Pound staff get their hands on stray cats... A One Voice investigation

Gateways to employment, an integration project, made up of odds and ends

Should animals who are already homeless have to endure the lack of hygiene, discomfort, and psychological and social fragility of the humans who look after them once they are rescued?

When we received the first report on this pound-rescue, the Bardot Foundation and former volunteers had already called out to the prefecture several times since 2015, without much success. Like for SIVU 47, the first part of our campaign in pounds, the manager of a neighbouring rescue centre herself had tried over and over again to improve the situation. Including with the support of the Confédération nationale de défense de l’animal [National Confederation for Animal Defence], by bringing their attention to hygiene problems, a lack of respect for the regulations, and a lack of training for the staff with disastrous consequences for the animals.

Gateways to employment also offer workshops aimed at reintegration through other activities such as planting vegetables and plants but also through work. This social mission is exemplary… while sentient beings in distress themselves do not come into play.

Our investigation reveals that most cats taken in are killed there!

When our investigators were finally able to visit the site, lockdowns and interdepartmental transport restrictions having prevented our usual responsiveness, there were several improvements in the infrastructures. In the exterior space of the cattery, for example, a concrete slab had been poured in place of the beaten earth that was there before. But it is still impossible to clean it satisfactorily.

Hygiene, lighting, climatic hazards, illnesses and injuries, escapes: basic problems still existed. For months, no cats were put up for adoption because no treatment was planned for them. After a quarantine spent crammed into a shed with no daylight, without insulation and with no veterinary visit, they were placed into a communal cattery. Before this, there were no preliminary FIV or FeLV tests either. A complete lack of care for these cats, the majority of them affected by coryza and intestinal problems…

Are unwell kittens and cats here being exposed to the cold again now? That is the problem with a lack of public money and precarious solutions: we have to choose between two unsuitable solutions and it is the cats who pay the price.

2020 was a terrible year for cats in the pound-rescue in Sud Manche. Real carnage happened there. The knacker who comes along when the pound has filled their 200kg freezer up with bodies, in other words usually approximately every six months to a year, came three times more often. And for good reason! Hundreds of cats died throughout the year, most of them without explanation.

Did they die from illness? If yes, which one? Were they ‘euthanised’? If yes, by whom and for what reason? One day, ten deaths occurred, nine of which were ‘euthanasias’. Kittens were slaughtered for no reason and sometimes without a veterinarian being present. By whom? How? The cats and the few dogs found in the freezer had not all been seen by a veterinarian. Their open for adoption profile was taken off the Facebook page. Incidentally, we are wondering how some kittens were killed because frozen blood was visible in their throats. The DDPP (veterinary services) pinned this disastrous management on the rescue-pound and asked for new procedures.

The dogs, during the same period, had mostly been returned to their families or adopted. It is clear that the treatment by the rescue-pound is not the same towards them at all… And also the treatment that certain individuals subject cats to by neglecting to get them microchipped and neutered.

Resolve the problem by attacking it at its root

We have been asking for a long time, and even more so since 2018, for an urgent plan for stray cats in France. The November 2021 law illustrates its shortcomings, one of which and by no means least is not having enforced neutering on non-LOOF cats throughout the country, with a clear layout of towns and a real commitment from the State and public services.

The Chatipi programme that we are developing cannot fulfil the educational mission for stray cats and resolve the national problem that they are faced with alone. There are currently fifteen million cats in French homes and double the number of dogs. And almost as many are having to get by alone in our streets, endure the harsh elements, hunger, thirst, and sometimes human violence. Because in our country, no less than eleven million cats are stray in towns, villages, and the countryside. This figure, reported a few years ago, is without doubt very underestimated today.

In pounds, if a cat is not microchipped, it will be killed after the eight required days if it is not claimed or transferred into a rescue centre… if it is not overloaded as is unfortunately the case everywhere.

Individuals must shoulder their responsibilities. Living with one or more cats is not inconsequential. They need us, their supposed independence conceals a great vulnerability. They cannot survive on the streets. No litter should be born there, far away from the sight and protection of humans. Each kitten must be microchipped and neutered before six months of age, and public services must invest hugely in neutering stray cats. In each commune. Pounds and rescue centres are structurally lacking in resources; the State must intervene.

On the weekend of 10 and 11 December, our activists will be out on the streets throughout France (in Aix-en-Provence, Amiens, Gap, Golfe Juan, La Rochelle, Lille, Lyon, Nice, Paris, Tours, Troyes, and on 14 December in Bordeaux), to raise awareness of feline straying and of possible and effective solutions: systematic neutering of non-LOOF cats and the fight against compulsive buying on the internet, particularly with the upcoming holidays.

You can sign our petitions for an urgent plan for stray cats, but also for better protection for cats and dogs, our companions.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice