(Beth Clifton collage)
Courtroom debate is on hold, but “Kitten Lady” Hannah Shaw & Nathan Winograd, among others, hiss & spit online
SAN DIEGO––Continued on July 17, 2024 until August 1, 2024, and then expected to resume again on August 7-8, 2024, the cat control “trial of the century” may determine the fate of feral and found cats in California and perhaps around the U.S. and the world for years––and perhaps centuries––to come.
Pending since May 2021, the case is a lawsuit brought by the Pet Assistance Foundation and Paw Protectors against the San Diego Humane Society.
(See Cat control “trial of the century” cleared to proceed in San Diego.)
Bryan Pease.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Challenging cruel policy”
Plaintiffs’ attorney Bryan Pease on May 26, 2024 defined the case as “challenging San Diego Humane Society’s cruel policy of dumping friendly, adoptable cats on the streets without food, water, or caretakers, instead of fulfilling their legal and contractual obligations to provide shelter and adoption services.”
The San Diego Humane Society denies having such a policy and denies doing any such thing, despite extensive witness testimony already presented to the contrary.
The lawsuit is mischaracterized by some leading advocates of no-kill animal control, perhaps most influentially “Kitten Lady” Hannah Shaw and the Feral Cat Coalition, as an attack on trap-neuter-return cat control, TNR for short––but TNR is in fact favored and practiced by both sides.
Walt Disney tests Mickey Mouse drawing on a cat.
TNR vs. “return to field”
No Kill Advocacy Center founder Nathan Winograd, a leading advocate of trap-neuter-return for more than 35 years, came out squarely on the side of the plaintiffs in a July 12, 2024 blog posting entitled “The California ‘humane” movement on trial.”
Heated rhetoric aside, the Pet Assistance Foundation and Paw Protectors vs. the San Diego Humane Society is actually all about defining the difference between two superficially similar animal control techniques, which tend to be very different in outcome.
The first, favored by both the plaintiffs and the defendants in the San Diego case, is trap-neuter-vaccinate-return, commonly called “TNR” or “TNVR.”
Introduced by Walt Disney Inc. in 1955 to manage feral cats at Disneyland, popularized as a feral cat control method throughout the U.S. since circa 1990, “TNR” or “TNVR” was separately introduced by the Blue Cross of India in 1966 as a method of managing street dog populations. It is now the preferred method for managing street dogs in much of the world.
Kate Hurley, DVM.
(Facebook photo)
What “return to field” is
The second animal control technique, the approach actually on trial, is “return-to-field,” introduced less than a dozen years ago by Kate Hurley of the Koret Shelter Medicine program at the University of California, Davis campus, promoted by the no-kill foundation Maddie’s Fund and the Best Friends Animal Society.
“Return-to-field” is the practice of releasing tame, friendly cats found at large back where they were picked up, on the theory that they will find their own way home.
“To call this abandonment,” argued Shaw in a recent video, “is quite simply not an accurate depiction of what a community cat program does,” tripping along the way over the term “community cats,” which includes the unsupported presumption that all cats at large have caretakers.
(See What to call cats, & why it matters: evolving terms, “Vagrant” or “feral” cats: part 2 of What to Call Cats & why it matters, Feral cats & street dogs: part 3 of What to call cats & why It matters, and “Community cats” vs. community health: Part 4 of What to call cats & why it matters.)
“Kitten Lady” Hannah Shaw.
(Facebook photo.)
“Scare tactics”
“These are scare tactics,” claimed Shaw, “and they’re meant to divide the community on an issue that really should be quite simple and unifying. We don’t need to be taking cats who are in good condition and not at risk and placing them into a shelter where they are going to be a higher risk of death — and the fact is here in California, unfortunately, we still see tens of thousands of cats being euthanized every single year.
“Lawsuits like this one,” Shaw objected, “basically assert that if you’re a friendly cat, you have to be human property. Even if it means that you might die there, it’s better for you to be in a shelter than for you to stay in the community that you know.
“My perspective,” Shaw finished, “is that as their advocates, we should care more about what is good for them,” she said. “Are they in a good enough body condition that they can stay here in the home that they know and thrive?”
Nathan Winograd.
Nathan Winograd
Countered Winograd, “At the Los Angeles city pound [there are actually five Los Angeles city pounds], cat rooms are mostly empty. Cats are abandoned across the street after staff turns away people trying to bring in stray cats. The abandoned cats are fed by individual rescuers, not the pound staff, who appear indifferent to their welfare.
“Likewise,” Winograd charged, “when a pregnant cat showed up in the Orange County, California yard of a Good Samaritan and then gave birth, the woman did what she thought was responsible: allowed the kittens to nurse and then wean before taking them all — mama and kittens — to Orange County Animal Care, the municipal shelter.
“Shelter staff told her to return the feline family to where she found them. The woman explained that the mother cat might not have a home. She did not have a collar or tag and was also pregnant when found.
“At any rate, the kittens [from the second litter] certainly had no home to go to, because they were not yet born and would not know where to go even if they did. Staff still turned them away, telling her to release them back on the street.”
Julie Virga. (Facebook photo)
Similar story from Sacramento
Sacramento realtor and cat rescuer Julie Virga told a similar story on Facebook.
