Clarity on No-Kill Shelters

No-kill shelters used to be a Gray Matter for me because I’ve seen (and read about) the ones that aren’t doing it right and merely warehouse animals, in cages, for their entire lives. Naturally, when you go to Guide Star or Charity Navigator and research their finances, you see that they are very inefficient because they spend so much money per animal, and the animals don’t rotate out much, so the number of animals served ends up being very low, at a high cost per animal. (Hence the low rating of some no-kill shelters; the way they’re doing it just isn’t working.)

I also look at life on the streets for the average homeless cat and think, "that sucks. A lifetime of starvation, disease, danger (in the form of animals, humans, traffic, and the weather), and fear. And you’re always on the lookout for the next potential problem."

Like the people at PETA, Animal Person has argued that the above two scenarios aren’t much of a life, and would rather be dead. (Of course, that’s no stretch for a quasi-Buddhist, as I’m not particularly attached to life anyway.) The argument is one of preventing or decreasing suffering. When I reread my post, "On the Euthanizing of Feral Cats," part of me still finds the argument compelling.

But if an Animal Person doesn’t believe that we have the right to take the freedom from another animal–human or otherwise–it doesn’t make sense that we’d endorse kill shelters. In addition, as long as there are successful no-kill shelters right now, we know we can create more; we already have templates.

We humans have created the present cat and dog overpopulation crisis, therefore I believe we have an obligation to do something about it. And that something shouldn’t be: kill them. It’s cowardly and cruel. What we should do is duplicate successful Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR) programs, such as the one described at The Animal Spirit, and the sanctuary design of the magnificent Best Friends Animal Society.

Furthermore, killing the animals clearly isn’t working, and more important, it doesn’t solve the problem. Problem-solving can be a lot of work and take more time and energy than the band-aid of killing, but an entire society created this problem, and it isn’t unreasonable to ask that society to band together to fix it. We must all be accountable, and give the animals we’ve put on this earth (due to our own irresponsibility and/or ignorance) a chance at a good life.

Finally, the philosophy of animal rights is contrary to mass euthanasia, and I’ve been campaigning for consistency and for the alignment of your beliefs and actions. If you believe that animals are not here for our use, abuse, or exploitation, you don’t make a choice between two evils and choose euthanasia over no-kills. Instead, you say: My current no-kill might not be ideal, but there are others that are more successful and rather than reinventing the wheel, I’ll go to them for advice and tweak my program.

Check out your local no-kills and kill shelters, and refer them to The Animal Spirit. Visit Best Friends, in person or online. This is one of the few problems we can solve in our lifetime. Let’s make it happen.

Thanks to Gary Francione for helping me with this important issue.