And more :(. I AM ONLY CROSS-POSTING!!! PLS DO NOT HIT REPLY!!!! CONTACT INFO LISTED BELOW!! DELAYS REACHING THE RIGHT PEOPLE CAN COST LIVES!!! From: Samuel Eaton [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, November 05, 2013 4:41 PM To: [email protected] Subject: FW: Cruelty by Floyd County Animal Control Goes Unprosecuted Sent: Monday, November 04, 2013 2:42 PM Subject: FW: Cruelty by Floyd County Animal Control Goes Unprosecuted addictinginfo.org/2013/10/25/cruelty-floyd-county-animal-control-goes-unprosecuted/ Cruelty by Floyd County Animal Control Goes Unprosecuted Author: Juniper Russo October 25, 2013 7:46 pm His name, if it could be called that, was 13C-2106. He was a three-week-old, mewing, orange ball of fur, scheduled to be euthanized with his mom, brothers, and 30 other cats at Floyd County Animal Control in Rome, Georgia. If I didn’t answer the call for help by 6 pm, he would be killed in the morning. At the pleas of my five-year-old daughter, I took off work and drove two hours out of state to come to the kitten’s rescue—and ended up uncovering one of the sickest and most disturbing cases of animal cruelty and government corruption I have ever seen. Floyd County Animal Control Floyd County Animal Control was run primarily by prison inmates, part of the increasing trend in the South to use prisoners as unpaid laborers, and an uncomfortable throwback to the days of slavery. The two actual employees present mocked me and lied to me. “You came here all the way from Chattanooga, thinkin’ we was fixin’ to put them to sleep?” the manager asked, and then mocked, “We don’t even do that. I mean, hardly ever.” My daughter and I went to the room of adoptable cats, many of them covered in their own urine and excrement, but 13C-2106 and his family were nowhere to be seen. Neither were the dozens of other cats and kittens I had seen listed online as “urgent.” I sent a message to the administrator of the page where I’d originally seen them listed: “Can’t find the urgent cats at Floyd County Animal Control. They’re not here. Shelter manager said they don’t euthanize??” I got a response within seconds: “They’re lying. They euthanize every week. Ask to see the back room.” I turned to a prison inmate who was mopping the floor. “May I see the back room?” “Lots of them in there are sick,” he said hesitantly. “May I see them?” I repeated. He looked over his shoulder and showed me toward another room, where the stench of decay hit me as soon as I opened the door. There were many more animals in the “back room” than in any other room at the shelter, and it reeked of death and disease. “There’s Smiley!” my daughter squeaked, and pointed to a shivering orange kitten, in a cage with two other kittens. “Is this 2106?” I asked the inmate. “Where’s his mom?” “She died this morning. Another from that litter, too.” “Was she sick?” “Yeah.” “Did anyone take her to a vet?” “No. Floyd County Animal Control doesn’t take animals to vets. If they get sick or if they don’t think they’ll adopt easy, they get put back here, then they do away with them once a week.” Horrifying “Back Room” at Floyd County Animal Control. I looked in horror at the other “back room cats.” A litter of fuzzy gray kittens had their eyes sealed shut by infections, which were draining foul-smelling mucus, blood, and pus. One cat lay dead in its cage, its eyes glassy and its body stiff. Another, who had been listed online with her seven kittens, lay alone with engorged nipples. Her kittens had all died. Four healthy, frisky orange-and-white fluffballs purred when I touched them. A Maine coon kitten stuck his paw out at me, trying to “catch” me as I walked past. A six-week-old calico baby meowed desperately. A fuzzy black kitten and his fuzzy gray sibling huddled together, shivering. One cat made strange sounds, stumbled, and leaked foam from his mouth. I found myself quickly pulling my daughter away from his cage, wondering if I was witnessing the effects of rabies for the first time in my life. Most of the others lay lethargic, panting, and in pain as they awaited the next morning’s euthanasia. Meet Smiley the kitten. I picked up little 2106, or “Smiley” as my daughter had immediately named him, and went to the front desk, saying I wanted to adopt him. A woman had me fill out the adoption form, where I signed saying that I understood that none of the animals had received any veterinary care, and that they were likely sick. I rushed my new baby to the vet, where I found out, much to my relief, that he appeared healthy, although he would need to be fed formula for about three more weeks. “Isn’t it funny that there’s even such thing as a cat who’s a ‘shelter rescue?’” the vet said, benignly poking and prodding the orange puffball, “That should be an oxymoron. If it’s a shelter, you shouldn’t need to rescue from it.” I expected her to be shocked when I described the conditions of the shelter, and she was saddened but not surprised. She’d heard it all before. Rural animal shelters in the Southeast engage in unforgivable