Changes defended at no-kill cat shelter

The Hermitage Cat Shelter, which has operated as a no-kill sanctuary since 1965, has been at the center of a controversy over the last few months in the wake of changes that include staff turnover, increased adoptions, and a partnership with the Humane Society of Southern Arizona, which is now providing veterinary care.

Former staffers, volunteers and some donors are outraged over the changes, saying the euthanizations, in particular, were not justified and show the shelter has abandoned its mission. They have formed a group, Save the Hermitage, and run a blog where they voice their concerns.

But at a press conference, Hermitage Executive Director Mary Jo Spring said the cats who were put down had been medically neglected. All the cats had been ravaged by illnesses and many suffered a poor quality of life. With the shelter's census sometimes reaching 500 cats, some cats hadn't had a veterinary examination in years. Hermitage has filed a report with the Tucson Police Department.

"We are doing everything in our power never to let this happen again at the Hermitage," Spring said. "We are not euthanizing healthy cats. We will never do that in the future."

Those with Save the Hermitage have a different perspective, saying the cats were relatively healthy, and many former staffers and volunteers would have gladly taken the cats into their own homes. Because of the infighting, members of Save the Hermitage have no direct contact with the shelter or the cats, despite longtime connections.

"The problem with the changes at the shelter in that respect is that they are killing, not euthanizing," said Gary Stanfield, a member of Save the Hermitage.

The majority of the euthanized cats were feral, Spring said, making them impossible to adopt out even if they had been healthy. But some of the cats were also sponsored by donors who often visited the cats for years. She said the shelter did not contact the sponsors about the decision because of all the turmoil.

"They will be contacted," she said. "People who sponsored cats will be getting letters."

Why it took so long to notice medical neglect is unclear. Spring has been with the shelter about 18 months. Stanfield and others questioned why she didn't see problems sooner.

"The main problem that a number of us have voiced for quite some time is that the board and the executive director are making all of these claims about abuse and neglect, yet the current board has been in charge of the shelter for two years," said Stanfield, who has also filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service about some documents not being made available to him.

Spring and Taylor Heidenheim, newly appointed vice president of the Hermitage Board of Directors, said they became aware of the medical problems in May after the shelter split with its longtime manager. They claim, among other things, sick cats were "hidden" and proper treatment was withheld.

"They were not paying attention to where all our cats were," Heidenheim said. "Some cats weren't looked at for four years."

Many of the euthanized cats suffered from an inflammation of the mouth known as stomatitis, which makes eating difficult, causes a number of canker sores and is usually a sign of malnutrition or anemia.

"It is well documented in overcrowded and hoarding situations, and in feral cats it is difficult to almost impossible to treat," said Dr. Karter Neal, a veterinarian with the Humane Society of Southern Arizona, who is handling the vet care for Hermitage.

Neal comes from a no-kill background and has seven years as a shelter veterinarian.

She and her staff are in the process of going through the shelter's population, which has been made difficult by both the volume of cats as well as that a number of them are feral.

"I am very pleased with the improved care and monitoring that we are trying to install in the Hermitage, and the Humane Society is supporting these changes," she said. "There were about 100 feral cats, and some of them had not been examined in quite some time."

The shelter will no longer take in feral cats and is moving the remaining ones to a trap- and-release program, Spring said.

The decision was made because the feral cats were taking up space at the shelter, and Spring wants to start taking in more cats from the Pima Animal Care Center, which euthanizes unwanted animals. Rather than euthanization, those cats could be adopted out to homes.

There will still be cats that live permanently at the Hermitage, but the census will now hover around 250. The emphasis will be on adoptions, with a goal to adopt 40 cats a month, Spring said.

Sally Danielson, spokeswoman for Save the Hermitage, said increasing adoptions is fine, but the group would like the shelter to resume home checks for prospective adoptive families, particularly in the case of special-needs cats. The shelter recently stopped doing home checks.

"If you let those cats go out for adoption, then you have to be careful the kind of home they are going to," Danielson said.

Looking ahead, the infighting is likely to continue. Mediation has been suggested, but that's no certainty.

"We would really like to have mediation," Danielson said. "We realize they don't have to, but for the cats' sake that we all love."