AWLA Hawk

One of AWLA’s kitten fosterers recently mentioned to us that the shelter didn’t seem to be receiving the steady stream of abandoned kittens that usually begins in April and continues into the fall. We speculated that maybe the winter blizzards had taken a toll on the feral cat population, or that maybe years of spay/neuter efforts by the local animal-welfare community were starting to pay off.

Curious about this absence of kittens, we sent AWLA a written request for their intake and disposition records for cats and dogs for the first six months of 2010. Section 3.2-6557 of the Virginia Code compels AWLA to make these records available for public inspection. AWLA responded by sending the records promptly (probably because when they refused to do this two years ago, they were taken to court by the requester and ordered to comply by the judge.)

The cover letter enclosed with the records provided the helpful information that:

AWLA is a private non-profit corporation founded in 1944 to improve the welfare of stray, abused, and neglected animals in Northern Virginia. AWLA is not a public body under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) and, accordingly, nothing in AWLA’s response to your Request shall be deemed to subject AWLA to the requirements of FOIA.

OK, we get it; AWLA will fulfill the minimum requirements of the law when Arlington residents inquire about the welfare of the animals it is entrusted to care for with taxpayer funds — but don’t ask for any additional information. When we asked AWLA to include the animal ID numbers with the records, they refused. That makes analyzing the intake/disposition records much more difficult.

As we flipped through the records, the sad truth about this year’s crop of kittens emerged. Between March 28 and June 21, AWLA received 40 kittens that were younger than two months old. Three of them died at the shelter, and the other 37 were euthanized. How many of the 40 kittens were transferred to foster care? None.

During the same time period, AWLA also received 17 kittens that were two or three months old. Of these, one was euthanized and the other 16 were adopted, all within 10 days of their arrival at the shelter. The 16 survivors were old enough to be offered for adoption without spending time in foster care. Since losing one kitten out of 17 is a casualty rate that approximates the survival odds most rescued kittens face, we’ll give AWLA the benefit of the doubt with that kitten.

But when 40 out of 40 young and newborn kittens perish, the word “euthanization” no longer applies — especially when the vast majority of them were dead within hours of their arrival at the shelter. Some of these kittens may have been sick, but my five years of kitten fostering has taught me that most sick kittens recover fully with basic TLC and common medications — the very treatment that foster homes are happy to provide. I’ve seen ten-ounce kittens recover from diarrhea, vomiting, hypoglycemic shock, 107-degree fevers, and severe upper-respiratory infections. What they need is encouragement and a chance.

The likelihood is that most of the kittens entrusted to AWLA’s care were healthy. They just weren’t weaned yet, and they needed to be bottle-fed. That’s what kitten-fostering programs are for. AWLA has over 30 kitten fosterers, yet it couldn’t manage to actually utilize them when the need arose. Maybe because AWLA’s volunteer coordinator left her job earlier this year and the position remained vacant for a while.

Whatever the reason, AWLA’s indiscriminate killing of this year’s bottle-babies represents both a sickening step backward from prior years and an insidious betrayal:

- of the citizens who thought they were “rescuing” kittens by bringing them to the Arlington shelter;

- of the kitten fosterers who trusted AWLA to let them help save orphaned and abandoned kittens;

- of the donors who contribute based on the false belief that AWLA tries to save needy kittens;

- of AWLA’s own asserted mission to improve the welfare of stray, abused, and neglected animals in Northern Virginia.

One fosterer said that when she inquired about the dearth of kittens recently, a shelter staffer told her that they’d been referring kitten-finders to other shelters or rescue organizations. If that’s true, then AWLA wasn’t just betraying its constituents — it was also lying to them.

Clearly, the culture of stonewalling, elision, and path-of-least-effort at AWLA didn’t entirely disappear with the departure of the former Executive Director. When her replacement arrives, we retain some hope that the culture can be converted into one that truly values the lives of Arlington’s neediest companion animals.

That will take a leader who is willing to perform a thorough house-cleaning at AWLA. Any staff member who can rationalize AWLA’s recent treatment of bottle-baby kittens has no place in a well-managed open-admission shelter. Too many innocent animals pay for that ambivalence and lack of compassion with their lives.