paying her to murder cats like Eddie.

Another one of her comrades in arms is, quite obviously, Old Gibby and Newsweek. Owned by The Washington Post from 1961 until 2010, it since then has been presided over by Dev Pragad and Jonathan Davis who have turned the news magazine into a rather successful web site. For instance, in 2020 it reportedly had one-hundred-million readers.

Within the past two years, if not indeed earlier, it has taken it upon itself to propagate PETA's mantra that the only good cat is a dead one and Old Gibby has been in the forefront of that effort. For example, on February 8th of this year she authored a story for Newsweek concerning Brandi Ediss of western Massachusetts and how that she cleverly got rid of her twenty-year-old ginger and white cat, Sophie. (See "Owner Shares Twenty-Year-Old Cat's Final Perfect Day: 'I'll Never Forget It'.")

Specifically, Ediss and her unidentified husband treated Sophie, who was suffering from kidney trouble, to one final day of living by, inter alia, giving her a crinkly bag to chew on and some ice cream. They also showed her some movies and took her outside in order to relax in the sun on a heating pad. Whether that is how that she would have chosen to have spent her last day on this earth, that is if she had been given either any forewarning or choice in the matter, or more likely a sick and perverted example of Ediss's and her husband's indulging themselves in order to assuage their guilty consciences is a debatable point.

The very next day they gave their unsuspecting and faithful companion of two decades some pain medication and additional treats before summoning an unidentified veterinarian in order to kill her. Afterwards, they posted a video of the sorry affair on TikTok in order to promote their perfidy and cat-killing agenda and Old Gibby lapped it up with a siphon to the very last drop.

"I love that Sophie's story has connected so deeply with so many people and I hope that my video inspires some of them to plan similar bucket-list days for their beloved animal friends if they're lucky enough to have the chance," Ediss pontificated to Newsweek. "I know now what a rare gift it is -- for humans and animals alike -- to be able to say goodbye before things become too dire."

A few months earlier during the summer of 2022, Ediss had another one of her cats, eighteen-year-old Mewie, killed off by a veterinarian. Like Intlekofer, she too is an old hand when it comes to killing cats.

Individuals who truly appreciate and love their cats do not have any need for Ediss's sophistry, self-serving lies, and cruel trickery. Rather, they fully realize from the outset that their beloved companions are only going to be with them for a very brief period of time even under the most auspicious of circumstances and they therefore endeavor to spend as much time with them as is possible.

They accordingly do not have any need for either silly bucket lists or feel compelled to shower them with attention and affection one day only to turn around and betray and kill them the next. On the contrary, they treat every day that they are fortunate enough to spend with them as if it were the last.

They also do not have any need for scum-of-the-earth veterinarians and their jabs of deadly barbiturates and they cannot even begin to fathom how that anyone who ever had loved a cat could so dishonestly betray it. Above all, they categorically refuse to shed innocent feline blood and to shorten by so much as one second the all-too-brief time that cats are allotted on this earth.

Cold-blooded owners who commit such dastardly deeds also leave themselves open to charges that they simply were too cheap, lazy, and uncaring to have attended to their cats once that they had become either sickly or elderly. That is to say, their professed love for them was only valid during fair weather.

Later on March 17th, Old Gibby's colleague at Newsweek, Jack Beresford, published a story concerning Quin Gable's killing off of her three-year-old mackerel-colored cat, Otto, at her father's farm in Colorado. The last day of life that she allotted him consisted of watching the sun rise and the taking of his paw print. (See "Pet Owner Chronicles Beloved Cat's 'Final Adventure' Before He's Euthanized.")

She showered her cancer-stricken companion with kisses and then had him whacked by a veterinarian. Like Ediss before her, she next turned to TikTok and Newsweek in order to trumpet her cat-killing agenda.

Unable to get over her fixation with killing cats, Old Gibby was back at it again on April 5th when she published a story about a beautiful longhaired eighteen-year-old female who was expected to have died in 2016 but is still alive today after having been adopted by a woman identified by only her first name as Julia. (See "Woman Adopts Shelter's Oldest Cat So It Can 'Die Peacefully' -- Plan Backfires.")  

