A Philadelphia family is outraged and considering a law suit after an animal rescue shelter amputated their healthy cat’s crooked leg.
Kim Schmidt said her cat ‘Stinky’ got out on Saturday night in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Two days later she got a call from the local animal control center ACCT Philly to come identify the missing cat.
When the shelter showed her the cat, she nearly passed out. Her beloved 16-year-old pet was missing one of his legs.
Stinky was born with a malformed rear leg that was crooked. The shelter assumed it was broken so they amputated it.
A family cat named Stinky escaped on Saturday night. When she was brought to a shelter, the employees thought her leg was broken so they amputated it
Schmidt posted about the incident on Facebook.
‘Well, I found her, WITH NO F**KING LEG. They cut her f**king leg completely off,’ the post reads.
The employees at the shelter said they performed the amputation because they thought the leg was broken and didn’t have an x-ray machine to confirm it.
Employee Ame Dorminy says the shelter takes in about 15,000 cats annually and the staff there made a decision that the cat could be adopted out more readily if its bad leg was amputated.
Schmidt says the amputation was hasty and unnecessary because her cat was only in ACCT’s care for less than 48 hours.
Under state law dogs must be held for two days, but there is no such law for cats that don’t have a microchip, so the shelter didn’t do anything illegal when they amputated Stinky’s leg.
But Schmidt is considering legal action regardless.
A petition was drawn up to have the practice hand over its license. It currently has over 4,100 signatures and is closing in on the 5,000-signature goal.
Stinky’s owner Kim Schmidt said she almost passed out when she saw her cat with only three legs. ‘Since she was born had a limp, she was seen by vets throughout the years and she was a perfectly normal functioning cat. Just a little different,’ she wrote in the Facebook post
An employee said the staff there made a decision that the cat could be adopted out more readily if its bad leg was amputated
Schmidt says the amputation was hasty and unnecessary because her cat was only in ACCT’s care for less than 48 hours. Stinky is shown sulking above
Schmidt says although the leg was crooked, in the 16 years that Stinky has been alive, no vet has ever considered it an issue.
‘She was a perfectly normal functioning cat. Just a little different,’ she wrote in the Facebook post.
Stinky is home now, but is having trouble adjusting to life on three legs.
She is…in so much agony,’ Schmidt said. ‘Shes 16 years old and now has to adjust to this new life. I’m heartbroken to say the least. This is the botch job they did for no reason.’
The 16-year-old cat is ‘in agony’ and having a hard time adjusting to life on three legs
A petition was drawn up to have the practice hand over its license. It currently has over 4,100 signatures and is closing in on the 5,000-signature goal