#euthanasia mention

[gottawhump]

Surrender

115

CW/TW: pet whump, BBU/WRU, euthanasia mention, Facility mention

He didn’t mean to.

He didn’t mean to fall asleep in her arms, in their bed, in the master bedroom. He’d been so tired, every muscle sore and aching from the night before, and their bed was so soft. Her hands stroking his brow were so soothing. So comforting.

He didn’t meant to still be there when the front door opened, when the bedroom door banged opened.

They both sit upright, hair disheveled, clothes in disarray, under the owner’s angry gaze. 115 rolls out of the bed, and falls to the floor, prostrating himself at the owner’s feet.

“I’m sorry, sir, so sorry.” He repeats it like a chant.

“Dear, we were just cuddling.” She presses her body against the owner, trying to distract him.

“Whores, both of you.”

“Dear, it will never happen again.”

“You’re right. It won’t.”

He tries to make himself as small as possible in the trunk. He tries not to think about the warehouse, and the fighting Dogs.

He thinks about the Facility, 
about a small room tiled in white, fulled with relentless white light, never dark, never safe. He thinks of the disappointment of his Handlers. Back again? Oh, 115.

He thinks of the Drip, its cold rushing through his veins, taking away his memories, rendering him ready for another refurbishment.

He thinks of loss, and mourns while he can.

“Out.”

He sees tears running down her face when he obeys. It’s not a Facility, or a processing branch that they stopped at. It’s not the warehouse.

“Please, sir,” he tries agin.

“Save it, whore.” The leash snaps on.

They enter the building.

“I’d like to surrender this pet,” the owner says to the receptionist.

Then he knows. Shelter. He’s being surrendered, discarded, not even given the mercy of the Drip.

“Please, dear,” she begs, “somewhere else. Not a kill shelter.”

“Hush,” the owner says, and she falls silent.

He listens to his number and designation, training, all the facts needed for intake.

“Reason for surrender?”

“Recalcitrance. Disobedience.”

His stomach lurches. He’s a bad pet. No one wants him. No one will want him.

The owner asks for a private room, “to say their goodbyes”.

“Last chance. Say whatever you want.”

She kisses him, long and sweet, for the first and the last time, and when it ends hot tears run down his cheeks, too. She whispers, “I love you” in his ear.

“I won’t forget you,” she says aloud.

“That’s enough, darling. Go back to the car. There’s a pet shelter down a road a bit. I’ll get you a cat to keep you company.”

“Yes, dear.” And she obeys.

The owner steps very close to him, and he catches his breath, expecting a kick, a slap.

But it’s worse than that.

“She will forget you,” the owner says. “I’ll make sure of it. I’ll send her back to WRU for a full wipe, and she won’t remember ever knowing you.”

115 is still sobbing when the shelter worker comes to take him to the kennels.

Old Friends taglist: @painful-pooch @justplainwhump @redwingedwhump @maracujatangerine @honeycollectswhump @tragedyinblue @taterswhump

[horatioandalice]

I'm afraid I have some bad news about Harriet.

Yesterday morning when I got the budgies up, I noticed that she wasn't able to use her right foot. (The picture attached was taken before she lost the use of her foot.) I thought that maybe she and Pippa had had a fight, or that she had injured it in some way, so I toweled her and gave her some of Pippa's leftover pain meds and looked at her foot. There wasn't any visible sign of injury, but she was definitely unable to move her toes. By an unbelievable stroke of luck, my vet had an opening at 2pm, so I took Harriet in to get looked at.

Unfortunately, the prognosis is not good. The vet found a significant amount of bruising in Harriet's abdomen, indicating that she likely has some kind of organ dysfunction that is resulting in pressure being put on the nerves that control her right foot. The most likely causes, according to the vet, are either kidney cancer or reproductive disease. Because budgies are so small, and because of Harriet's age (she's 9) and relative fragility (since she's already had surgery for reproductive issues), the vet isn't confident she would survive the major surgery required to determine the problem, and the odds are there wouldn't be an effective treatment anyway.

So the decision has been made to try to keep Harriet comfortable with anti-inflammatory pain meds and in a hospital cage until her quality of life declines enough that it will be kindest to euthanize her. She is still allowed out with the other budgies, so she's not totally isolated, and as of this morning she is still eating well, destroying toys, and being very active and vocal (her wonky foot doesn't slow her down at all!), so right now she's doing well. She has already outlived all my other past budgies by three years (!!!), so although of course I will be heartbroken to say goodbye to this little fierce warrior, I am grateful for whatever time we have left.

