Breaking news: I am so pleased to report that President Obama today signed into law the measure advanced by The Humane Society of the United States to outlaw the creation, sale, and distribution of animal crush videos. This is a great victory for us, less than eight months after the U.S. Supreme Court nullified the original law as unconstitutional. Now state and federal law enforcement have the tools to identify producers or peddlers of this smut and bring them to justice.
Last week I shared the first story in our Survivor series, profiling Boomer, a formerly neglected dog rescued from the cruelty and filth of a puppy mill and now living a contented life in a new home. In our second installment, I share with you the story of Powell, a kitten saved from an animal hoarder. Unlike those who mass-produce dogs for profit at puppy mills, there's typically no material gain or malice with animal hoarders -- just a case of denial and distorted reality and often awful conditions for overcrowded, often ill animals living in filth.
Powell was a tiny black kitten living amongst 90 cats confined to a dark basement room. Powell was undernourished, suffering from an upper respiratory infection, and his eyes were nearly swollen shut. He was so weak he could hardly make a sound. Today, Powell has been nursed back to full health, he's strong and playful, and we expect he'll soon find his forever home.
All told, we discovered 150 cats that day in every nook and cranny of the residence -- and that was just one of many deployments this year where we responded to hoarding abuses. In this case, many of the cats suffered from illnesses, injuries, ear mites, tumors, and emaciation. The suffering was extreme, but the case was not atypical.
Watch as Adam Parascandola, our director of Animal Cruelty Issues, shares Powell's inspiring story, then please make a donation to our 2011 Animal Survivors Fund to support our hands-on rescue efforts and all of our other work to help animals. With your help, in 2011 we can continue to save thousands more animals like Powell and continue to strike at the root causes of cruelty, charging forward with our offensives against human-caused cruelty.
This post originally appeared on Pacelle's blog, A Humane Nation.