Commentary

When the truth hurts, do we just start lying?

“When my eyes moved up to the headline,” Cathy tells us, “I felt immediate sadness.” Above a photo of smiling people holding puppies, the headline read “High Kill Shelter.”

If the subject is eradicating termites, high kill is kind of the point. A pill that “kills the pain”? Bring it on. Dressed to kill? Très chic. But these are exceptions to the rule: stick just about anything after “high kill” and it’s not going to end well. Combine it with images bursting with innocence and joy — like puppies and kittens and wagging tails and tiny paws — of course the words messed with Cathy.

After all, they’re “shelters.” Shelter: noun. Something that affords protection. Come in, have some food, water, a comfortable place to rest. It’s here that you’re protected. What a betrayal it would be to offer shelter, and then to instead cause harm.

Oh, uh, hang on there. Apparently I misunderstood — It’s not the killing that Cathy’s sad about. Cathy wants to lose the “kill.” As, in the word. Wait, what? Everyone who cares about animal shelters “must stop accepting the ‘kill’ label,” Cathy says.

In what upside-down world would Cathy accept the actual taking of life but reject calling it what it is?

Cathy tells us about that upside-down world. It’s a world where she’s convinced that there’s just no choice but to take the lives of pets. Healthy, adoptable pets, by the millions. Somehow Cathy’s unaware that for nearly two decades, across the country, shelters in areas rich and poor, rural and urban, north and south, have implemented a set of programs through which they have completely stopped the killing. Through which they have lived up to their name: they are worthy to be called shelters.

Someone ought to get this poor gal some info, some good news: there’s a solution to her sadness, a solution that many have implemented overnight, simply by refusing to kill and by taking the steps proven to be effective. Nathan Winograd tested it himself, then wrote about this approach in Redemption, published in 2007.

A “kill shelter” label is indeed an image problem. Cathy tells us that her own Bissell Pet Foundation has suffered the loss of donations when would-be corporate sponsors learned they support “kill shelters.”

Again, Cathy seems to think the solution is to twist words rather than to face reality. She tells us to “break the negative stigma” — reject the word, accept the action.

I don’t like the sound of genocide; will you please call it a “cleansing”? Can we say “interrogation,” cause torture just sounds icky. Rather than execution, “special treatment” has a nice ring to it. I’m uncomfortable with convenience killing; what if we call it “euthanasia” instead?

When it comes to “kill shelters,” the word we must reject is “shelter.” Any place that kills the lives it has promised to protect is not worthy of the term. When Cathy tells us to reject the label “kill shelter,” she’s half right. But she’s got the wrong half, and the wrong reason.

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Written in response to “The ‘Kill’ Label is Killing Our Nation’s Pets” by Cathy Bissell. For information about sheltering that earns its name, see the No Kill Advocacy Center. I have no affiliation; just appreciation.