Not All Animals End Up in the Landfill

How Polly the cat and Cokie the dog came to be living the good life.

MARSHALL — This week I wrote about the needless demise of Mercy, the white female boxer who now resides in a local landfill. For those of you who didn’t read the story it was a situation where the shelter employees felt it was more important to kill the animals before taking phone calls. Had they taken any one of numerous calls from a couple who wanted to save the boxer, the boxer would be alive today or at the very least she would be comfortable.

Shortly after we moved to Marshall one of our dogs died. I went to the shelter and gave them my name, address and wrote on the form that I was looking for a small female. Several months went by but I thought small dogs seldom are surrendered so I would be patient. You can imagine how surprised I was when a picture of a small dog was in the paper (the pet column). I dashed down to the shelter, retrieved the little dog and Cokie is still with us today.

But it isn’t because they called me, they put a picture in the paper and I saw it.

Cokie lucked out.

Photo by Ron Munden

Deloris with Cokie.

In 2008 we lost our calico cat so I called the Pet Place and the Animal Shelter and told them I wanted a female calico cat. The Pet Place called one day and I went to their shelter. The cat looked like tabby/calico but I took her and she is adorable. But I still wanted a calico cat…the ones that are white, black and orange.

No calls.

But then one day I took newspapers to the animal shelter and what was in a cage…a beautiful calico kitten. Needless to say, you know how the story ended.

What is the common theme in these two cases? Lack of communication? Lack of procedures in place to compare adoption requests with available cats and dogs?

I don’t have the answers but maybe the shelter could look at other shelters with lower kill rates. Perhaps they might have some ideas we haven’t tried.

In the meantime, Polly the cat and Cokie the dog are living the good life -- not rotting in the landfill.