‘Grown ups killed my kitty’: Boy, 8, writes heartrending letter to newspaper after his cat was euthanized by mistake

 

An 8-year-old Utah boy wrote a letter to his local newspaper after an animal shelter worker failed to write a note to save his cat from being euthanized. 

‘Yesterday grown-ups killed my kitty, my best friend, when they weren’t supposed to,’ Rayden Sazama wrote, with his grandfather’s help, in his letter published in The Herald Journal, of Logan, on Thursday.

By Friday, it had received the fourth-most comments on the newspaper’s website – behind three letters about Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Heartbroken: Brothers Rayden, 8, and Devin, 5, were left heartbroken when their black cat named Toothless didn’t return home, but Rayden says he was especially hurt to learn his neighbours had lied about its capture

‘I just wanted to tell people about Toothless – that I loved him,’ he told The Associated Press through his father, Jason Sazama, on Friday. ‘And that people shouldn’t lie.’

Some berated the shelter for failing to keep the cat safe. Others criticized the family for letting the cat outside, failing to have it on a leash or not looking for the cat at the shelter sooner. Still others faulted the neighbours who had trapped the cat and denied having seen it when asked.

The cat roamed the cow pasture next door and often brought home ‘presents’ of field mice, but on Sept 28 he slipped out his kitty door and didn’t return home. By Sunday, Rayden and his five-year-old brother, Devin, were going door to door, asking neighbors if they had seen the cat.

Everyone said they hadn’t seen Toothless.

Jason Sazama checked the Cache Humane Society’s website but didn’t see any photos resembling Toothless. After two busy days on the road for work, he decided to swing by the organization’s shelter Tuesday to see if Toothless had turned up.

The shelter had already closed for the evening, but a worker allowed Mr Sazama inside, where Toothless sat in a cage. There was just one problem: Mr Sazama still needed to pay the impound fee at a government building that was also closed.

The worker assured Mr Sazama the cat would be fine, and he returned home, crowing: ‘I found Toothless! We’ll get him tomorrow.’

Adult’s mistake: Raden’s father, seen with him and his two younger siblings, said he went to the animal shelter to collect Toothless but was told the cat had mistakenly been killed

The worker assured Mr Sazama the cat would be fine, and he returned home, crowing: ‘I found Toothless! We’ll get him tomorrow.

But when Mr Sazama returned the next day, the receipt for his impound payment in hand, he discovered that Toothless had already been euthanized. The worker had forgotten to put a note on the cage.

The Cache Humane Society did not return a telephone message Friday from the AP. When reached by The Herald Journal, Director Brenda Smith confirmed Rayden’s story, saying the boy’s father had visited the shelter after business hours, when the worker was busy training another employee.

‘She let him in to look for the cat, but unfortunately, in training someone she forgot to leave a note on the cat’s cage,’ Smith told the newspaper. ‘I’ve just been sick about it, and so has she.’

Mr Sazama said he has no ill will toward the shelter.

‘I had to explain to my son that several adults made mistakes here,‘ he said. ‘The worker made a mistake, and I should have gone to the shelter sooner.’

Mr Sazama said he even understood why the neighbours trapped the cat; he hadn’t known that Toothless had been visiting the neighbours’ sandbox and leaving different kinds of presents there.

‘When Devin and I knocked on their door and asked if they had seen Toothless they told us no, and that was a lie,’ Rayden said in his letter. ‘My dad and mom tell me and Devin not to lie and that is right.’

‘Now I don’t know what to do,‘ the letter concludes. ‘My cat Toothless is dead; the people that killed him didn’t even give him to my dad so we could bury him. What do I do now?’

News Link:-http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2213683/Rayden-Sazama-Boy-8-writes-heartrending-letter-newspaper-cat-euthanized-mistake.html

 

Computer glitch blamed for deaths of rescued cats

 “I would have thought doing something so dispicable as taking a life, would require double, even triple checks twice over, before the actual deed is done! This is human error…computers aren’t stupid nor do they make mistakes, the data is put into a computer manually, i.e. by humans!”

Dozens of rescued cats have reportedly been mistakenly killed due to a computer glitch at the New York City Animal Care & Control center.  It’s claimed that their “so-called death-row database,” is neglecting to inform the center when requests for adoptions come in for these cats.

The database posts a list at 5 pm of cats that are scheduled for euthanasia for the following day.  The public then has the opportunity, until 6 am, to go online and reserve one of the death-row cats for adoption.   But glitches within the new system are failing to notify the center that certain cats have been requested for adoption and thus, they are mistakenly being put to death.

One such cat reportedly put down in error was Max, a two year old black and white cat, who had a home waiting for him in Connecticut.  “When you call them, they don’t pick up, and they don’t email you back.  You’re sitting in the darkness, never knowing what’s going on there” said the rescue group member, now heartbroken over the fact that Max is gone.  When she was finally able to get through to them, they claimed they never got her request for Max and that he had already been put to death.

A 12 year old cat named Tooperina met the same fate.  Elizabeth McMahon, her would-be adopter, also dealt with the same programming issue and never received confirmation of her adoption request.  Ms. McMahon has said that in addition to Tooperina, the rescue group she works with requested four other cats the same night but never got a response.  It’s unclear if those four cats were also put to death, or if someone else stepped in and rescued them.

Another cat, Missy, wasn’t even listed as a rescue until after she was already put to death.  She never had a chance to be saved.  Other times, animals who have already been put to death appear on the list.

Julie Bank, Director at New York City Animal Care & Control blamed user error for the problems.  “They forgot to press the submit button.  They walked away and the computer timed out” she said.

However, the accusations against the New York City Animal Care & Control are reportedly confirmed by a former employee. She claims that supervisors told staff members not to say a word about the known computer glitches.   She said she left the agency because she could not stand to be part of such negligence.

With a reported $8 million per year in tax payer money going to this organization and having taken a year to develop this new system, these types of errors are outrageously unacceptable.  Clearly something is not right here and the “kinks” in this system are being worked out at the expense of precious lives.

News Link:-http://www.thisdishisvegetarian.com/2012/07/dozens-of-rescued-cats-have-reportedly.html