The Victoria SPCA may be trying to practice limited surrender of cats. We've been told that a Victoria cat rescue society is getting phone calls from cat dumpers who have been turned down by the Victoria SPCA and told that there is a waiting list to surrender their cat.

It is not written policy - it can't be because the SPCA official policy is to take them all and kill the unsellable to make room for more, but the manager is doing it anyway.

The Victoria SPCA has led the way before, recently defying orders from CAMP (the SPCA's head office culling crew), to kill specified dogs. And Millie Sargent, the wife of the current president of the BC SPCA Board of Directors, defied the BC SPCA several years ago by posting all the horrors she discovered about the Victoria SPCA when she volunteered there by allowing AAS to publish her evidence (See http://www.animaladvocates.com/spca-victoria.htm ). The BC SPCA threatened to sue Millie and AAS but the SPCA had to call off their lawyers because we had the facts. (See http://www.animaladvocates.com/libelthreat.htm ) and http://www.animaladvocates.com/libel-2nd-attackOct02.htm

Limiting surrender is the only way to break the cycle of 'get/get rid of' that the SPCA encourages, enables, and benefits from, and limiting surrender can mean that resources are freed to use for animal welfare instead of animal shuffling.

Does the Victoria SPCA have a cat room and a cat garden? If not, does it have plans to build these? In our opinion, it should stop taking all cats until it does, as keeping animals in cages for extended periods causes distress, and distress is a criminal offence under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act - in other words, it is legally defined as cruelty.

Every SPCA causes distress, even 'critical distress' (death) by keeping animals in cages, and every SPCA branch should shut its doors until it can provide humane care of the helpless animals in its charge. SPCA facilities should not ever be called shelters because they do not shelter - until SPCAs provide humane sheltering and rehabilitation, they merely impound animals until they are sold or killed or until they die of SPCA induced disease.