Kitten Abandonment Brings Call for Criminal Investigation

PETA Urges Gov. Carney to Ensure That Animal-Welfare Officer Is Held Responsible for Dumping Sick Kitten in the Woods

For Immediate Release:
August 1, 2018

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

This morning, PETA sent a letter calling on Gov. John Carney to order a criminal investigation into the Office of Animal Welfare and its officer who reportedly willfully dumped a sick kitten in the woods in Sussex County last week, noting that Delaware state law prohibits animal abandonment.

“This vulnerable kitten is reported to have had such a severe infection that her eyes were sealed shut and she was too ill to eat or drink. She needed medical care—not to be dumped from a van into the woods,” says PETA Senior Vice President of Cruelty Investigations Daphna Nachminovitch. “PETA is calling on Governor Carney to establish that this incident was cruel and to ensure that appropriate cruelty charges are brought against those responsible.”

In the letter, PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—also urges Carney to veto House Bill 235, which would require that shelters in the state abandon cats.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.

PETA’s letter to Gov. Carney follows.

August 1, 2018

The Honorable John Carney

Governor of Delaware

Dear Gov. Carney,

I hope you are well. We’re hearing from many of our thousands of Delaware members and supporters who are deeply concerned after reading news reports detailing the abandonment of a sick kitten by an officer with the Office of Animal Welfare (OAW). The officer responded to a resident’s call about a kitten. The animal was unable to eat or drink and was suffering from a badly infected eye that was described by resident Kurt Herring as having “goo scraped and matted across [it]—in fact, there was no eye that I could see.” The officer reportedly drove this ailing animal to another area and abandoned him or her “in the woods.” We respectfully request that your office order a criminal investigation into the incident, which surely violated Delaware state law.

Delaware Criminal Code § 1325 Cruelty to Animals prohibits the abandonment of any domestic animal. The term “abandonment” “includes completely forsaking or deserting an animal originally under one’s custody without making reasonable arrangements for custody of that animal to be assumed by another person.” OAW officers are not exempt from the code.

We also again urge you to veto House Bill (H.B.) 235, which proposes to remove minimal legal protections currently provided to cats in the state and require shelters to abandon them. (See the attached previous correspondence.) Please consider that when Herring initially filed a complaint with the OAW about the kitten who was abandoned, he reports that he was told that “feral cats don’t go to shelters.” Cats—whether they’re feral or socialized, sick or well—are domesticated animals who can’t survive for long on their own and endure painful and gruesome deaths from disease, infected wounds, car strikes, attacks by animals and people, freezing, and other causes when abandoned outdoors.

In areas in which animal shelters have become derelict in their duties to protect animals and the public—this sick kitten may well have had rabies or another disease transmissible to humans—in favor of touting low euthanasia rates, incidents of cruelty to animals are rising. Laws protecting cats—and the public from roaming cats—in particular are sorely lacking in Delaware. We urge you to request that legislation be drafted to require cat owners to provide their felines with minimal responsible care—including sterilization, microchipping, licensing, and humane containment—and to veto H.B. 235. In light of this case, we also hope you’ll consider asking that legislation to increase the penalties for animal abandonment be immediately introduced.

I  am eager to hear from your office about efforts to prevent future cases like this one. Meanwhile, thank you for your hard work for Delaware residents.

Respectfully yours,

Teresa Chagrin

Animal Care and Control Issues Manager

Cruelty Investigations Department

cc:       Albert Shields, Policy Director

Matt Denn, Delaware Attorney General