Kitty Sharpshooter Defending Herself from LAAS

Spayed Not Once - But Twice!

The humane community supports spay and neuter - but it doesn't believe it should be done twice to the same animal! Listen to this story of utter incompetence and neglect bordering on animal cruelty by LA City's West Valley shelter and one of its outsourced private vets, Porter Pet Hospital.

Remember the Ron Mason case? Ed Boks raided him and confiscated all his cats. He claimed that they were not spayed or neutered and that they were all ill and suffering irremediably. In fact, both claims were bald-faced lies and no charges were ever brought against Mason. Ed just wanted a raid to put on an Animal Planet show. Many of Mason'a cats were in fact killed by LAAS under the supervision of Ed Boks, even though they were healthy and/or treatable.

However, two of Ron Mason’s impounded cats, Simba and Foxy, were adopted on March 2. LAAS requires all animal leaving the shelter to be neutered before being adopted out. Many, if not all, spays / neuters from the West Valley shelter are performed by referred vets such as Porter Pet Hospital.

Simba and Foxy had already been spayed - one about a year ago and one about five years ago at Holiday Humane. On March 2, Ron was at the shelter with the adopter and informed everyone of such. Apparently, no vet or tech had ever bothered to check that the cats had been spayed despite the fact they had been caged in the facility for five months!! Or, if they did check, they were too incompetent to notice residual hysterectomy scars! How could Dr. Rao, who is the West Valley vet and who is scheduled to perform 3,000 spay / neuter surgeries a year, not know that the cats under his care for the last five months had already been spayed?

If the vet staff could not determine whether the cats were spayed, how could Boks so self-assuredly tell the media - and post on the LAAS website - about all the unsterilized cats found on Mason’s property? Well, for this PR bust to proceed, it would hardly look good for the official records to reflect that all the seized cats had in fact been spayed / neutered! LAAS wa probably intending to "disappear" Ron's records.

The adopter was told that the two cats needed to be checked at Porter Pet Hospital to verify whether they had already been spayed. When they were picked up on March 3, both cats had been operated on again - for spaying!
Five days after the unnecessary surgery, one of the cats, Simba, developed a swelling at the incision site and was returned to Porter for treatment of this development. A pressure bandage was applied and amoxicillin was prescribed. On the 13th, Ron went back to Porter with Foxy to have the stitches removed. There was a note at the hospital dictating that no stitches were to be taken out until the adopter paid a $64.50 bill. Porter was attempting to charge for the treatment of a complication that had arisen after two unnecessary surgeries!

We have a few questions to pose. Why did these cats have to suffer second surgeries? Is there more here than just gross incompetence by Animal Services and Porter? Was this part of a cover up because Boks had claimed the Mason cats had not been spayed and neutered? Is this situation unique to Ron, or is this routine? Do these unnecessary surgeries occur to boost Animal Services' spay / neuter numbers with a little kickback for Porter each time? Unnecessary surgery is a win-win situation for them, but a sometimes life-threatening ordeal for the animals and a loss to the taxpayers who foot the bills.

Just more of LAAS' incompetence - or deliberate malfeasance?