PHOENIX — Animal lovers threatened to pull donations to an animal rescue group and the public flooded the agency with scathing comments after a cat was euthanized when the owner couldn’t afford its medical care, prompting the Arizona Humane Society to go into damage control Wednesday.
The group hired a publicist, removed dozens of comments on its Facebook page and directed five volunteers to respond to the overwhelming calls and e-mails it received after The Arizona Republic published a weekend story about Daniel Dockery and his 9-month-old cat, Scruffy.
Dockery, a 49-year-old recovering heroin addict, told the newspaper that he took Scruffy to a Humane Society center Dec. 8 after she was cut by a barbed-wire fence, an injury he described as not life-threatening. The agency said it would cost $400 to treat Scruffy, which he didn’t have.
The Humane Society cited policy when it declined to accept a credit card over the phone from Dockery’s mother in Michigan or to wait for her to wire the money. The staff said that if he signed papers surrendering the cat, Scruffy would be treated and put in foster care, he said.
Scruffy was euthanized several hours later.
Dockery told the Republic he was devastated.
“Now I’ve got to think about how I failed that beautiful animal,” Dockery said. “I failed her. . . . There was no reason for her not to be treated.”
He described the cat as helping him stay off drugs for about a year, the longest he had ever been clean. He hand-fed her before she opened her eyes at 4 days old, giving her tuna and letting her sleep on his pillow.
Dozens of scathing comments have inundated the Humane Society’s Facebook page, with animal lovers demanding to know why the cat was put down.
Stacy Pearson, hired by the agency just to deal with media questions about the cat, said Scruffy was put down over a number of reasons, including Dockery’s lack of immediate funds, a lack of veterinarians to treat her and what Pearson described as a very serious cut on Scruffy from her abdomen to her knee that went to the muscle.
