Where Are All the Cats?

Last summer, Alley Cat Allies conducted an analysis of Illinois Department of Agriculture reports collected from the 247 animal pounds and shelters licensed by the state that handled cats in 2006.

Things don't look too good.

More than 60,000 cats were killed in Illinois animal pounds and shelters in 2006. That’s 5,000 cats killed every month, and 160 each day.

On top of that, these same facilities couldn’t account for over 17,000 cats. No one knows what happened to them.

Illinois is one of the few states with laws already requiring pounds and shelters to report the fate of animals in their custody. In the same year that 60,000 cats were killed and 17,000 went missing, the Illinois Department of Agriculture didn’t review the reports. It didn’t even total up those numbers.

And it didn’t penalize or investigate a single facility for failing to account for so many fatalities.

They point out that Illinois is just one state of many others where there is no accountability for where these animals go.

Alley Cat Allies is awesome and we have supported them for years (although not as much as I would like.)

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