Dear Editor:
Is our way of dealing with homeless dogs and cats – locking them in cages until adopted by someone, or euthanizing them if not – the best way? (Reporter, Dec. 5). It would be great if we had a law punishing those who throw their pets out of doors when caring for them becomes inconvenient. We don’t but we can take comfort, perhaps in the knowledge that these corpses are not wasted. Some sources say they’re ground up, mixed with hay and antibiotics and fed to mad cows, which stagger off to the slaughterhouse and become steaks and hamburgers.
A Peace Corps volunteer of my acquaintance, who had served in Ethiopia, had a dog that he couldn’t take home with him for health and red tape reasons, so, because he loved this dog and didn’t want it to suffer “on the streets,” he “put it to sleep.” He felt he had done the right thing, but I was shocked. If the dog had lived, who knows what Chance, and Time, might have played in its life. It might have suffered, but it might not have. Death is a book called, Now We’ll Never Know.
It’s true that dogs, not being as adaptable, have less chance to survive “on the streets” than cats. If I ran the Jersey City Humane Society, I’d open the cages and turn the cats loose. Many people put out food for stray cats. My wife used to put a box outside with a scrap blanket in it for a beat-up old Tom who would use this hospitality to lick his amorous-fight wounds before disappearing again for a week to court yet another puss in heat.
Besides, we have way too many squirrels with no natural enemies to keep them honest, and have become fat and bored, with nothing to do but vandalize our backyard gardens. Some hungry cats would be just what Doctor Nature ordered.
T. Weed