This story tells it how it is. straight out. Please be a responsible pet owner... desex, microchip AND register your cat/dog!
story from brisbanetimes.com.au
This woman has killed 100 cats this week.
She had to.
Euthanasing cats and kittens is her business.
Melanie "Minnie" Layton is an animal attendant at the RSPCA's centre at Fairfeld.
Recent moves by the State Government to force councils to make it compulsory for people to register their cats by July 1 may be one small way of making her job easier.
However, if councils don't strongly encourage ratepayers to desex their cats - with hefty discounts for desexed cats in the new cat registrations - her job will continue to be as hard as it really is.
On the day we spoke it had been a hard day.
"The other day we had to euthanase 32 cats, primarily because there are just too many cats," Minnie said.
"And these were beautiful cats. There was nothing wrong with them - they were healthy, really beautiful cats," she said.
"And that is really hard to deal with because they don't deserve that.
"They deserve to live and be happy and healthy."
The irony for the Queensland's peak animal welfare organisation, the RSPCA, is that too many Queenslanders and certainly Brisbanites think cats and kittens are cute, but easily disposable.
When they become an inconvenience, they are dumped.
The RSPCA receives 18,000 cats and kittens each year and kills 12,000 of them by legal injection.
Minnie Layton's job is to clean up that mess.
For five days straight in a month-long roster, Minnie Layton puts cats and kittens to death.
Stray cats have a three-day shelf life, but if someone surrenders their own cat, they have just 24 hours.
And it is not pretty.
Unfortunately, it is pretty necessary.
The RSPCA would choke if she didn't do her job.
Minnie Layton might spend three days looking after cats and kittens and then, on the fourth day come and collect the cats that the vet marks with a big "C" on the chart above their stall.
They all go off to "Central", the centre at the RSPCA's Fairfield home where they are killed.
After that, the cats get an injection in the stomach with a legal mix of barbiturates.
And then there is the disposal.
"After the euthanasing we have to check to make sure that they have passed away," Minnie explains.
"And after that we have to look after each body and dispose of each correctly."
That part gets serious.
Every animal attendant has a soft side.
Later, Minnie says the euthanasing is a hard, but necessary part of her job - something that effects all her colleagues.
"They have images of cats they have euthanased going through their heads at night," Minnie said.
"And they always question themselves. Why? Why that cat?
"You just question the owners of the cats. Why didn't you get your cat de-sexed."
Perhaps surprisingly, Minnie does have pets.
"I have two cats, a dog and a fish."
help out here: RSPCA
