She even though she did a good thing, the problem is that she’s got a bad attitude about it?
It makes it even more reckless whether or not it turns out to be true, unless she has Superman-like powers of telescopic vision and memory that would enable her to know one way or the other at that distance.
Your kinda missing the whole beauty of this pitting.
Its not just ONE thing. You don’t even have to choose one thing. That’s what makes it so fucked up. Its fucked up a bunch of different ways.
It’s like a buffet of fuck up ed ness. Everybody can find something they" like".
AVMA (I can find the link if someone really wants and can’t find it themselves) has a document on humane euthanasia techniques. A gunshot to the head is an acceptable form of euthanasia, with a lot of caveats about where to place the gun, proper training, etc.–it’s easier to go wrong with a point-blank gunshot than it is with an intravenous FatalPlus injection, at which point it becomes very inhumane.
Not looking at the picture, but I’m willing to believe in this case that the bolt caused an instant-kill. That does NOT mean that a crossbow shot from a distance is humane, because you need to choose a method based on foolproofedness. There’s no way to guarantee that a cat you’re aiming at won’t twitch, even if it’s sleeping, resulting in your planned headshot actually being a shot to the neck or shoulder or something that’s not an instant kill.
And that’s setting aside the fact that she wasn’t qualified to decree that cat a feral cat under those circumstances.
“We’re gonna need a bigger sign.”
I suppose the only thing left that would have made it even more fucked up is if she had chosen to dispose of the carcass in spectacular fashion.
Even looking at it from a local viewpoint, I would rather not have a stable local population even of sterile cats. Plus then I don’t have it on my conscience that the incoming ferals are driven off to be a problem for somebody else.
One suggestion might be to tell people on Facebook not to pitch a fit over kitty pics, but I suppose that’s not practical.
Regards,
Shodan
WhyNot seemed to be putting emphasis on stress too.
I think your points are valid. Injections can be inhumane too when they go wrong. Overall there are no good ways to put down a cat, I think, only worse and better ones.
Poor kitty 
I “like” that she chopped off one its legs.
Speaking of Alley Cat Allies, they’ve offered “a $7,500 reward for evidence leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible”. That arrest and conviction would be under Texas Penal Code Chapter 42, Section 42.092: Cruelty to non-livestock animals.
My vet killed one of my cats last year. I’m happy about this- the alternative was to let the cat continue to suffer until she died of cancer. Killing cats is part of a vet’s job. I don’t think it’s a part most of them enjoy, but I think you’d have a hard time being a vet if you really couldn’t bring yourself to kill cats.
Problem is, if you don’t have a stable local population of sterile cats, you have an ecological niche that is going unfilled. Something is going to move into that niche, unless someone puts a hell of a lot of effort (meaning: money) into preventing that from happening. It’s likely to be non-sterilized feral cats from somewhere else. In that case, you won’t have a stable population. A stable population of sterilized cats might be able to keep an exploding population of unsterilized cats from moving in, possibly at less cost than other methods of keeping the cat population under control. How much are you willing to pay to not have feral cats around?
Even if you could eradicate the feral cat population, that doesn’t mean there won’t be other problems. How does an explosion in mouse and rat populations sound to you? They will be a lot more likely to get into your house without your permission than feral cats will. Their poop and pee can spread disease- it will be different diseases than cat poop would spread, but diseases nonetheless.
Does that photo look like a bad photoshop job to anyone else but me?
I say “meh” over killing the feral cat (if that’s true). I’ve killed several feral animals at our ranch, that I’ve considered unsafe. I even shot and killed one of my neighbor’s dogs that was out of control, after I had repeatedly asked him to keep it on his property.
The vet’s problem is that she posted the pic and bragged about her conquest on FB.
It’s already been explained to you that there’s a difference between humane euthanasia and an arrow through the head, but vets do have an oath, which is included in the letter this vet’s alma mater wrote condemning what she did:
It could be argued that Dimwit Vet upheld part of that American Veterinary Medical Association oath*, which dealt with preventing animal suffering (if one is considering the birds and other animals tormented and killed by stray cats).
