Tulsa's Pet Overpopulation Crisis

I studied the classified ads this past Sunday. There was a small section for cats, most "free to good home" kittens (How does someone who gives away a living being as if it's an old sweater define "good home," do you suppose?). The dog section was over 2 and one-half page-long columns. Of the hundred-plus ads, five were for rescue groups; six offered mixed breed dogs or puppies (free, of course); one ad offered mixed breed puppies given a nonsensical name and a hefty price tag. All the other ads were for purebred dogs, most litters of puppies. In all, there were several hundred animals offered for sale in the three columns of ads. During the week preceding the sale of these advertised pets, local shelters, vets and rescue groups put to death a similar number of animals. What is the difference between the 400 advertised pets and the 400 dead pets?  Why did the second group of pets have to die?

The reason they died is that no one wanted them.  Although there were 400 families scouting the classifieds for a pet, they bought pets from breeders, puppy mills, pet stores and families seeking to make a quick buck. And so the 400 pets in the shelters died.

This scenario is played out across this country, in every city and town.

What does this say about our culture?  In a culture in which people throw birthday parties for their dogs and spend billions every year on pet food, toys and animal health care, where do the millions of animals who die in shelters come from?

They are abandoned at those shelters by the very people who so proudly claim to love animals.

The Tulsa city shelter kills over 12,000 unwanted pets every year. They don't want to, but they have to- what else can they do? Consider that other shelters in the metro area, some fifty or more rescue groups and some seventy veterinary clinics in the area put many more to death. Factor in the uncounted animals who die abandoned in rural areas and along roads, as well as those victims of mistreatment, cruelty and neglect, and the number of animals who die at the hands of Tulsans easily exceeds twenty thousand every year. But it doesn't end there. Conservative estimates place the number of feral and free-roaming cats in this country to be equal to the number of house cats- seventy million. Most of these cats are abandoned or allowed to roam by people, and very few are spayed or neutered. Since males die at a higher rate than females, there are more than 35 million reproducing free-roaming cats in the US. What do you suppose happens to the 180 million or more kittens that these cats produce every year?

Our overfed, wasteful, disposable society treats its animals the same way it treats its natural resources. We use them until we tire of them, then throw them away and move on to something new. But the animals we discard like fast food wrappers are living, intelligent beings. They can suffer, feel pain and loneliness or joy and happiness at our hands. They can live full lives in the care of loving guardians, or die by the thousands- healthy, young and unwanted.

The persons responsible for their deaths are not those who place the needles in their veins. Those who inject the poison that ends their lives are doing the work of those who command them to do the killing. They are commanded to kill by everyone who surrenders an animal to a shelter; everyone who dumps or abandons a pet; everyone who opens the classified ads instead of driving to the shelter to adopt. People who breed their pets can and will choose to stop, if no one buys. But dogs and cats in a shelter cannot choose- they can only die.

Are you one of the people responsible for the killing? You are if you have ever allowed a pet to have babies, purposely or accidentally. You are if you have an unneutered male dog or cat; they can father hundreds of babies in a year, while one female can produce ten to twenty. You are responsible if you have sold or given away a pet who was not spayed or neutered, allowing the next owner to breed. You are responsible if you have purchased an animal from a pet store, breeder, puppy mill or family breeder. For when you bought that pet that day, there was an animal in a shelter who was literally dying to meet you.

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