Old Gibby neglects to mention whether Julia adopted the unidentified cat with the intention of allowing her to live out the remainder of her life until its natural end or if she was planning on eventually hiring a hit man in order to finally get rid of her. "My plan about giving this cat a peaceful end of life failed, but I'm happy it did," is all that she has disclosed to Newsweek on that subject.

Despite having been diagnosed with allergies and FIV in 2021, the female is alive and well today. "She doesn't seem bothered by her age at all," Julia told Newsweek. "Since I managed to find food that doesn't trigger her allergies I get her to the vet every six months or so for a regular check-up."

It is almost superfluous to point out but old age, being homeless, having allergies, and being FIV-positive are hardly legitimate reasons for whacking a cat. The only things that domesticated cats truly need are homes with loving owners who will respect their right to live, a proper diet, and competent veterinary care should it be available.

Otto Was Killed Off by His Owner after He Contracted Cancer

For those that a homeless, Yorkshire Cat Rescue in Keighley, West Yorkshire, established the gold standard as to how that they should be treated some years ago when it established its hospice program. The bottom line is that absolutely nobody knows with any degree of certainty either how long a cat is going to live or what quality of life it is going to enjoy and that most definitely includes veterinarians who, being too lazy and incompetent to treat it, care only about pocketing a cheap, easy, and lucrative fee for killing it.

Other than being staunch proponents of killing cats, another thing that is interesting about Old Gibby and Beresford is that neither of them work in the United States. Rather, the former is based in Leicester, the West Midlands, whereas the latter is headquartered in London.

Secondly, both of them rely almost exclusively upon either TikTok or Reddit for their information and that is hardly prudent owing to the slipshod nature of the articles that appear on both platforms. In Eddie's case, however, Old Gibby apparently was either contacted by Intlekofer or tipped off by someone concerning her blog. As best it could be determined, Eddie's murder was not covered in Cheyenne by either the print or the electronic media.

It thus seems clear that Old Gibby, Beresford, and certain other reporters at Newsweek that are based in Angleterre are dedicated propagandists with cat-killing agendas of their own. A more thought-provoking question concerns who other than Newsweek is financing their efforts?

To be fair about the matter, America has just as many, if not indeed more, dishonest journalists than England. For example, in 2012 Evelyn Koegler of the Aloe Village Senior Complex at 1311 West Aloe Street in Egg Harbor City, twenty-seven kilometers north of Atlantic City in New Jersey, called upon her fellow tribesman, Ted Greenberg, of NBC-10 (WCAU-TV) in Philadelphia in order to help her get rid of some homeless kittens that were residing on the grounds of her complex.

Not about to disappoint a fellow tribesman, Greenberg quickly forgot all about being an impartial journalist and took matters into his own hands by calling in a private exterminator who subsequently trapped and removed at least six kittens. They were then taken to the Atlantic County Animal Shelter in nearby Pleasantville where they surely were killed upon arrival. (See The Press of Atlantic City, November 23, 2013, "Region's Cats Put Down by the Thousands.")

Being a born liar as well as a kitten killer, Greenberg dishonestly told his viewers that they would be evaluated for adoption. (See Cat Defender post of July 7, 2012 entitled "NBC-10 Philadelphia Conspires with a Virulent Cat-Hater and an Exterminator in Order to Have Six Newborn and Totally Innocent Kittens Killed in Southern New Jersey.")

When dealing with either the legacy or social media, absolutely nothing can be taken at face value. Therefore, those who care about the truth need to endeavor to acquire first-hand knowledge of the subject in question and even then most matters in this world boil down to normative considerations and not all value judgments are equal.

Little known by the general public, Black Dog is in the vanguard of the socially conscious sheltering movement. For instance, in 2015 its founder, Britney Wallesch Tennant, published a long-winded exposé on the subject entitled "Common Ground in the Ever-Changing Landscape of Animal Welfare," which originally appeared in the Humane Society of the United States's (HSUS) Animal Sheltering Magazine but today can be found on the Cheyenne-based group's web site.

