At 12:30 am, on the 24th of November, 1999, Laurie Hansen of Surrey, found a cat that was lying in the middle of the road in Vancouver, hit by a car. She took the cat to a 24 hour emergency vet clinic, and because he survived the night, and he was a stray, he was transferred to the SPCA clinic in Vancouver.

Laurie loves cats, and because she felt connected to this one, she visited him in the clinic regularly, coming all the way from Surrey. She called him Roady.

At the clinic she overheard conversations among the staff about how many unclaimed strays are killed, so she told them that if no one claimed Roady, she would adopt him, rather than have him killed.

Laurie has a disease which causes non-malignant tumours in her brain and every few years she has to undergo brain surgery to remove as much as the growth as possible. Consequently, Laurie is on a disability pension, a very small disability pension.

Laurie tried to find Roady’s owners, and when they couldn’t be found, Laurie applied to adopt him.

The adoption fee for anyone else would be $95.00, but the clinic insisted that because Laurie had brought Roady in, she would have to pay the full bill, just as though she was Roady’s owner. And even though Laurie had her vet in Surrey phone the clinic to confirm that Laurie wasn’t the owner of Roady, they refused to budge. It looked to Laurie that they would rather risk killing Roady, than let her have him for the regular adoption fee.

Laurie was told the bill totaled $1000 (a pretty high bill considering there was no surgery). When Laurie explained her financial position, the clinic offered her Roady for half price. Laurie got the $500 together and took Roady home.

Two weeks later, only after Laurie’s insistence, the clinic sent Laurie a breakdown of Roady’s bill. It showed a total of $743.56, not $1000.00, so Laurie paid 2/3rds of a bill she should never have had to pay at all.

When Laurie objected to having paid $500, she was told she could surrender Roady to the SPCA and get half her money back. Roady’s chances of being adopted and not euthanized at the SPCA were very slim. In fact, their offer was an almost certain death sentence for Roady.

When Laurie told all this to Animal Advocates, we contacted Pets in Need and Pacific Animal Foundation and between us, we gave Laurie back her $500.00.

(AAS, along with many other truly humane organizations, has helped to pay the bills for animals owned by needy people, after the SPCA has told them to call us. And we have been told countless stories just like the one above.