Joseph Brownstone

Review of Humane Society of Southern Ari...

First off, I want to point out that I am a huge an...

First off, I want to point out that I am a huge animal lover and supporter of the Humane Society as an organization. This review is about this local chapter only. Over the last two decades of being in Tucson, my wife and I regularly come across dogs and cats (normally cats). We get them neutered, shots and rehomed. Now we have a one-year-old daughter and have three cats and one dog, all of whom are the difficult ones to rehome so we kept them ourselves.

Someone in our neighborhood doesn't fix their cats and so every year we get another litter of stray kittens roaming our street. Most of them are taken in, however, two remained and my home was the only one still feeding these (now) teen cats. Since one of them is regularly picked on by other neighborhood cats, my wife and I decided to help them. We got these siblings in kennels and took them to the humane society. One was taken in no-problem. The other was declined for being too feral. This was determined by poking this frightened young cat with a stick. Keep in mind that this was the first time this cat had been in a cage and experienced a car ride, all within 45 minutes.

So we took him home and after the first day, the cat chilled. He hasn't shown a single sign of being feral and is even great with our one-year-old. So after a week we called to setup an appointment. This is what upsets me. They refused to even see him again. They didn't care that it was his first car ride or first hour of ever being caged. They said "he failed our test" and refused. I pleaded, asking for them to at least run their tests again, and then if he fails, okay. Apparently helping this young cat wasn't worth their time.

They said to take him to PACC, but I refuse to bring any animal to a kill shelter. They told us we could take him to a feral program to be released with feral cats but he isn't feral. HSSA let us down. We already have so many animals and a daughter that taking in another animal, even for a short time, isn't feasible. So my options are basically to drop him off at the Pima Animal Death Camps or release him back into our neighborhood, where he no longer has his sibling (HSSA took him) and gets picked on by cat bullies.

So I won't be supporting HSSA anymore. I'll support the parent organization but not the local chapter. The local chapter is filled with quick-to-judge (aka pre-judgemental or prejudice) staff.

Thanks for checking out my review. Hopefully you have a better experience with them.