[delimeful]

I feel the need to clarify, since I've seen this confused in comments for the new chapter, that "palliative care" does not mean euthanasia/giving someone a quick death. It means treatment for someone who is dying that focuses on making them as comfortable as possible rather than trying to combat their condition. Logan is unwilling to accept the reading because it's telling him there's nothing he can do to prevent Virgil from dying, not because it's telling him to actively kill Virgil

yup, exactly! my apologies, i didn’t realize the term was being interpreted that way

also to be clear, virgil is fine. this is just a very upsetting and stressful misunderstanding for the alien dads

[snakebites-and-ink]

My dog is really sick. She can't keep anything down. And at her age she might have to be put down instead of given surgery if there's a blockage. I'm so worried.

[fbwzoo]

Well. Bearded dragon ended up coming home with Jack last night due to work shift making it easy to just get him then.

Sometimes I hate being right. I'd been getting increasingly certain that this kiddo was gonna be in bad shape from the info and pictures we kept getting. Well. Let me introduce you to Ed.

Yeah. Poor bub has moderate to severe MBD. He can't even lift himself off the ground really, and he moves by shuffling along on his belly, pulling himself with his front legs. His legs feel like undercooked noodles.

They dumped crickets in the 20g with him, so we moved him over to the 40g last night. Weird makeshift set up bc we didn't even have a lid yet, getting one today. Used the heat and (unused??) Uvb light they had for right now, getting proper stuff ASAP. He's got cloth puppy pads for the floor right now, which seems to work well. Soft, but stay put so he can move.

Joel is getting greens this morning, Jack is getting the lid and some slate & bricks for a better basking spot. May have to do just the slate if he can't even get up a ramp right now, but hoping he can so it can double as a hide. He's dehydrated as well, so that's adding to his current struggle. We decided against trying to syringe him some water last night, to avoid stressing him more than he already was.

Jack's going to work on hydration today, and also calling the vet so we can get him in next week. We're expecting at least bloodwork, probably x-rays, and then we'll see what the vet thinks about the chances of improving his state. Honestly, euthanasia is on the table, but we're still hoping to avoid that. We'd really like to at least see how he responds to a proper set up & food, and if there's any improvement with some treatment time.

And I guess I'm eating my words, bc if we don't euthanize this bub, he's probably fucking staying now! He's going to be disabled to some degree for the rest of his life, and I suppose we could still likely find someone willing to take him, but it does add further complication.

My boys know me well though. Apparently they were already taking bets on how likely we were to keep him. 🤦 I chose my life partners well, I think.

[lavenderstratosphere]

Sad work stuff below

At work today, I spoke with a lady on the phone about organizing/finding euthanasia services for her elderly dog. She was outside of my workplace's jurisdiction, so my department was unable to do anything and I was trying to help her find services within her own county.

The dog died in her arms while we were talking.

The phone call ended with incomprehensible sobbing and me saying 'I'm sorry I'm sorry' uselessly over and over.

I had to take a little 10 minute break and my coworker was nice enough to cover for me.

[likesplatterpaint]

Ughggghh Pasta’s eyes are cloudy and despite doing 50% a week and a half ago, all the tanks are looking grody. Cyano is back in Louie’s tank and now maybe the Yam’s too. Our worm supply is lower than I thought. Glad we’ll be homebodies this weekend so I can get these guys straightened out. Everyone else seems fine except Pasta. Could be food, could be params, could be too much sunlight (can’t really do much about that with the placement of the Gal tank). My skinny buddy in the dwarf puff tank is STILL hanging on, even comes up to greet me in the breeder box. But despite multiple wormings, meds, and an abundance of feeding, he still is incredibly skinny. If he wasn’t so lively I’d consider euthanizing the kinder option.

Of course this is all going down the week before school starts and my brain is absolutely screaming with Tasks. Maybe I will tub Pasta tmr.

On the bright side one of my supervisors actually listened to me, validated me and got pushed on my behalf so maybe I WONT have 5 preps in the second semester.

[gottawhump]

Choices

Maia

CW/Tw: pet whump, institutional slavery, BBU/WRU, death/euthanasia mention

It takes forever for the rich kid to decide who he’s taking home, like it always does, but she’s not surprised when he chooses the little dark-haired Romantic.

When the shelter gets a Romantic, they usually get snapped up quickly. Usually, they’re eager to go, trying out all their practiced charms to win over a new owner.