Where she may have run afoul of the oath is the part where it says “I will practice my profession conscientiously, with dignity”. Gloating over the kill on Facebook is arguably undignified (though strictly speaking, it wasn’t part of her professional activities).
*it isn’t clear to me that every veterinarian graduate takes a (or that particular) oath. It is often assumed that every graduating physician takes the Hippocratic Oath, which is not the case (there was an alternate credo attested to when I graduated from my hippie Communist med school).
Well, it wasnt a feral and that’s obvious just looking at it.
Now, yes, sometimes if one seems a really diseased or injured feral, the best thing is to put it out of it’s misery. But that’s a very healthy looking cat and apparently someone much loved pet.
We seem to have conflicting reports if this was a neighbor’s beloved pet or if this was some random feral cat. To me, that makes a huge difference. If it was someone’s pet, then fuck this vet. If it was a random feral cat, then. I would think that trapping a cat and dropping the trap off at the HUMANE society or animal shelter would be the recommended course of action. I know I can get human traps at my local animal shelter on loan. They’ll even come pick up whatever I catch.
My uncle is a veterinarian and my mom is a crazy hoarding cat lady. I’ve heard my uncle make jokes about taking care of mom’s cat “problem” with his .22. I find this attitude shocking, but also recognize that my uncle is a vet in a rural, farmy area and feral cats are nuisances and also a public health concern (rabies). There’s a reason, however, why he and my own personal vet do not recommend that you put your own sick, dying animals down with your own .22 or a crossbow or a brick to the head. Because we can fuck it up and make the animal suffer even more. That’s why, when you pay for euthanasia, they start an IV line and give three different injections. The first two are for the owner – it’s just valium and puts the animal, literally, to sleep. The second one is a paralytic I think (so we aren’t disturbed by post-death twitching) and the third one actually does the killing. I’ve heard tales of animals walking happily out of gas chambers at shelters, so I surmise that mass euthanasia is problematic for its own reasons.
So I see it as irresponsible to kill an animal in a way that this person should, in her professional setting, advise clients against trying. And it’s also probably really bad for business where she works because if I took my animals to that clinic, there’s no way in hell I’d let that woman within 20 feet of my cat. And, at this point, I have no reason to believe she doesn’t also hold dogs in contempt as well. It’s the smug bragging about it on social media that really grinds my gears though.
Some of these points have already been covered so I’m just going to re-emphasize them.
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This was not a feral tom cat. It did not have the huge jowls of an adult, un-neutered tom and any knowledgeable animal person could see that. That fact alone should have made her pause and wonder if that was someone’s pet and if she were a decent human being that cared about pets and their owners she would not have loosed that arrow.
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Yes, veterinarians take an oath but they also have professional guidelines they must follow to provide humane euthanasia. An arrow through the head is not an approved method, whether or not it died instantly - and we only have her word that it was a quick kill.
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Whether you agree with killing ferals or not it was the ultimate idiocy to think that she should post that on social media. She had to realize that as a vet many of her clients and colleagues would not agree with her methods.
I understand the point, but as always, it is messy either way.
Supposing X = the number of sterile cats in a given niche sufficiently large to drive away non-sterile interlopers. X will presumably be a stable number, but as sterile cats die off, non-sterile ones will move in and be accepted, and begin to breed. Therefore the catch/sterilize/release program will have to be ongoing. In the same way, if we shoot cats instead of capturing and sterilizing them, that will have to be ongoing as well.
Regards,
Shodan
ISTM that it is easier to shoot a cat than to capture and sterilize it. That is, in the time it takes to capture and sterilize and release one cat, you could shoot three cats. That would imply you could reduce a population three times faster with the same effort to shoot cats rather than capture them, with the added benefit that “replacement” non-sterile cats are coming in and being shot rather than being driven out and damaging the environment elsewhere.
“FatalPlus” always gives me a wry chuckle – It’s fatal, plus!
Different environment, but I believe picking up a lab rodent by the tail and quickly smacking its head on the bench is a legitimate euthanasia technique. I believe that’s “Cervical Dislocation”?