“No kill” shelters are where you dump an unwanted pet when you’re cruel enough to throw out a puppy, but not quite cruel enough to have it sent to certain death. They’re the ultimate balm for troubled psyches—a “get out of jail free” card for dads needing to dispose of their kid’s unwanted birthday kitten while still feeling okay with themselves. And they’re about a zillion times crueler than their murderous counterparts.
Let’s start with the basics. If you have a shelter committed to a “no kill” policy, that means the animals have to be rehoused. If you can’t rehouse them, it means you have to keep them. And if more animals that you can’t rehouse keep on coming in, it leads you down a very dark path. PETA reports hundreds of shelters where animals are crowded together in conditions that would make a battery hen shudder: crammed into cages, living in piles of feces, and suffering diseases so awful that killing them would be a mercy. The alternative some of these shelters have is to turn away animals they can’t rehouse. Unfortunately, this usually means the owner dumps them on a roadside, leaving them to starve, or flat out kills them in whatever way they see fit. So while we may shudder at the idea of a shelter putting down its inhabitants, the alternative is one heck of a lot grimmer.
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