In an interview with Ryn Gargulinski of the Tucson Citizen in July of last year, the Hermitage's Executive Director Mary Jo Spring described some of the wonderful programs the Hermitage had to encourage people to adopt. One statement in the article particularly caught my eye:

Free vet care for life entices others to consider adopting cats plagued with feline diseases.

Ms. Spring did a fantastic job of keeping the announcement of this program a surprise, and none of the staff or volunteers heard anything about it until they read it in the paper. Unfortunately, for some reason, details have not emerged. In the 10 months since the article was published, there has been no mention of the Free Vet Care for Life Program on their official website's Programs page, whose header reads "The Hermitage offers programs that help our precious animals live long and healthy lives." There has been no mention of the Free Vet Care for Life Program on their Hermitage Cats blog, whose purpose is "to inform our sponsors, donors and adopters of the ongoing activities and programs of the Hermitage Cat Shelter in Tucson, Arizona." Certainly none of the people I know who have adopted cats from the Hermitage over the last 10 months have been told about this measure, and I'm certain in this economic climate, if people knew they could adopt an animal without worrying about vet bills, there would be many more adopters.

I don't understand why Ms. Spring hasn't announced this offering during her TV appearances on KVOA Channel 4's noontime Kitty Corner and Channel 12's Pet Connection. These programs are all about connecting potential adopters with local shelters, I'm sure the Hermitage would have 10 phone calls before Ms. Spring even returned from the studio. I hope someone like Martha Vazquez or Terry Quinn will ask Ms. Spring for some specific details, including how many special needs cats have been adopted out using this program, averge yearly and lifetime cost savings to the adopter and how funding was secured. I'm sure the Hermitage will be getting phone calls from other shelters all over the country who want to start a similar program in their own community.

Note: Since this article was posted yesterday, the lead vet tech's description of the incident has been pulled from his personal blog, but we have posted a link to a copy at the end of this article. The Hermitage has also removed the text from its homepage indicating where to click to read their official blog articles on the incident, whose most recent headline read "Cat Death at the Shelter." However, you can still get to their blog by clicking here, or on the cat in the tophat underneath the list of links on the left-hand side of their homepage. And since I'm sure they'll take that down as soon as they figure out removing a title is not the same thing as removing a link, I'll go ahead and post MS Word copies of their own articles here.

Mike, a lead vet tech at the Hermitage, has a personal blog in which he has written first-hand about how Abe the FIV cat was mauled to death by two dogs at the Hermitage. It is not the sanitized version printed on the Hermitage's official blog, or released to the press. It is distressing reading for anyone who loves animals, especially those who knew Abe "personally", and there are in addition greater social concerns about why 8 year-old boys would commit such an act. Indeed, when I worked at the Hermitage, there was a poster on the wall in the very room where the attack occured, on the connection between violence against animals, and how it progresses to violence against humans.

I bring up this sad event here, because there is an important question that has not been asked publicly in all the Hermitage official blogs, memorial articles, and news coverage. It is this: how were two fairly young children able to just walk into the Hermitage when it was closed, with two dogs, go all the way back to the FIV area, prop open doors, and in addition to turning the dogs loose, beat the cats with sticks (this was in another article), without setting off any alarms, or having to break windows or doors to gain access? The Hermitage closes at 4 PM. Mike says he was the last staff person to leave, and that Mary Jo Spring, the Executive Director, and Dick Blanchard, a volunteer, and now a member of the board, were the only ones there. The Executive Director's office is in a building separate from the cats, and she does not go over there to provide animal care, so why weren't the animal areas locked and alarmed? It is clear from Mike's blog that it was common practice for the shelter to be left unsecured after closing. In order for the children to gain access, multiple locks and alarms were not set, even though it was more than 2 hours after closing, on a Friday night, and since it was after 6 PM in January, presumably dark. There were multiple levels of security that should have been in place to protect the cats, and just one of them would have been sufficient to prevent this tragedy, but the Executive Director didn't use any.

Ms. Spring did not cause the two 8 year-olds to seek out helpless targets for their anger, but better decision making on her part would have prevented the tragedy. But she dropped the security ball, Abe paid for her mistake with his life, and no one is acknowledging this. I think this is another consequence of having an Executive Director whose background is in fundraising, not animal care. Anyone who has worked in a shelter environment will tell you all animal shelters are sadly targets for this type of behavior by disturbed persons, and therefore security is a special issue that becomes second nature. When I worked at the Hermitage, we kept the front door locked all the time, to make certain we knew when we had visitors, and visitors were always accompanied by a staff person. And the Hermitage is a unique place in that the cats are uncaged, and allowed to go between rooms, so locking the door to prevent cat escapes is paramount in a way that is not true at PACC or the Humane Society. But even there, I can guarantee you that when the head of the Humane Society, or PACC works late after their shelter is closed, they do not leave entry doors unlocked, or the entrances to animal care areas unalarmed. Ms. Spring's learning curve is too steep.

Since I'm sure they'll try to pull his article off the internet once they read this, here's a pdf copy.

The Hermitage was advertizing on its website last week a seminar on fostering infant kittens (or as they phrased it, "kittins"). I found this interesting, because the Hermitage staff I knew who had fostered kittens were all let go, and the board members who had helped foster are also long gone. I thought perhaps the Hermitage had worked at "fostering" the talents of their new staff. I thought perhaps they had decided to "foster" a new relationship with volunteers since the September board meeting, when Executive Director Mary Jo Spring stated that there were only 7 volunteers (the rest having fled or been banned), and they didn't want any volunteers for cleaning, just tabling and outside events. So I checked the volunteer section of the website, and but saw nothing on fostering. And upon further searching I found that in fact, the seminar was being presented by Humane Society personnel.

Merchant Circle is a business review website. You can see for yourself how former customers of the Hermitage rate their experiences over the past year. Some of the names are familiar, some are folks I've never met, but there is a definite consensus.

About a month ago, shortly after the Tucson Weekly's second recent article on the Hermitage, another board member's name disappeared from the Hermitage's "Who We Are" page on their website. Again, no fanfare, no "thank you for services rendered", no acknowledgement of the various activities accomplished, nada. Judy Showers follows in the footsteps of Dawna Spencer, Vernon Alexander, Kendra Kent, and Rachel McCaffrey, who have all resigned from the Hermitage Board since last May's yearly board meeting (and additionally Dan and Denise Moynihan, who chose to leave the board at May). This is especially impressive since the board only has 5 members at the current time (although the by-laws permit many more). Some time ago, I was told that Ms. Showers had tried to talk with Ms. Spring about the Hermitage actually sitting down and talking with the Save the Hermitage group, but was thoroughly rebuffed by the Executive Director. In the spirit of open communications, I invite Ms. Showers to contact the webmaster and directly give her side of the story, on or off the record, as she chooses. If she wishes, I promise to publish any communication she may wish to write, whether favorable or unfavorable to either side. Only open communication can lead to a better future for the cats.

The Board meetings are still hidden and private, but here are links to the online Board application and the printed version. I predict one vacancy.

Here's an article from this weekend's Tucson Citizen on why it is not responsible to give baby animals as Easter presents:
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/ss/lifestyle/114040.php

Here's the third part of the Hermitage's Mission Statement, as taken from their own website:
Educating the public about responsible companion animal guardianship

And here's the Hermitage website home page, whose scrollbar as of 11:15 this morning was still advertizing their Easter Adoptathon:
http://www.HermitageCatShelter.org

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Thanks for the lead, Jack!

Update at 4:30 PM: That was a quick response, the Hermitage has now pulled the item off their scroll.