"frlpwr" wrote in message ...
Kalyahna wrote:
And they can't choose to take perfectly adoptable animals and still
leave the sick and less friendly animals for other shelters to deal
with? Their acceptance of cats from other shelters doesn't eliminate
the cream-of-the-crop theory by any means.

Yes, it does. No-kill facilities and rescue groups "accept" (your own
word) the animals public and private kill shelters choose to release.
No-kill shelters and rescues take animals declined by public shelters,
animals scheduled to be destroyed. They don't walk past cages shopping
for the best and brightest and the shelter has no obligation to give
them the animals they want.

If there are good and bad euthanizing shelters, then that applies equally to
no-kills. For every no-kill that takes a sick or special needs animal, I
imagine there's a no-kill that will take in only healthy animals, or ones
with no history of behavioral problems.

There are good and bad euthanizing shelters. The public shelter in San
Francisco has a kitten fostering program that is the envy of every
no-kill and rescue group in the area.

But please know that a shelter is only as good as its policies allow.
Some shelters will not support volunteers willing to foster neo-nates.
San Mateo county shelter euthanizes any kitten not eating on its own.
Other shelters draw the line at eyes open. Our SF shelter fosters
little ones no bigger than over-sized peanuts.

(snip)

Ours has just been altered, basically to allow the option to experienced,
willing fosterers, to take on the newborns and the ones needing considerably
more care. We didn't really have that option before, and I've learned this
past year that I'm not up for it, but several other employees make fantastic
itty-bitty foster parents.

The San Mateo county shelter has night-drop boxes, metal-doored,
cage-like lockboxes, kind of like a night deposit slot at the bank.
During kitten seasons, assholes drop litters of neo-nates into these
torture chambers. They're so tiny, they fall through the grates and, as
the mechanized cages retract, they're crushed. The shelter has not
bothered to modify the design of these nightdrops. I guess they figure
the kittens are dead meat anyway. Saves them the trouble of doing
intake paperwork.

Like I said, a shelter is only as good as its policies.

That, frankly, is creepy, disgusting, and wrong. Humane agents have keys
into the building here so that they can get in and place the animals
directly into a cage. They do the paperwork themselves. We do get people who
abandon animals in crates or carriers outside the building (one woman tied
her dog to the back door and left a note with information on the dog, along
with her phone number), but it's actually (thankfully) quite rare.