A Philadelphia family is outraged after an animal shelter amputated their beloved pet cat’s leg.
Kim Schmidt told NBC10 her cat “Stinky” walked with a limp her entire life with a slightly crooked back leg due to a birth defect.
“Everybody in the neighborhood knows who Stinky is,” Schmidt said.
When Stinky escaped the house over the weekend however, a stranger picked her up and took her to ACCT Philly, the only shelter in Philadelphia that doesn’t turn away animals. Staff members saw the cat’s paw and believed it was mangled and almost facing backwards.
“Instead of giving her an X-Ray, they just took her leg off,” Schmidt said. “And now she has to try to learn to live with three legs.”
ACCT officials say they can’t afford an X-Ray machine and don’t put animals up for adoption with unexplained limps. So they believed it was best to amputate.
Schmidt found out her cat was at the shelter through an online post and went to pick her up. That’s when she found out about the procedure.
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“I went berserk,” she said. “I lost it.”
Now her cat is home on medication as Schmidt demands answers from ACCT Philly.
“I understand why the woman is upset, certainly,” said Ame Dorminy, who works at the shelter.
Dorminy told NBC10 that if they had known the cat lived with her leg crooked and wasn’t in pain, they wouldn’t have amputated it. She says they didn’t know however and had to make a quick decision in a high-volume shelter.
“We feel that we made the best possible decision for this cat with the knowledge that we had,” Dorminy said.
While dogs must be held for two days under state law, there is no such law for cats that don’t have a microchip, meaning the shelter didn’t do anything illegal when they amputated Stinky’s leg. Despite this, many are speaking out against the facility in light of what happened. A petition to shut down ACCT Philly has garnered more than 2800 signatures so far.
“It’s inhumane and they don’t know what they’re doing,” Schmidt said.
ACCT Philly asked Schmidt to come back in ten days so that Stinky could get her stitches removed. Schmidt refused however and said she’s taking her cat to a private vet instead.
