Background (Preamble):
Coastal Animal Services Ltd has provided animal control services and pound facilities for North Cowichan since 1975. It is time they stopped using the notorious and archaic gas box to destroy unwanted cats, young and old as well as feral cats and kittens.

For years, animal control agencies and shelters have destroyed unwanted cats by asphyxiating them to death with carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide gas in the gas box. Thankfully, many animal control operators have now changed their euthanasia protocol by taking unwanted cats to veterinary clinics for lethal injection, or by having animal shelter technicians perform the injection, which is much faster and far more humane.

Warning - graphic description: I have seen what cats look like after being killed by gassing, it is a gruesome sight. Cats and kittens are loaded into wire cages, which are then placed inside the gas box. The lid is shut and the gas is turned on. Kittens, climb to the top of the inside of the wire cage and are found dead with their paws sticking up through the top of the cage, their jaws tightly clamped down on the wire. I have seen litters of kittens in with the mother cats. They died with their eyes wide open while trying frantically to escape. The mother cats were slumped over, listening to their kittens dying cries as they themselves were suffocated.

The person responsible for removing their bodies would have to pry their jaws open to get them off the wire. Cats being gassed do not just fall peacefully asleep, as some pound operators who continue to use gas will tell you.

Veterinarians provide a faster and less stressful means of euthanasia for unwanted felines whose lives must end all too soon. Unadoptable dogs from Coastal Animal Services are taken to a veterinary clinic and euthanized there. Why not the cats as well?

Petition:
We, the undersigned, demand the owner of Coastal Animal Services of BC Ltd to immediately stop killing cats in the gas box and to dismantle it.

The cats should be taken to the veterinarian for humane euthanasia that will end their lives peacefully and with no suffering. Please help to stop the unnecessary suffering of these cats by signing today.

Vicki Boutellier