I hope everyone who thinks it's OK to "just breed her once" or "just buy one dog" reads this all the

[SheilaT]

11. Thank you.

I did volunteer work in a shelter some years back, and I can attest to just about everything you said. The only thing I would question is the euthanasia. I never witnessed it at the shelter, but I have three times with my own cats, and I never saw them spasming or defecating on themselves.

And while I do understand that things can change and keeping a pet can become difficult, I agree that everyone needs to understand the realities of animal shelters. I also want to note the fundamental hypocrisy of "no kill" shelters. You see, those shelters either farm out their euthanasia, or simply stop accepting animals when they are full. Yes, the animals that make it to them will live out their lives, but meanwhile other animals WILL be euthanized.

When I was working at the shelter, we had a little flier to underscore the enormity of the animal overpopulation problem. I forget the exact numbers, but the essential truth is still here: For no cats or dogs to be euthanized, every single family in this country would need to have three dogs and six cats, or maybe it was seven dogs and two cats. I don't recall, but the combined numbers were well above what the average family would be willing or able to have.

As an adult I've had four cats. The first one came with the house we bought. After she lived out her life, we adopted another from a shelter. Less than a year later I adopted one from our vet. Vets often have cats or dogs they've taken in and can be adopted. The last was a stray who showed up in our front yard, determined that we were her last, best hope for life. She'd been someone's well-loved pet, and it still bothers me that she wound up on her own. She must have been at least 13 or 14 years old by then, and was starving, supporting herself by hunting. She was so thin that the vertebra on her spine were like needles, they were so sharp. She was flea infested and probably no more than two days from death when we started giving her water and feeding her. After about a week I took her to the vet, got the fleas taken care of, then took her inside. It took a while for her and the other two cats to adjust to each other, and I never regretted for a minute that we took her in. That was nearly seven years ago, and she as well as the other two have passed on. At present I am without any cats, but someday I will take in more. I'll go to a shelter and say, "I want the oldest cat you have here." When I was a volunteer I'd see elderly cats whose human had died or gone into a nursing home and there was no one who would take them in. Those are the sorts of cats I will someday take into my life. Right now, I can't take any, but it will happen again.