Remenber, He also Created the Pet Euthanizer.

Most Heart-Wrenching

Pet Euthanizer
Animal Shelter

STANDING NEXT TO ROWS of caged feral cats in the quarantine room of the
Santa Clara County Animal Shelter in San Martin, lead kennel attendant
Judy Mendes is explaining how to put a kitten down. That's "put down"
as in dead.

"What we'll do with a real wild kitten is we can throw a towel over
them," she says matter-of-factly. "Then you can pick them up by the
scruff of the neck and then you can inject them up in the ribs up in
through here," she points to the top of her stomach to show where the
needle goes. As she's speaking, a frightened orange and white feral
kitten--which probably only has a few days before it gets one in the
ribs--meows over and over, as if to say, "Not me!"

"You want to hit a major organ," Mendes concludes, "so they go down
just like that."

Last year 2,667 stray or owner-surrendered cats and dogs spent time at
the county animal shelter. Fewer than half made it out alive.

Mendes is the person at the shelter who decides which animals get to
keep living and which don't.

She targets sick and ill-tempered animals if she can. But if the kennel
starts overflowing, Mendes must order her crew to put down even the
sweetest cat or dog if they're too old and have stayed too many months
without being adopted. "That's the sad part of this job," she sighs.

Mendes makes it a rule not to give names to any of the dogs or cats in
the kennel. She learned that lesson early on in her career when she
fell in love with a big black cat and gave her a name (which she can't
remember now).

"We didn't have a cage empty," she recalls. "We were bringing in
outside cages, rabbit cages. We had to make a decision. ... She [the
black cat] was here the longest and she was the oldest cat, so she had
two strikes against her. No one wanted to adopt an old cat and where I
was at the time, I couldn't take her."

"I've learned that you don't name them," she explains. "When you name
them and then have to put them down, that's even worse."

It wasn't like Mendes--a self-described animal lover who has adopted
two dogs from the shelter--grew up wanting to be an executioner for
unwanted pets. As she describes it, she just "sort of fell into it."

Before she began her career in animal control, she spent 18 years
working as a bookkeeper for her late husband's business. Then, around
seven years ago, she started working part time for animal control,
packing boxes for storage. The director took a shine to Mendes and
asked her if she would work at the shelter with the cats. From there,
her role steadily progressed until she was running the whole show at
the shelter--including euthanizing the unlucky animals.

But Mendes says that despite what others may think, she can sleep well
at night. The animals suffer no pain from the lethal injection, which
acts instantly, she points out. "It's a very humane way of dying," she
says.

Mendes and her staff also verbally console the dogs and cats when they
are about to insert the needle. "We sound like fools," she chuckles.
"We're sitting there saying, 'It's OK, baby, you're going to have a
better life now. You're going to go run and play.' It calms them down."

She knows her job doesn't sound pleasant.

"In the beginning, I wouldn't even tell anybody what I did," she
admits. "Now, I just explain to them that it's a fact of life.
Unfortunately, some animals have to be put to sleep. You know, we all
die."

To find out how to adopt or find a missing pet, call the folks at the
Santa Clara Animal Shelter (408.683.4186), located at 12370 Murphy Ave.
in San Martin.
Will Harper