American Realistan

I’ve spent much of the day today - the first one I’ve had to post here for a while now - caring for three two-day-old orphan kittens. I have no idea where their mother is, but my family and I can’t stand to see these creatures starve to death. There was a fourth, but he died before we could do much for him, and one of the remaining three refuses to eat from a bottle even though he’s clearly hungry.

Imagine my disgust through this experience to read that in Puerto Rico, people’s cherished pets have been callously thrown off a bridge by a man hired to collect them and transport them to a shelter. At least 50 former pets were put into a common grave near the bridge by a local resident, and at least six badly injured pets were reunited with their owners.

The problem is: someone didn’t understand that the majority of these removed pets were not in violation of any rules in the public housing project in Barceloneta on Puerto Rico’s north coast. But the problem doesn’t stop with pets with homes, or even with animals in general.
(more…)