Ad Exposing Pound Seizure in Texas City Rejected

For more than two decades, Odessa Animal Control has sold homeless cats to the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) for use in painful intubation exercises. A spokesperson for Odessa Animal Control has stated, “We don’t have a problem with [selling cats to TTUHSC]. … We don’t ask any questions.”

If Odessa Animal Control did ask questions, it would learn that the cats are killed after hard plastic tubes are repeatedly forced down their throats and needles are stabbed into their chests—a fate that no animal guardian could bear hearing if his or her cat were the victim.

To share this disturbing information and urge local residents to push for changes in Odessa Animal Control’s policy, we attempted to publish this ad in a local paper:

Unfortunately, our blog is the only place that you can see the ad because it was rejected by the paper. We aren’t giving up so easily, though. By this time last year, cats had already been shipped off and killed at TTUHSC, but we recently confirmed that no animals have been sold or used in the procedures yet this year. Please help permanently end this cruelty today by urging Odessa Mayor Larry Melton and Odessa Animal Control to stop selling animals to Texas Tech and passing this along to everyone you know.

Written by Liz Graffeo