Reduced to its basic essentials, the article is vehemently anti-no kill and enthusiastically pro-kill, especially when it comes to cats. For example, one of its basic tenets is that only those animals that it deems to be safe and healthy should be made available to the public for adoption.

First of all, by definition that excludes just about all homeless and lost cats. "'Place every healthy and safe animal' is dangerous to cats because it would allow shelters to kill cats with the sniffles and minor scratches," Alley Cat Allies pointed out on May 31, 2021. (See "Calling Out the Dangerous Ideas Behind Socially Conscious Sheltering.") "Defining a 'safe cat' as one not exhibiting behavior that is likely to result in bodily injury or death to another animal or person is far from objective."

Secondly, Black Dog's pledge to ensure that "every unwanted or homeless pet has a safe place to go for shelter and care" is a prescription for rounding up and killing every cat that dares so much as to venture out of doors. It additionally is dishonest in that, as it did with Eddie, it only impounds those cats that it intends to kill.

Thirdly, there does not appear to be any place for TNR in Black Dog's scheme of socially conscious sheltering. Fourthly, the movement is fascistic and totalitarian to its core.

"Regardless of each organization's intake policies, adoption criteria, or the threshold they set to establish how far, how long, and how much money they are willing to go for an individual animal, it is neither productive nor wise for those of us outside that organization to judge," Tennant declared in her spiel to HSUS. "None of us can help the other with all of the other's problem animals. None of us can understand the intricacies of the relationships we have with our staff, volunteers, foster families, and adopters."

Fifthly, although another tenet of socially conscious sheltering calls for the fostering of a culture of transparency, ethical decision making, mutual respect, continued learning, and collaboration, such lofty goals are anathema to an organization as fascistic and bloodthirsty as Black Dog.

Sixthly, throughout her lengthy diatribe Tennant repeatedly refers to sheltering as an industry. In other words, she apparently looks upon cats as a free and inexhaustible commodity that she and her cronies can round up and kill at any time and for a tidy profit. 

In that respect, Tennant certainly has done all right for herself. For example, in 2021 she managed to get herself appointed as head of the Cheyenne Animal Shelter. (See KGWN-TV of Cheyenne September 2, 2021, "Black Dog Animal Rescue Founder Britney Tennant Appointed New Chief Executive Officer of Cheyenne Animal Shelter.")

Along about that same time, the city of Cheyenne took over Animal Control. Now, with little on her plate to do other than to kill cats, she surely must be making out like Jesse James.

Secondly, it is enlightening to note that she certainly has not brought much in the way of transparency to her new job. For example, between January 1st and July 18th of this year the Cheyenne Animal Shelter found homes for only one-thousand-two-hundred-sixty-one animals, it returned another three-hundred-forty-seven pets to their owners, and it fobbed off another fifty-seven onto other shelters while taking in seventy-nine of theirs. 

Tennant dishonestly fails to break down those statistics but it can generally be inferred that a lion's share of the animals that she and her colleagues either found homes for or returned to their rightful owners were dogs. It correspondingly likely killed a huge number of the cats that it impounded. 

The shelter did admit, however, to having returned sixty-five cats to the field and that is one indication that the TNR program that the city inaugurated in 2014 at the behest of one of its employees and ACA is still in place. Since it does appear to contravene Tennant's socially conscious sheltering model, however, it may not endure for much longer. (See ACA's undated press release entitled "Cheyenne Wyoming, Trap-Neuter-Return Ordinance.")

Aside from the TNR program run by the Cheyenne Animal Shelter, the city does not appear to be a very hospitable place for cats. Black Dog kills them right and left and although it has talked of starting a sterilization program that apparently has never gotten off the ground. As far as investigating cases of animal cruelty are concerned, doing so does not appear to ever have so much as crossed the minds of either Black Dog or the city's animal shelter.