The Front Street Animal Shelter in Sacramento, Virga posted, “receives over $8 million annually in taxpayer revenue to provide animal care services. Yet cats and kittens are turned away every day at Front Street’s doors.
“Citizens are told to leave little kittens on the streets where they were found,” alleged Virga. “Friendly abandoned cats who could easily be adopted at the shelter are left to fend for themselves. Sick and injured friendly and feral cats and kittens are turned away daily because they are not dying, in violation of our state laws!
“Front Street Management, Contra Costa, and Elk Grove, to name a few shelters, all cite Kate Hurley and Koret for their policy of turning away friendly cats and kittens,” Virga recounted.
(Beth Clifton collage)
San Diego judge rejected motion for summary judgement
While Shaw, Winograd, Virga, and others figuratively fight the Pet Assistance Foundation and Paw Protectors lawsuit against the San Diego Humane Society through social media, inside the courtroom San Diego County Superior Court Judge Blaine K. Bowman on March 28, 2024 set the stage for the fairly dramatic trial––albeit largely ignored by mainstream media––by rejecting the defendants’ motion for summary judgement.
At the same time, Bowman adopted for the purposes of the trial the San Diego Humane Society’s analysis of the term ‘abandonment.’
“Under this analysis,” Bowman explained, “the term ‘abandons’ as used in Penal Code § 597s requires a finding that the alleged acts of the San Diego Humane Society in operating its Community Cats Program are ‘reasonably likely to result in the infliction of unjustifiable pain, or suffering, or cruelty upon’ cats.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Judge also accepted San Diego Humane Society program description
Bowman further accepted that the San Diego Humane Society Community Cat Program “operates to improve the overall health and wellbeing of community cats,” and accepted testimony “that when cats are brought into the San Diego Humane Society, they are checked for indicia of ownership, given a medical evaluation, provided any necessary medical treatment, vaccinated, sterilized (i.e., spayed or neutered), and ear-tipped for future identification.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
“If a cat is generally healthy”
Summarized Bowman, “If a cat is generally healthy with a good body condition score and has no credible or verifiable evidence of ownership, the cat is returned to its outdoor home in the community. Cats who do not meet the Community Cat Program’s health and body condition criteria are not eligible for the Community Cats Program, and are instead admitted into the shelter for medical treatment and adoption or transfer to another animal welfare organization.”
But Bowman also accepted written declarations from plaintiff’s witnesses Amanda Vlahos, Sherri Penaloza, Kate Parberry, and Anna Brown, the latter a registered veterinary technician, describing “incidents where ill, injured and/or recently spayed/neutered cats were [allegedly improperly] released into the community by the San Diego Humane Society.”
Sharon Logan founder Paw Protectors.
(ABC7 News photo)
Plaintiffs’ witnesses
During the trial session of July 16, 2024, a new judge, Katherine Bacal, heard plaintiffs’ witnesses, plaintiff Sharon Logan of Paw Protectors told ANIMALS 24-7, including a former donor of $500 a month to the San Diego Humane Society.
The former donor testified, Logan said, that she stopped donating after she took a friendly found cat to the shelter, only to see the cat returned to her neighborhood 48 hours later despite her warnings of the presence of coyotes.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Coyotes
The San Diego Humane Society contends that it does not release non-feral cats in areas known to host coyotes.
However, separate studies published in 1998 by University of Arizona at Tucson researchers Martha Grinder and Paul Krausman, and in 1999 by Kevin R. Crooks, of the Department of Biology at the University of California in Santa Cruz, and Michael E. Soule of the Wildlands Project in Hotchkiss, Colorado, confirmed the presence of coyotes in practically every part of San Diego County, and further confirmed that the coyotes prey heavily on outdoor cats.
There is no data to suggest the San Diego County coyote population has declined or become less ubiquitous since then.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Additional witnesses affirm testimony
A second plaintiffs’ witness, a seven-year TNR practitioner, testified, according to Logan, that the San Diego Humane Society “returned” a friendly 10-week-old kitten trapped in Oceanside to a feral colony at a San Diego motel, despite a purported policy of not practicing “return to field” with cats younger than seven months.
A third witness, Logan recounted, offered similar testimony about the San Diego Humane Society releasing kittens under the age of seven months into known coyote habitat.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Abandoning social, adoptable, domestic cats”
The Pet Assistance Foundation and Paw Protectors case originated soon after the San Diego Humane Society resumed providing shelter service for the San Diego city and county animal control agencies in 2018, after a 43-year hiatus beginning in 1975.
Almost immediately the San Diego Humane Society announced that it would pursue a neuter/return policy in response to calls about feral cats.
Two years later, in 2020, the San Diego Humane Society expanded the feral cat program into a “Community Cats” program, along lines that society president Gary Weitzman told KPBS-TV investigative reporter Claire Trageser are recommended by “Alley Cat Allies, American Pets Alive, the ASPCA, Best Friends and the Humane Society of the United States.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
This, however, alleges the Pet Assistance Foundation and Paw Protectors lawsuit, became “the unlawful business practice of abandoning social, adoptable, domestic cats onto the streets.”
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