Don’t leave your pets to fend for themselves

I am pretty angry about people who abandon pets.

This to all who have, who are considering or condone taking a pet and dumping them in another neighborhood or in the country, I despise you. You regularly wreak havoc in my life with your callous treatment of your responsibility. You cost me money, cause me tears and make me so angry, you’d better hope I don’t catch you doing it.

In the nearly 11 years I’ve lived in a very rural area, I have been responsible for the deaths of so many of your pets that I don’t have the stomach to try and count. Thanks for making me be responsible for your wonderful, loving animal being put down.

Why won’t you just do it yourself? How can you drive away from them, leaving them alone, hungry, victim to starvation, disease, coyote attack, farmer’s traps and rancher’s poison and go back to your routine? Do you think that you are absolved of guilt by forcing someone to else make the call to Animal Control? That you’re not responsible for their deaths if I take them to the vet to be put down after a trap or an animal rips their leg off?

Yes ... that was my morning. A cat that had been dumped out here where houses are scattered and dangers are many. He found his way to our barn and I did my best for months to befriend him. But all I could do was make sure he didn’t starve. Tried to make him see I wasn’t like you but he was too traumatized, to afraid of people now and he couldn’t trust. So he got caught in a trap or attacked by a coyote and his leg was torn off.

So now I sit here, sad and out money wondering what you’re doing? Are you out for breakfast? Are you headed to the kid’s soccer game? Do the kids think their kitty is “living on a farm?” Would you even care at all that your cat suffered terribly before a stranger did what you should have!

And if you’ve thought maybe “setting the pet free” could be a solution for your situation, now you know that your family pet will not likely find a home. They’ll only find suffering. Take care of it yourself! Find them a home. Or drive to whatever org or agency where you are that takes pets...Placer Animal Control, SPCA ...and drop them off there. The suffering will be much shorter and they’ll at least have a shot at finding the home you denied them.

It’s a blessing really that I didn’t get to know him better, I feel badly enough for a total stranger. Dr E at Lincoln Banfield is a wonderful person and made sure your animal is out of his immense suffering and we so appreciate his and the staff’s wonderful support and care of every animal, ours and yours, that we’ve taken them.

I hope you can’t sleep tonight, I hope this rant haunts you in the quiet moments of your life at least as much as your animal’s suffering will haunt me.

Cheri Frost, Lincoln