"Socially conscious sheltering may sound ideal, but in practice it poses a major threat to the well-being of cats, both pets and those who live their lives outdoor," ACA concluded in the May 31, 2021 article cited supra. "Until its parameters are defined in a manner that would save cats' lives rather than open countless avenues to kill them, this ideology has no place in animal shelter protocol or legislation."

Julia's Cat Is Still Going Strong at Age Eighteen

It is Davyd Smith of No Kill Colorado in Denver, however, who has put his finger on that which is so terribly wrong and unjust about socially conscious sheltering. "It's a premise that ignores the most important freedom we should be striving toward for animals: the freedom to live," he told ACA. "Instead, it simply offers political cover for shelters to exercise the freedom to kill, for any reason, at any time."

Over the course of the past few decades, the two most beneficial developments pertaining to cats have been sans doute the no-kill movement and TNR. The former still needs to evolve into a truly non-violent movement that respects all feline life and means exactly what its name implies: no killing of cats under any circumstances.

To make that imperative even plainer, no subterfuges, guises, double-talk, ifs, ands, buts, and bullshit about the matter. Above all, the movement needs to jettison its nonsensical and dishonest policy concerning saving ninety per cent of the cats that it deems to be "adoptable." (See Cat Defender posts of July 29, 2010 and October 23, 2012 entitled, respectively, "The Benicia Vallejo Humane Society Is Outsourcing the Mass Killing of Kittens and Cats All the While Masquerading as a No-Kill Shelter" and "A Supposedly No-Kill Operation in Marblehead Betrays Sally and Snuffs Out Her Life Instead of Providing Her with a Home and Veterinary Care.")

TNR practitioners also need to stop killing the cats under their care as well as to step up their efforts to socialize them and to get them into loving homes. (See Cat Defender posts of December 22, 2011 and December 1, 2021 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" and "Socks, Coors Field's Most Famous Resident, Is Saved from the Gallows by a Pathology Report after She Is Trapped, Misdiagnosed, and Then Unjustly Consigned to Death Row.")  

On the other hand, the socially conscious sheltering movement is hellbent upon short-circuiting and destroying both no-kill and TNR. Whereas the task at hand should be to move forward rather than backwards, it deigns to take societies back to those bad old days of yesteryear when cats were looked down upon as vermin to be eradicated.

Despite its brief history, the socially conscious sheltering movement has gotten off to a roaring start. For example, in addition to having secured the fidelity of the Machida Doggy League, thirty-one kilometers southwest of Tokyo, it also has received endorsements from the regional branches of the Australian RSPCA in Malaga, Western Australia, Mowbray in Tasmania, and Burwood East in Victoria.

It is only fitting that the Australian RSPCA should be in bed with Black Dog considering not only its complicity with the Australian national and state governments, the country's degree mills, ornithologists, and wildlife biologists in the extermination of millions of cats, but also its own eradication campaigns against the species. (See Cat Defender posts of November 18, 2016 and April 22, 2008 entitled, respectively, "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 on the Species Enters Its Final Stages" and "The Australian RSPCA Sells Out by Readily Agreeing to Gun Down Charles Sturt's Defenseless Rock Cats," plus The Conversation of Boston, May 28, 2023, "Australian Shelters and Pounds Kill Fifty-Thousand Mostly Healthy Cats and Kittens Each Year. There's a Way to Prevent This Pointless Killing.") 

In the United States, the nascent movement boasts one-hundred-fourteen members. Most prominently, there is the Loudoun County Animal Shelter in Leesburg, Virginia, which Karin Bruillard of The Washington Post praised to the high heavens in 2005 for having killed a staggering forty-seven per cent of the animals that it impounded the previous year. (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.")

From the look of things, it does not appear that cats are being treated any better today in Loudoun County. (See WTOP Radio of Chevy Chase, Maryland, articles dated August 11, 2023 and August 12, 2023 and entitled, respectively, "Forty Cats Rescued in Loudoun County Pet Hoarding Investigation, Shelter Asks for Donations" and "Cats in Loudoun County Shopping Center May Have Caused Rabies Exposure, Health Department Says.")

