It means more

Animal welfare means more than providing food, water and shelter. Sometimes it means ending suffering.

A woman showed up at the front door yesterday evening, one minute after we closed. I saw that she had an animal wrapped in a blanket in her arms. We opened the door and she said she had found this cat outside her home, she didn't know anything about animals so decided to bring it to us. The cat didn't look right to me, her jaw was hanging open and she wasn't holding up her head. I thanked the woman for bringing her in and we took the cat back to Dr. P. who was still in the clinic. Upon opening the blanket on the exam table it was immediately apparent that something traumatic had happened. The hips bones were all wrong and it looked like she had a huge abscess inside her back leg that had burst open. She was extremely thin. And looking into her eyes I saw only pain. We ended her suffering. But she was lovingly held, spoken to softly, and stroked as she fell asleep. She was cared for. Isn't that what we all want?