Most days I feel good about my job.  I save lives for a living.  That's something to feel good about.  On days like today, however, I despair of ever making a difference.

Today 4 tiny, 10 day old kittens were found tied into a plastic bag, and left to die in a Selkirk Ave. field.  This was a deliberate, blatant act of cruelty.  The person who did this will probably do it again. 

Somehow, a significant portion of our populace has come to believe that it is okay to make other beings suffer.  It's okay to inflict pain.  It's okay to kill.  It's okay to stuff helpless kittens into a plastic bag and leave them to die.

If this was the first time something like this had happened at CSC, I'd be shocked.  Unfortunately, we see it all the time.  This week 2 kittens were found abandoned on a door step.  Not long ago 2 kittens were found tied into a plastic bag and stuffed in a garbage bin.  We've taken in kittens that were tossed from moving vehicles, taped into boxes and left on the side of the road, dumped out on the street and abandoned, and left locked in empty apartments when their owners moved.  All of the people who did these things thought that they were okay things to do.

I am no longer shocked at the truly evil things that some people think are okay things to do.  I am angry.  Angry that these kittens have suffered.  Angry that they are now at much higher risk of disease, infection, and death because they are not with their mother.  Angry that whoever did this is free to do it again.  Angry that even if caught, the scum that would kill helpless kittens would probably not receive any punishment for the crime.

And I don't feel good about that.

Originally published on September 28, 2009.

Over the past week (Sept. 2009) the Winnipeg Humane Society has been engaged in a controversial bit of name calling.  WHS executive director, Bill McDonald, was quoted as having called no-kill shelters warehouses for animals that aren't being adopted because nobody wants to adopt them.  When asked to apologize McDonald went on the offensive and claimed that "so called" no-kill shelters don't want to acknowledge that "euthanasia" is a sad fact of life here in Winnipeg.  I don't want to get involved in the debate over who is or isn't right.  I do, however, want to convince everyone to use the correct terminology.

Euthanasia means mercy killing.  When you euthanize, you end suffering.  You put a being out of its misery.  Ending the life of a creature that is suffering is rightly called euthanasia.  In our society it is deemed humane to euthanize animals for which there is no other way to end suffering.

Ending the life of a healthy, adoptable animal, solely to create space for more animals, IS NOT EUTHANASIA.  Ending the life of a sick animal with a treatable illness or condition is not euthanasia.  Ending the life of a non-symptomatic animal with an untreatable disease or condition is not euthanasia.  These acts are destroying, putting down, or killing.  The WHS kills thousands of animals every year in order to make space for more animals.  They apply the word euthanasia to this space clearing in an attempt to make it appear humane, because our society does not consider the act of killing animals to create space for more animals to be humane.

Unfortunately, applying incorrect terminology clouds the issue and makes it difficult to follow whatever logic might be in use by the different parties to an argument.  The Humane Society calls its space clearing "euthanasia", thereby implying that it is humane to end the life of an animal that is not suffering.  The act may be done humanely, but that does not make it a humane act.  The use of the word "euthanasia" is, therefore, inappropriate.

I am asking all concerned to PLEASE FIND ANOTHER EUPHEMISM for what the WHS does when it kills animals to clear space for more animals.  Stop clouding the issue by using a word that means something entirely different.