This alert is no longer active, but here for reference. Animals still need your help.

In late July, an animal control officer was dispatched from the Delaware Office of Animal Welfare to pick up a sick kitten in Frankfort, Delaware. What the officer did next defies logic and is a violation of Delaware law. The officer picked up the severely ill kitten and dumped her in the woods – some 30 miles away! Speak up now to charge this officer with animal cruelty!

A resident concerned about an unresponsive and very sick kitten sitting in the middle of a road called the Delaware Office of Animal Welfare. The Office dispatched an officer to assist, and when the officer arrived he was able to pick up the kitten and place her in his truck. From the description of the kitten by people in the neighborhood, it sounds like she was suffering from a severe upper respiratory infection and badly needing medical care, which everyone assumed she would then receive.

However, when a follow-up call was placed to the officer later that evening, he told the caller that he had wiped the kitten's face and placed her in the woods - not where she was originally picked up, but in Milton, Delaware - 30 miles away! This would be a likely death sentence for any animal, but certainly true for a kitten needing medical care.

Animal advocates have searched the woods but the kitten is missing, presumed dead.

Removing animals from the areas where they live and abandoning them in other locations where they don't have food or water sources, shelter, or know which predators might be lurking is almost always a death sentence for those animals. In most states, this isn't just a horrible idea, it's also against the law and Delaware is no exception. Delaware Criminal Code 1325: Cruelty to animals, specifically lists animal abandonment as a violation.

Delaware Animal Control has apparently 're-educated' its officers on protocol to release animals in the same area where they are found, but this is too little, too late. Sick kittens deserve urgent medical attention, whether they have a guardian or not.

Please join us in asking Christina Motoyoshi, Director of the Delaware Office of Animal Welfare, to investigate and charge the animal control officer who abandoned the kitten under Delaware law. This wasn't just a case of bad judgment, it's criminal animal abandonment, almost certainly resulting in the kitten's death and this officer is not above the law.

What You Can Do

This alert is no longer active, but here for reference. Animals still need your help.