All cages are cleaned, litterboxes sterilzed, food dishes fresh food dishes put out, at the shelter where I volunteer for too, but I can tell you that Malcolm and Matilda's, the two feral kittens I rescued, cage would be appalling when I got there to clean them up :sad:. Volunteers had to give them baths, they would be full of food and feces
. So if you saw them before the daily cleaning and took a pic and sent it to the media to be published, I am sure there would be many shocked and angry people too. Plus, they were being treated for a severe eye infections so they not only had a filthy cage, but looked sickly too. You would swear nobody cleaned their cage for a week
, but I know it wasn't so, as I was there doing it on weekends and they have a very strick policy on cleanliness, but what happens after closing could not be controlled. M&M stayed in hiding while the shelter was open, but after it was quiet, they destroyed their cage
.
. I still miss those two :sad:.
I guess my point is that no shelter is perfect and THS being a huge shelter there was probably even more than average issues. Reality of it is that there are never enough resources or volunteers, to keep everything spic and span and to nurse every cat the way they should be (in my opinion they don't heal well in a shelter environment). These are not ideal living conditions for cats, I know, but the only alternative is to euthanize for space. Sometimes it is so easy for us to sit and judge, not so easy to manage a perfect shelter with limited resources, especially if you are trying to manage with a mandate of no kill.
I am not defending Tim, I don't know him or how he ran the THS, I am speaking of non kill shelters in general
.