Don't blame SPCA for your guilty feelings

Editor:

The loss of the Chilliwack SPCA shelter rests squarely on the shoulders of the people in this community who used that shelter as a dumping ground to abdicate their responsibility to treat animals with compassion.

There is a serious animal welfare problem in this community and it is unfortunate the SPCA has decided to cut and run. But it is a private organization and has the right to operate where it chooses.

For those of you who have dumped, regardless of the reason why, the decent and honourable thing would have been to take the animal to a veterinarian and have it euthanized immediately and not left to cower in fear and confusion in a horrid little cage or run. But of course, you didn't want to pay especially if it wasn't your animal to begin with.

For those of you who dumped your dog, know that every time someone walked by his run he eagerly watched to see if it was you come to take him home. He doesn't understand the people he loved and trusted unconditionally, betrayed that love and trust. If he saw you again he would greet you with the same enthusiasm he always did.

For those of you who dumped your bunnies because you didn't want them anymore, know that no one else wanted them either. Except for me. I took 14 of those rabbits you people didn't want because I do care.

And for those of you who dumped a cat, your own trusting house pet or some pesky stray, know the Chilliwack SPCA is a slaughter house for cats. Being emotionally fragile creatures, cats handle the trauma of being dumped by refusing to eat and a cat who doesn't eat for two days is headed on a downward spiral to death.

Can you even begin to imagine the terror a house cat feels who is used to roaming free in the house and who now is stuffed into a little cage and has to eat and sleep right beside her litter box. Or the terror of a wild cat, used to roaming free, now suffering the same fate. If she needs medication she likely can't be treated because she isn't used to being handled. Know that a cat lasts for about two weeks in that environment. Know that maybe one in 10 gets out of the Chilliwack SPCA alive.

Abandoned animals are a community problem, not an SPCA problem. Shame on each and every one of you.

Wendy Weber
Chilliwack