Man loses his cat because he couldn’t pay the Humane Society vet upfront
WHAT HEELS: Five-time felon and recovering heroin addict Daniel Dockery, 49, found a reason to stay clean and sober nine months ago when he took in a stray four-day-old kitten, which he named Scruffy. But the Arizona Humane Society's Campus for Compassion took his pet from him when he was unable to pay a $400 veterinarian bill, The Arizona Republic reports:
[Dockery] said instead of working with him, or waiting 24 hours for his mother in Michigan to wire the money, Humane Society staff told him the only way Scruffy would be treated is if Dockery "surrendered" the animal and signed away his ownership rights. …
But Dockery's mother, Donna Koning of Muskegon, Mich., said it was a decision that didn't have to be made. She said that when her son called from the clinic in a panic over Scruffy's fate, she talked to a clinic manager and offered to pay the bill immediately with a credit card over the phone.
"They refused to take it. They said they didn't want to do that because they've had trouble in the past," Koning said. …
When he turned over Scruffy to the clinic, Dockery said he asked repeatedly what would happen to her. He said he was told the cat would likely be put up for adoption. He said he asked staff members if he would be able to re-adopt the cat.
"They hemmed and hawed. They finally said maybe if I could go to the shelter and find her," Dockery said, adding that he scoured shelter adoption books and looked at every cat in every cage without locating Scruffy.
The reason he couldn’t find Scruffy is that the Humane Society euthanized her just hours after Dockery had brought her in for treatment:
"The Humane Society took that cat with every intention of treating the cat and putting it in foster care," [spokesperson] Stacy Pearson said. "It was never intended for that cat to be euthanized."
Pearson said Scruffy was transported to the Humane Society's second-chance clinic along with three other cats; doctors were available to treat only two. …
She said if Dockery paid for the treatment or the clinic had accepted the credit card by phone, Scruffy would not have gone to the second-chance clinic.
On Friday, the Humane Society said it will review its credit-card policy.
For his part, Dockery is distraught over how he “failed that beautiful animal.”
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