'Grown-ups killed my kitty'

By Hum
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Grand Master

Hum

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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - An 8-year-old Utah boy wrote a letter to his local newspaper after an animal shelter worker failed to write a note to save his cat from being euthanized. "Yesterday grown-ups killed my kitty, my best friend, when they weren't supposed to," he said.

The letter appeared in The Herald Journal, of Logan, on Thursday. By Friday, it had received the fourth-most comments on the newspaper's website ? behind three letters about Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Some berated the shelter for failing to keep the cat safe. Others criticized the family for letting the cat outside, failing to have it on a leash or not looking for the cat at the shelter sooner. Still others faulted the neighbors who had trapped the cat and denied having seen it when asked.

But the boy, Rayden Sazama, just wanted to share his love of his cat, Toothless.

"I just wanted to tell people about Toothless ? that I loved him," he told The Associated Press through his father, Jason Sazama, on Friday. "And that people shouldn't lie."

Sazama said he's surprised how many people didn't get the point of Rayden's letter, which the boy dictated to his grandfather: "It was about a boy sharing his love for his cat ? and saying, `C'mon grown-ups.'"

Toothless, a fluffy, black cat who roamed the cow pasture next door and often brought home "presents" of field mice, slipped out his kitty door Sept. 28 and didn't return home. By Sunday, Rayden and his younger brother, Devin, were going door to door, asking neighbors if they had seen the cat.

Everyone said they hadn't seen Toothless.

Jason Sazama checked the Cache Humane Society's website but didn't see any photos resembling Toothless. After two busy days on the road for work, he decided to swing by the organization's shelter Tuesday to see if Toothless had turned up.

The shelter had already closed for the evening, but a worker allowed Sazama inside, where Toothless sat in a cage. There was just one problem: Sazama still needed to pay the impound fee at a government building that was also closed.

The worker assured Sazama the cat would be fine, and he returned home, crowing: "I found Toothless! We'll get him tomorrow."

But when Sazama returned the next day, the receipt for his impound payment in hand, he discovered that Toothless had already been euthanized. The worker had forgotten to put a note on the cage.

Rayden said in his letter that the neighbors lied when he asked them if they had seen the cat. "My dad and mom tell me and Devin not to lie and that is right," he said.

"Now I don't know what to do," the letter concludes. "My cat Toothless is dead; the people that killed him didn't even give him to my dad so we could bury him. What do I do now?"

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Grand Master

*RedBull*

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Poor kitty. Bad people. Well he's leaned first hand that people don't do the right thing. That's why prison exist.

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Grand Master

DirtyLarry Veteran

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Forget being a kid, I would be totally heart broken if this happened to me. Could have absolutely been avoided, and that is the tragedy of the situation.

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Grand Master

ILikeTobacco

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Maybe it is an outdated picture, but if that was a recent one, there is never a reason to kill a kitten in the pound, especially after a few days only. Kittens are the most likely to be adopted.

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Grand Master

ILikeTobacco

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that poor kitten and child. :( maybe some nice kind hearted person will give him a new one.

perhaps the neowin community could chip in and get this kid a new friend ?

I think, and this is strictly my opinion, immediately getting the kid a new kitten would be a bad life lesson. The "just buy a new one" and "everything is disposable" mentality needs to stop in our society. Right now he is feeling grief and should deal with that directly, not just replace what was lost with something new.
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DConnell Member

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that poor kitten and child. :( maybe some nice kind hearted person will give him a new one.

perhaps the neowin community could chip in and get this kid a new friend ?

I'd chip in. I'd be heartbroken if anything happened to my Chara. I don't normally let her out but accidents do happen. And the one time she did I was a wreck until I found her. So I know exactly what this kid is going through.

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Tarvis123

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I lost my cat back in 2010 and felt extremely guilty and depressed over what I deemed to be my fault and something I should have prevented and it still bothers me to do this day. It's probably the most upset I've ever been about losing someone or something and I guess that's due to the fact that I feel more empathy for cats than I do most other animals, or even most people, as cats generally seem to have a lot of people who hate them and abuse/abandon them.

My cat was a stray that I found abandoned on the side of the road when she couldn't have been more than 5 or 6 weeks old. She was different than most cats because she could never jump very high and she couldn't climb to save her life, but she was the most loving animal I've ever known and I've had lots of dogs and cats in the past. She wasn't a very self sufficient cat, which I guess amplifies my feeling of guilt about her death.

A week after her death, someone asked me to take one of their two kitten because they needed to get rid of it and I fought with myself over how it would be like I was replacing my cat. In the end I decided to take her because she needed a home and I was still miserable. It ended up being a good thing I did, because a few days later the woman told me a dog attacked the other kitten and killed it. While my new cat is just as loving and I wouldn't trade her for anything else in the world, I know it is not the same. Whether a child could understand that, I don't know. All I know is it helped me get me past some of the pain I felt.

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Grand Master

episode

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That's so sad. Those people who killed that poor kitty should be extremely ashamed of themselves.

If it happened to my dog, I would euthanize the worker. Period.

I think, and this is strictly my opinion, immediately getting the kid a new kitten would be a bad life lesson. The "just buy a new one" and "everything is disposable" mentality needs to stop in our society. Right now he is feeling grief and should deal with that directly, not just replace what was lost with something new.

Trust me, kids understand a lot more than you think.

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Lovell

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Maybe it is an outdated picture, but if that was a recent one, there is never a reason to kill a kitten in the pound, especially after a few days only. Kittens are the most likely to be adopted.

I know PETA kills 99% (2000) of cats and 97%(1000) of dogs a year, it's the main reason if I were ever to get rid of a pet I'd try and give it to a friend or put an ad in the paper.

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