Penny Levesque has been rescuing abandoned and feral cats in this east Van neighbourhood for eight years. She calculates that she has helped 200 cats. During that time, Penny has asked the SPCA for assistance several times and never got any. About nine months ago she asked again for some financial assistance to spay a cat and was told that they would give her a small break on the price, but by now Penny was so broke that she couldn't afford so little help.

Now the house where the feral cat colony live and are fed and monitored by Penny is being torn down and Penny is desperately looking for a place for the colony to be moved to. She hasn't asked the SPCA because she knows that the SPCA kills feral cats.

That fear of the SPCA is rife in the animal rescue community in BC. Not one rescuer that AAS has known in our 15 years of rescue work, trusts the SPCA. Nor do hundreds of animal lovers all over BC. Everyone who does animal rescue in BC is phoned constantly by people who want to surrender their pet, but say they can't bring themselves to take it to the SPCA. That distrust and fear of the SPCA is so widespread, is proof that something is very wrong.