Secondly, the Animal Rescue League (ARL) of Birdsboro, seventy-nine kilometers northwest of Philadelphia, is another member in good standing of Black Dog's cat-killing cabal. For example, in November of 2017 it killed a cat named Diddy that was owned by Cody Lesher of Fleetwood, twenty-seven kilometers north of Birdsboro, after he had been stolen by one of Lesher's neighbors and given to it.

In its defense, the ARL later claimed that it was unable to locate Diddy's implanted microchip. Even more outrageously, the shelter failed to have recognized him even though it originally had adopted him out to Lesher.

That was by no means an isolated incident in that a month before it whacked Diddy, the ARL had killed an unidentified child's collared, and possibly also microchipped, cat. (See WCAU-TV of Philadelphia, December 15, 2017, "Animal Shelter Euthanizes Man's Cat after Failing to Find Microchip.")

A third member of the socially conscious sheltering movement is the Cleveland Animal Protective League which in 2008 allowed a pretty tuxedo kitten named Malli to die in foster care after she had survived a thirty-two-day voyage on a cargo ship from Malaysia. (See Cat Defender posts of March 21, 2008 and April 25, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Malli Survives a Thirty-Two Day Voyage from Johor Bahru to Cleveland Trapped Inside a Shipping Crate" and "After Surviving a Lengthy and Hellish Confinement at Sea, Malli Dies Unexpectedly in Foster Care.")

Fourthly, Simply Cats of Boise, which claims to be a no-kill operation, is listed as another of Black Dog's adherents. That, along with its shanghaiing of Crash into shilling for Cadbury's candies, strongly suggests that the once reputable charity has sold out and joined forces with the species' sworn enemies. (See Cat Defender post of May 30, 2023 entitled "Crash, Who Lived Through Being Run Down and Left for Dead by a Hit-and-Run Motorist, Has Been Reduced to Impersonating a Rabbit and Shilling for Cadbury's Creme Eggs.")

Fifthly, although Metro Denver CAT claims on its web site to practice TNR, it too is listed as a member of Black Dog's pack. The Humane Society of Pinellas in Clearwater is the only group belonging to the socially conscious sheltering movement that is known to ever have done right by a cat.

For instance, in 2009 it saved the life of a tom named Robin Hood after he had been attacked by an archer and when it was unable to have placed him in a home of his own it secured him a spot at In Defense of Animals' sanctuary in Sarasota. (See Cat Defender posts of July 23, 2009 and November 1, 2009 entitled, respectively, "Robin Hood Is Wounded in the Leg in Yet Still Another Bow and Arrow Attack Upon a Cat in the Tampa Area" and "Robin Hood, Who Survived a Near Fatal Bow and Arrow Wounding, Is Sent to a Sanctuary in Order to Live Out the Remainder of His Life.")   

To single out six of one-hundred-fourteen rescue groups for scrutiny can be misleading, but nevertheless it is difficult to see how that any of them could be both anti-no kill and anti-TNR without also being virulently anti-cat. Perhaps there is some room for disagreement within the movement but Black Dog's killing of Eddie and its anti-cat rhetoric make that at the very least problematic while, at the worst, highly improbable.

Ever since Old Gibby and her colleagues at Newsweek commenced championing the killing of cats back in February, if indeed not earlier, the entire business has had an all-too-familiar stench swirling around it. It was, however, their fellow journalist, Lucy Notaranotonio from Birmingham in the West Midlands, who finally, so to speak, let the cat out of the bag.

She did so on August 10th when she came out of the shadows and expressed her complete agreement with PETA and its blatant lies that all homeless cats are infected with diseases, such as FIV, and that none of them ever die of old age. In support of her prejudices, she even provided a link to Old Gibby's story on Eddie. (See "Shock as Woman Feeds Stray Cat, It Then Finds Her House and Brings Friends.")

Actually, the efforts put forward by Old Gibby, Notaranotonio, Beresford, and others at Newsweek are not really news stories at all. Rather, the authors cherry-pick bits and pieces of already elliptical articles about cats that have been posted on TikTok and Reddit and in turn refashion them into propaganda pieces that promote Black Dog's and PETA's cat-killing agenda. Their work is accordingly a prime example of dishonest, half-baked journalism at its worst.