levels of animal cruelty and neglect, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. We got Smiley home. Over the course of the next day, as I nursed Smiley and watched him bond adorably with my daughter and my dog, I got in touch with rescue groups, volunteers, and adopters in the area, and found out one disturbing story after another. Floyd County Animal Control euthanized 20-100 animals per week that it documented. Hundreds of animals, like Smiley’s mother and the seven kittens of the cat in the back room, were never cataloged and their deaths went unreported. When animals died of neglect or outright abuse, their numbers were just added to the list of weekly euthanizations, to cover their preventable deaths. When they did survive long enough to be euthanized, it took place by intracardiac injection—a “euthanasia” form typically used only on comatose animals, because it causes severe pain for 15-20 minutes before the animal finally gets the mercy of death. The stories grew worse and worse. The shelter manager at Floyd County Animal Control had once shot a dog in the parking lot. Someone had burned a kitten’s paw and cut her body with a pocket knife. A dog left the shelter with a broken jaw that he didn’t have when he first arrived. Inmate workers had deliberately slammed young kittens’ heads in doors, crushing their tiny skulls. As I heard these stories, I kept asking, “Why hasn’t this been reported?” and found out that all of it had been reported– many, many times– but these cries were unanswered. Rescue groups, volunteers, and adopters who had made these complaints were subsequently banned from entering Floyd County Animal Control, but the shelter still went uninvestigated and unprosecuted. I wasn’t going to give up. I called every single organization I could think of to report neglect and abuse by Floyd County Animal Control. The ASPCA. The USDA. The Georgia Department of Agriculture. The Georgia Animal Control Association. The Floyd County Sheriff’s Department. Everyone I called either did nothing to help or simply told me to call someone else. Most of them had heard before that Floyd County Animal Control was “pretty bad,” but it was always someone else’s problem. Someone else was supposed to investigate it. Several of them had even suggested that I call Floyd County Animal Control to report abuse by Floyd County Animal Control. By the end of the day, I had made a total of nineteen phone calls, none of which proved at all fruitful. What shouldn’t have happened… Late the next morning, after a long and sleepless night, I woke up to the mews of my little kitten—my Smiley, my baby, so much more than just 13C-2106. I put him in my lap and immediately knew something was wrong. He felt cold. He couldn’t stand. I checked his reflexes and he was unresponsive. I had just seen him at 5:00 a.m. when I’d last gotten up to check on him, and he was fine. Now, just a few hours later, he was clearly dying. I wrapped him in a towel and rushed him at 95 miles per hour to the vet’s office, hazard lights flashing. It was only seconds after seeing Smiley that my vet turned to me and urgently said, “He’s dying. No, there’s nothing that can be done. He’s hurting and I need a decision quickly. Do I have your permission to euthanize?” Then, just like that, my kitten was gone. I’d only had him for two days. The vet said there could have been any of dozens of causes. Hypothermia, even though he had a heating pad. Hypoglycemia, even though he’d been fed hours before. A genetic defect. A contagious disease. The damage might have already been done when Floyd County Animal Control had left him with no food or water after his nursing mother had died. Ultimately, these sudden deaths, called “fading kitten syndrome” were common in young kittens left to survive without their mothers. The government will do nothing to stop it. I’m out of options. No one is listening when I report Floyd County Animal Control’s cruelty. The government will do nothing to stop it. No matter who I call, it will always be seen as someone else’s problem– some other organizations’ duty to investigate. But, in Smiley’s memory, I’m not going to give up on exposing them. Maybe—just maybe—this incredibly sick shelter can be brought to task if enough people find out about what’s happening behind the cold, heavy door of the “back room.” If our government is too corrupt to investigate internal cruelty by a government-sponsored agency, it seems that We the People are going to have to expose this travesty ourselves. If enough people spread the word and express outrage, it may force some kind of reform from the ground up. In memory of my furbaby, please spread the word: Floyd County Animal Control, in Rome, Georgia, neglects and abuses animals. This needs to stop now. No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - avg Version: 2014.0.4158 / Virus Database: 3615/6797 - Release Date: 10/31/13
Posted on: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 22:04:36 +0000
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