Not that one. He’d been an owner surrender. He was being replaced by a cat, apparently, from the pet shelter a few blocks down. His skin was heavily marked by hard use, with signs of past owners. Any potential new owner would only take him to destroy him, not to cherish.

She hopes that won’t happen to him with the rich kid.

He shrunk into himself in the shelter kennel, refusing to interact with staff or possible adopters. Eventually refusing to eat, which slated him for the end-of-life section.

She hopes he’ll be okay, in his new home.

Now there are only two in the EOL section. The Guard Dog, due to be put down for inappropriate aggressiveness, and the Domestic, because they need more space.

Their adoption fees are heavily discounted, but even at the employee rate, she thinks she can only afford one.

She has to choose.

Old Friends taglist: @painful-pooch @justplainwhump @redwingedwhump @maracujatangerine @honeycollectswhump @tragedyinblue

[morbidsmenagerie]

Scientific Literacy and Stray Cat Policies Pt 2

This is a part two to my post on how to read research papers and how to interrogate a website for scientific accuracy. For this post, I'll be focusing on stray cat health, as it's talked about at Alley Cat Allies on their Community Cat Health Analysis page. I chose this page in particular because their claims are very specific and they provide sources.

This page argues that community cats are healthy, and so there's no reason to euthanize them for animal welfare reasons. Let's look at each claim in turn, and what the source article they are using to support this claim says.

The first claim says "the research points the other way a 2006 study found that of 103,643 stray and feral cats examined in spay/neuter clinics in six states from 1993 to 2004, less than 1 percent of those cats needed to be euthanized due to debilitating conditions, trauma, or infectious diseases." and their source is Population Characteristics of Feral Cats Admitted to Seven Trap-Neuter-Return Programs in the United States (Wallace, Jennifer L, and Julie K Levy, 2006). Link here. Because this claim is so specific, we can look through this article a little more expediently. Firstly, we can see a chart that does support this claim.

Of the over 100,000 cats tracked in seven different TNR programs, a very small number were euthanized or otherwise died. This seems to support the conclusion the ACA site is making, but what health conditions did the study consider to be grounds for euthanasia? On the data presented in this chart, it says "Even though the cats were homeless and had variable access to food and shelter, few cats (0.4%) were euthanased for debilitating conditions...Overall, 0.4% (range 0.03-0.7%) of cats were euthanased because of the presence of debilitating conditions, such as neoplasia, chronic inflammatory conditions, trauma, and infectious diseases. In addition, the SFSPCA euthanased most of 5.2% of cats in its program with positive test results for FeLV or FIV. A total of 0.4% (range 0.2-0.7%) of cats died during the TNR clinics (Table 3)."

So from this, it appears only extremely sick cats were euthanized, or cats that would have required extensive medical care. This data point alone doesn't convincingly argue that stray cats as a whole are healthy, because there are other conditions that they could have that the TNR programs did not consider severe enough for euthanasia. Also, this data selects for only cats that were caught in the TNR traps, not cats that were so sick or injured that they were unable to seek out the baited traps to be caught and sterilized. Earlier in the paper it also says "As feral kittens suffer an estimated 75% death rate prior to 6 months of age (Nutter et al 2004), the prevention of such births is a substantial contribution to feline welfare." This further suggests that this paper isn't a good indicator of community cat health overall, as young kittens were not included in the assessment of the data because they were not caught to be put in the TNR program.

The conclusion of this paper reads "Despite differences in policies and procedures, the rates of euthanasia and unexpected deaths were low and comparable among the programs. This suggests that it is feasible to safely sterilize large numbers of feral cats and that the experiences of existing programs are a consistent source of information upon which to model new TNR endeavors." This suggests further that the point of including unexpected death and euthanasia rates in this study was not to show that community cats are overall healthy, but to show that TNR surgeries as a whole are relatively safe to administer to a large number of cats.

The next point from the ACA site says "After testing community cats in Northern Florida for FIV, FeLV, and nine other infectious organisms, a 2002 study concluded that “feral cats assessed in this study posed no greater risk to human beings or other cats than pet cats.” The source of this claim is Prevalence of Infectious Diseases in Feral Cats in Northern Florida (Luria et al, 2004) link here and Prevalence of Feline Leukemia Virus Infection and Serum Antibodies Against Feline Immunodeficiency Virus in Unowned Free-Roaming Cats (Lee et al, 2002) link here.