If any further proof were needed of the Dreieck des Bösen that exists between PETA, Newsweek, and Black Dog, it is spelled out in black and white in an undated article entitled "Socially Conscious Sheltering: A Humane, Responsible Approach," which can be found on the web site of the notorious cat killers from Norfolk. More importantly, in this article PETA makes explicit that which Black Dog has attempted to sugarcoat.

First of all, it is vehemently opposed to no-kill. "Languishing in a cage is worse than death," it declares but that is patently untrue, especially if a cat is eventually adopted.

Eddie Deserved to Live and Should Still Be Alive Today

Secondly, its dogma that "shelters must accept all animals" is anti-life and anti-TNR. Thirdly, it is not only opposed to kittens, elderly cats, and those that are ill, injured, and behaviorally unsound being put up for adoption but also of their being transferred to other shelters and sanctuaries.

"For many animals -- especially those who are ill, elderly, very young, unsocialized, and easily frightened -- transport can be stressful and even terrifying, and it's not always the humane choice," the organization pontificated in the article cited supra. C'est-à-dire, kill all cats that are out of doors! It is easier and cheaper that way.

As with the chicken and the egg, it has not proven possible to determine if PETA is the driving force behind the socially conscious sheltering movement or if it has merely opportunistically joined Black Dog's bandwagon. There can be little doubt, however, that the two rogue rescue groups are joined at the hip.

To put the entire sordid affair into shirtsleeve English, unable to have gotten much of anywhere with its kill all cats mantra, PETA has taken a bath in a belated effort to wash off some of the feline and canine blood from its gnarled torso. It has combed and shampooed its long and oily locks, doused its scalp with Permethrin lotion in order to get rid of its head lice, ladled on the deodorant, perfume, and makeup with a trowel, and bought itself some new threads.

In spite of its elaborate makeover, underneath its new paint and garb it is still the same old cat-hater, defamer, thief, and killer that it always has been and there is not nearly enough Right Guard® and Chanel No. 5® on the planet in order to cover up the foul stench that emanates from its decrepit and rotting carcass. Every breath that it takes is foul and poisonous and every time that it reaches out its scaly tentacles to either a cat or a dog it is, as it once was said about 007's arch nemesis Mr. Goldfinger, the touch of death. Much like a worn-out old whore with nothing left of value, the only things that PETA is peddling are lies, deception, and a cult of death.

"Socially conscious shelters are committed to full transparency," PETA declares in the article cited supra. "This can include reporting accurate statistics, sharing policies, and fully disclosing and quickly admitting mistakes. All decisions must be based on integrity."

Hah! For PETA to lecture the public on integrity is akin to Jack the Ripper volunteering gratuitous advice on the proper treatment of women. After all, when has it ever adhered to any of those ideals?

Most glaringly, the web site of the movement, www.scsheltering.org., does not divulge any information about it, such as where it is headquartered, its mailing address, telephone number, and the identities of its leading lights. It merely provides an e-mail form that interested parties can avail themselves of in order to contact it. What is it hiding?

In 2006, PETA was caught accepting receipt of cats and dogs from shelters in southern Virginia and northern North Carolina on the pretext of providing them with loving homes. Instead it killed them in the field and afterwards dumped their corpses in private Dumpsters.

The organization is so low and, above all, duplicitous that it even photographed some of its intended victims playing in idyllic fields of flowers and then mailed the snaps back to the shelters from which it had received them as evidence of its good intentions. That was all a cleverly designed ruse in that the animals were all long dead before the photographs of them ever were delivered.

In spite of police and prosecutors having PETA dead to rights, the courts in backward North Carolina, where the case was tried, sullied their reputations forever by allowing these despicable fraudsters to get off scot-free. (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 a North Carolina Courtroom" and "The Verdict in the PETA Trial: Littering Is a Crime but Not the Mass Slaughter of Innocent Cats and Dogs.") 

