Gwen was dumped for her second time at an SPCA when we found her. She was less than a year old, and had been in the SPCA for less than a week this time around. She was so depressed in her tiny cage that she appeared to be either drugged or ill. She lay on her side in her Hide and Perch box, with her head sticking out and resting on the cold stainlees steel. Her eyes were distant and unfocused, staring into space, and she did not respond to any noise or visual stimuli at all. She didn't even blink. Quite frankly, she looked dead.
An SPCA staff person had scrawled the word "Housesoils" across her kennel card. Good sell SPCA. Gwen had no chance.
We were told by SPCA staff that Gwen had spent her entire time in her previous home hiding and housesoiling. We were also told that the home was a busy one with lots of kids and activity. We were told that Gwen was very shy and just would not adapt readily.
Within an hour of bringing Gwen home with us she was merrily batting at the water drips from the bathroom tap, eating, purring, and chattering away. She was not ill, or drugged, or deaf. She had just been terribly depressed, so depressed that she had withdrawn from the world and gone catatonic in her tiny SPCA cage.
There are thousands just like her, rotting their lives away in SPCA warehouses, waiting listless and depressed in their puny cells. Waiting to be killed or sold. Many stop eating and become ill while they wait, and instead of being treated, are killed.
Gwen just got lucky.