Let's take these both together because the interpretation of these papers is not in their data or how they are collecting. Both papers do suggest that feral cats have a similar prevalence of infectious disease as pet cats, however neither paper dissects the pet cat population into cats that are indoor only and cats that are allowed regular outdoor access. Only the second paper draws attention to this, saying "In many reports, an outdoor lifestyle is reported as a predisposing factor for FeLV and FIV infection. One large serosurvey found that outdoor pet cats were 2.7 times as likely to have positive results for FeLV and 4.8 times as likely to be seropositive for FIV than indoor cats were. Because all the cats in our study were unowned free-roaming cats, it is reasonable to consider them as a high-risk population." Both of these papers also study specific kinds of infectious disease, diseases that cats that are allowed to roam indoor and outdoor are also likely to be exposed to. The second paper didn't mention any other kinds of diseases, and the first paper explicitly states "In addition, we did not test for internal or external parasites or enteropathogens."

It makes sense that if you include cats that are owned but regularly allowed outdoors among the pet cat population, you would see a similar rate of things like FeLV, FIV, T gondii, and other kinds of infections that are contracted through contact with other cats and infected soil. This does not mean community cats are just as healthy as owned cats, and overlooking internal and external parasites is a huge blind spot in this claim. Indoor-outdoor cats are likely to be receiving flea protection and worm treatments, which community cats often don't get because of how difficult it is to regularly administer this kind of preventative to cats that are wary of humans. Parasites can cause many debilitating conditions, including death, and overlooking the rates of disease caused by fleas and worms is overlooking a large aspect of a community cats quality of life.

The third claim states "In 2003, a long-term study of a Trap-Neuter-Return program noted that 83 percent of the cats present at the end of the observation period had been there for more than six years." The source for this is "Evaluation of the Effect of a Long-Term Trap-Neuter-Return and Adoption Program on a Free-Roaming Cat Population" (Levy, 2003). Link here. This paper documents a TNR effort of 155 total cats at a university campus. At the end of the study, the fate of the cats involved is presented here:

It seems ACA is taking the more than 6 years value from the number of remaining cats, which in total is only 23 cats or 15% of the beginning population. This is a case of survivor's basis, as clearly a vast majority of the cats were adopted after a little over a year and the same number of cats disappeared at some point during the study. The paper states "Despite widespread concern about the welfare of free-roaming cats, many of the animals in our study survived for a number of years. Most cats (83%) still remaining on site at the end of the observation period had been present for > 6 years. This compares favorably with the mean lifespan of 7.1 years reported for pet cats, particularly as almost half of the cats in our study were first observed as adults of unknown age. Most cats (61%) that disappeared, died, or were euthanatized for debilitating conditions had been present for at least 3 years. In general, the cats were in adequate physical condition, and only 4% were euthanatized for humane reasons." The 83% number is only based on the 23 cats that still remained at the end of the study, so 83% of 23 cats had been on site for longer than 6 years. So 19 total cats had been on site for that long. (Not to mention comparing it to the lifespan of pet cats probably falls into a similar issue as before of counting indoor-outdoor pet cats in the same category as indoor only cats.) This is a misleading representation of the data and an extremely small sample size to make sweeping statements about the longevity of feral cats.

Additionally, saying 61% of the cats that died or disappeared had been present for at least 3 years does not convince me that there is not a welfare concern for outdoor cats. If you tally up the cats and use the median number of years they had been on campus, that leaves 50 cats that died, disappeared or were euthanized in under 5 years of being on campus. Those are not great numbers to convince people that outdoor cats are not a welfare concern. I also did not include the 9 cats that were reported to leave the study area and go to the woods where they were no longer tracked. This study also brings up the low number of euthanasia performed due to debilitating conditions, but also doesn't say what conditions were considered severe enough for euthanasia, and as mentioned previously cats can be unhealthy and have conditions that are a welfare concern that are not severe enough to require immediate euthanasia.

The last claim I will look at is the claim that "The lean physique of some community cats sometimes leads animal control and other groups to claim that the cats are starving or ill, but a 2002 study found that community cats have healthy body weights and fat distribution." The source for this is "Body Condition of Feral Cats and the Effect of Neutering" (Scott, 2002). Link here. This study discusses 105 cats that were trapped and brought to a TNR clinic, and a follow up with some of those cats a year later to show an increase in weight due to sterilization. For reasons further explained in the paper, only 63 of the initial cats were weighed and received a body condition score, and only 14 were successfully trapped a year later for their follow up.

This is the chart for cats upon surgery, broken down by season the cats were brought in.