Predictably, PETA's victory in court served only to whet its appetite for yet still more feline and canine blood. (See Cat Defender post of October 7, 2011 entitled "PETA Traps and Kills a Cat and Then Shamelessly Goes Online in Order to Brag about Its Criminal and Foul Deed" and The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, December 1, 2014, "Man Says PETA Took His Dog from Porch, Killed Her.")

Although this cancer on the body of the animal rights movement annually rakes in upwards of US$40 million in donations, it spends practically nothing on feeding, sheltering, medicating, and finding homes for cats and dogs. Instead, it annually exterminates up to ninety-eight per cent of those that it impounds at its Norfolk shelter and that does not even begin to take into consideration those that it kills in the field.

As the organization's head honcho Ingrid Newkirk has intoned on numerous occasions, "our service is to provide a peaceful and painless death to animals no one wants." If she had so much as a shred of honesty in her warped gourd she would just come out and admit that her organization kills just about all animals that so much as cross its path, including those that do have owners.

That is by no means all. Before she founded PETA, Newkirk used to run a shelter in Washington and that is where that she honed her cat and dog killing proficiency to a razor's edge. "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 confessed 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, dozens sometimes every day."

Like her kindred spirit Intlekofer, she clearly belongs in jail. Instead, however, she and PETA remain darlings of the capitalistic media. 

Killing cats is indisputably big business and shelters, cops, Animal Control officers, veterinarians, vivisectors, TNR practitioners, owners, and scores of other miscreants continue to live high on the hog by shedding feline blood. Within the Interior Department, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management all possess licenses to eradicate them en masse.

Within the Agriculture Department, Wildlife Services, the United States Forest Service, and the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service all kill their share of them. In addition to the uniformed services, at the Defense Department the United States Army Corps of Engineers kills cats as do vivisectors at the Cabinet-level United States Department of Veterans Affairs.

Even the Department of Environmental Protection as well as the Department of Transportation have been known to kill cats. Plus, each of the fifty states and dependent territories have their own fish and game divisions, environmental bureaus, and pest control agencies that eradicate cats.

With the defaming and killing of cats being so ingrained in the American psyche, it is not surprising that few, if any, individuals are shedding any tears over cats like Eddie and the millions like him that are unjustly killed each year. Consequently, there is only one way out of this dilemma and that is for this society to grant personhood to all cats, and eventually to all animals, and to likewise establish some mechanism to enforce their right to live.

Nothing else has worked in the past and will not work either now or in the future. So long as individuals and organizations are permitted to kill cats with impunity they are going to continue to do so all the while making up outrageous lies in order to excuse their behavior. Left to their own devices, none of them will ever come to accept the right of all cats to live out their lives to their natural ends.

It is not necessary to fully comprehend all the intrigues, machinations, and double-talk of Black Dog, Newsweek, The Washington Post, and PETA in order to appreciate why this is so vitally important. Rather, all that is required of fair-minded and compassionate individuals is for them to take one look at Eddie's life and, in particular, the photographs taken of him shortly before his cold-blooded execution and to ask themselves if he deserved to have been allowed to continue living.

Above all, they need to pause for a moment in order to reflect upon his utterly hopeless predicament. He was all alone in this world and without anyone to look after his rights.

To cap off this terrible business, he had the rotten luck to have ended up in the clutches of a morally retarded monster like Intlekofer. That was not fair and someone must stand up for cats like him and their right to live.

He is gone forever and no one can bring him back but perhaps his last owner will belatedly learn of what was done to him and come forward in order to demand justice for him. Until the day dawns when Intlekofer, Newkirk, and their misbegotten ilk are forced to answer for their despicable crimes in a court of law no cat's life will ever be worth so much as a plugged nickel.

Photos: Black Dog Animal Rescue (Eddie and Intlekofer), Roger Oldaker (Elmo), The Plymouth Herald (George), Breadly_Lettuce of TikTok (Sophie), Quin Gable (Otto), and Reddit (Julia's unidentified cat).