And this is the follow up. The paper points to a few shortcomings of this study, namely that relatively few cats were able to be retrapped and it's likely the "results would be skewed only if the friendliest and fattest cats were retrapped." However, I think the body condition given at the beginning of the study still does show convincing evidence that feral cats are not, as a whole, emaciated.

That is it for the claims on the ACA Community Cat Health site. As one last thing to point out, I want to draw attention to the sources listed at the bottom of this site.

For one, the first and second source are the same and come from PETA, which is fine because the site was debunking one of PETA's claims about community cats. But listing the source twice and having the second and sixth source be the same makes it seem like they were padding out their source list. Furthermore the last source on the list is a survey done on owned pet cats, and is completely irrelevant to the community cat discussion (although as an interesting aside if you follow that source it says the questions in the survey were developed by the ACA and that they did not ask the ages of the cats owned).

Overall, ACA has a general track record of misinterpreting and misrepresenting studies to further it's own agenda. It's also important to understand the potential damage rhetoric like this can have. If you continue to push the idea that community and feral cats are not a risk to native bird populations and just as healthy and happy as indoor cats, you leave very little argument for keeping cats solely indoors. Afterall, if community cats are living long healthy lives and not affecting wild bird populations, surely the same must be true from everyone's indoor-outdoor cat. Interestingly, they "debunked" the Smithsonian study on how feral cats affect wildlife populations by asking a statistician to review it, and he says a lot of the same things about that study that I'm saying here about the ACA.

I encourage you to look through some of their other claims, and read the sources from which these claims are based on and come to your own conclusions. I don't want to touch the TNR debate with a 10 foot pole on here currently, but we can argue for or against TNR without pretending like outdoor cats are not a welfare or an environmental concern. I hope these two posts in general also encourage you to do the same when looking at any site that makes particular claims, and gets you into the habit of reading source material and comparing that with what these sites are saying.

[dengswei]

idk if it's a blessing or a curse that love is like a cat came out during the month i lost my dog because in some ways there are aspects of it that i can relate to (especially eps 9-10), some are healing, and some aspects it just rips open a wound i'm pretending that has healed (also eps 9-10)

[seabeck]

Even if you don't plan on eating your chickens, you should know how to cull them as needed. Vets are expensive and often closed when your bird decides to injure itself so grievously keeping it alive would be impossible and cruel

[gemharvest]

They're Euthanizing me for this post.

(shitty LHUGUENY autotune voice) This Website is Great. So many Moots I can booooop. Til I can't see Straiiiiight; when can I startt? I'm addicted to boops!

[selenophobic-werewolf]

By me (because I'm way too tired of this)

[mjrtaurus]

Modern AU

Dragon met Granma at a very rough time in his life.

Medical discharge from a broken neck.

The cost of the surgery needed to save his life was covered by Veteran Affairs but the cost of therapy for the ptsd diagnosis and the damaged larynx? Nope. He had a pulse and he could walk. Looked good enough on paper. That’s all that the VA seemed to care about.

He was alive and he wasn’t paralyzed from the neck down, so yeah, he at least had that going for him… but now he couldn’t talk (yet). Now he was having nightmares every other night. Now he was feeling nauseous whenever he saw a certain hue of green. Now he was reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there whenever he heard a sudden noise. Now he wasn’t finding joy in anything anymore.

It was… it was really bad.

Garp had an idea, though. A spur of the moment idea: Maybe not the most well thought out, but Hell, his son needed help and he needed help quickly.

Wind Granma had been a race horse in her day, and not a very well treated one. She was young, she was jumpy, she would bite you if you got too handsy, she would kick you if you got out of her line of sight. She had chased away every other horse that would try and befriend her.

Garp had bought her because the people that had saved her from the dirty underbelly of the industry couldn’t care for her, and were stuck with the decision to either sell her to someone who could or to put her down.

Garp was determined to give her the second chance she deserved, but he wasn’t around as often as he liked to do that. So… why not she and Dragon get acquainted? Why not heal together? Once Dragon had fully recovered from his surgery, of course.

Look, it wasn’t his brightest idea, okay?

But before Urpi could give Garp a proper chewing out for impulse buying a horse that needed proper care, Dragon already had it in his head that he was going to be riding this horse.

Stubborn, hard-headed men, the both of them.

But it worked.

[golden--goofball]

art below the cut!! tw for syringe, mentions of ableism, bigotry, and euthanization!!!

feel free to use these (with credit) or even redraw them with your sona/oc!!! (≧▽≦)

[pluralquotebook]

(Captain Crunch commercial voice) EUTHANIZE ME CAP'N!

-🦋🌕

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