51 Down, 1 to Go!

As a prior donor to the Hermitage Cat Shelter, I have been completely out of the loop on this controversy until I read this article. I then went and Googled all the websites and articles over the past year on the topic and spent the past day reading them. I am really sick to my stomach.

The conclusion I draw, Ms. Spring is a heartless, opportunistic liar more concerned with her own paycheck and power than the mission of the founder or the cats. Killing over 50 cats in brief period, then hiding their names and reasons for the kill, firing all the staff and volunteers, blaming the former vet, saying your mission is to get cats adopted then refusing to let former volunteers and staff adopt (her own words), blaming past staff/volunteers for issues that the board was 100% responsible for if they were true–it is just beyond disgusting. If all these problems WERE going on, she had 2 YEARS to get it taken care of and instead let it go on for a year and a half then just started firing or banning anyone who asked questions about where the disappearing cats were going. She said she didn’t know they weren’t being cared for. Her office is right next to the cats. If she didn’t know, she is admitting at the very least she is incompetent. So which is it? Is she a murdering liar or incompetent? Such a high turnover in such a short period of time is disastrous for the cats; the caretakers who know them best are gone. I am betting that many of the cats had no one to take care of them and their health conditions worsened and the others she killed she did just because she could with no one holding her accountable & donors like me having no clue what was going on.

As to her complaints against the vet and prior employees…ha! Sounds like someone trying to cover her own butt. If the employees stole proprietary information (I imagine she means donor files) why didn’t I get a call, email or letter from this “disgruntled” group? Surely my info is in their database and if the supposedly horrible Heck group was trying to destroy the shelter, I would have received some notification.

“Heck is among those currently being sued by the shelter”. Apparently, Ms. Spring doesn’t realize that first amendment rights do protect blogs, especially when the truth is posted and the letters on said blog have the names of the people who wrote them. I will be happy to testify on behalf of the people who really care about the cats and not the murdering thugs running the place now. Killing a cat in contrast to the mission of a no-kill shelter and the fraud around getting donations under the guise of a no-kill makes her the worst kind of criminal.

“”That move was taken because of the confidential information that was being essentially stolen–financial information, comments made by board members, things like that.” Dear Tom doesn’t realize that the financial information is NOT confidential but required by law to be made public like any good charity does. All the other charities I donate to send me yearly reports on it. Why would that or board comments be confidential when this is a nonprofit that gets federal tax exempt status?

“Neal who decided that some of the animals should be killed”. Yes, the same Neal whose background is for the Humane Society who DOES kill cats for various reasons as part of their mission. The problem is, the Hermitage is the opposite…it is set up to care for those cats with various medical issues that the Humane Society normally kills off. As far as not knowing that cats had various issues…likely the cats declined due to improper care when all the volunteers and staff were fired. The cancer issue could easily be something that progressed but I do remember back in 2004 a kitty that was known to have cancer and it was not a reason to kill it…just like with humans. You can still live out your days and depending on the type of cancer and meds, pain free.

I had a tour of the shelter when I donated years ago. The structure of the building need a lot of work and repairs (that was before the later add-on) and yes, it could have been cleaner but that was more of an issue with funding and having enough volunteers during summer months. The lack of good air-conditioning and proper shade exasperated odor issues that would not have been an issue in a better building. Overall though, it was not what is described by Spring or Neal so if it declined that badly in the two years Spring was there…she is responsible and the board…no one else.

The rest of Ms. Springs’ claims are all bull. The volunteers and staff definitely cared about the cats and if there was abuse, the board is ultimately responsible. I don’t believe there was an abuse. Heidi, the former president, was there on a regular basis and new the status of all the cats and staff members. Yes, staff was entrusted to do a lot as were volunteers. That is whole point of having staff. The board at the time set the agenda. Is Ms. Spring saying Heidi was incompetent in her role…the same person who hired Ms. Spring? I went and Googled Heidi and she doesn’t even list her job as President for Hermitage and she was there at least two years. That is really interesting.

Regarding adopting and hording, more bull. I went there and they asked me all kinds of questions when I donated and really were encouraging me to adopt. When I went to fundraisers, the same thing. I knew they did home inspections which any responsible agency would do and since my home was not set up for cats, I could not adopt at that time as much as I would have liked to. Under the new management, they would give me a cat without even knowing if I was set up for it.

Why is Spring hiding the financial information? Maybe the donors, former staff and volunteers need to file a class action suit or several lawsuits. The reporter mentioned lawsuits but no specifics on who was filing and what the claims were. I can think of misappropriation of funds, refusal to supply federally mandated nonprofit documents to keep that status, wrongful termination, fraud (getting donations under the pretense of no-kill, murdering cats then not telling the donors who keep paying for the sponsored cats), libel and slander against donors, volunteers and staff…the list goes on.

When you bring in someone whose background is NOT animal welfare but fundraising…and give her the power to make decisions on the welfare of cats, you have failed as a board. Furthermore, Ms. Spring is a complete failure at the one job she was actually hired to do…fundraise. I didn’t know they got a new person because Heidi was always who I dealt with but it explains why in the past two years I have only received one fundraising solicitation and have not received any of the communication I used to. The website completely sucks…the old one was better. There is less information not more and the stated goals in the 2006 year-end report have not been achieved. In fact, they have gone backwards so hiring the ED was obviously a grave mistake. I believe the actions of Ms. Spring are typical of someone completely incompetent in their job who is scrambling to blame everyone else so she doesn’t get held accountable. Those who have been in the corporate world long enough see this all the time. If you don’t ask donors for money and don’t update on the status of the cats, it stands to reason they won’t donate. The Board and Spring all need to be ousted and there needs to be an accounting of what they have done with our money, including the sponsoring of cats they have since killed.

My guess is they have had a dramatic decline in funds and decided to just murder a bunch of cats to lower their expenses…yet with firing volunteers end up paying for cleaning and higher vet bills so in the end…really don’t reduce costs anyway.

4 replies on “51 Down, 1 to Go!”

C.W. says:

December 18, 2008 at 12:13 pm

As a prior donor to the Hermitage Cat Shelter, I have been completely out of the loop on this controversy until I read this article. I then went and Googled all the websites and articles over the past year on the topic and spent the past day reading them. I am really sick to my stomach.

The conclusion I draw, Ms. Spring is a heartless, opportunistic liar more concerned with her own paycheck and power than the mission of the founder or the cats. Killing over 50 cats in brief period, then hiding their names and reasons for the kill, firing all the staff and volunteers, blaming the former vet, saying your mission is to get cats adopted then refusing to let former volunteers and staff adopt (her own words), blaming past staff/volunteers for issues that the board was 100% responsible for if they were true–it is just beyond disgusting. If all these problems WERE going on, she had 2 YEARS to get it taken care of and instead let it go on for a year and a half then just started firing or banning anyone who asked questions about where the disappearing cats were going. She said she didn’t know they weren’t being cared for. Her office is right next to the cats. If she didn’t know, she is admitting at the very least she is incompetent. So which is it? Is she a murdering liar or incompetent? Such a high turnover in such a short period of time is disastrous for the cats; the caretakers who know them best are gone. I am betting that many of the cats had no one to take care of them and their health conditions worsened and the others she killed she did just because she could with no one holding her accountable & donors like me having no clue what was going on.

As to her complaints against the vet and prior employees…ha! Sounds like someone trying to cover her own butt. If the employees stole proprietary information (I imagine she means donor files) why didn’t I get a call, email or letter from this “disgruntled” group? Surely my info is in their database and if the supposedly horrible Heck group was trying to destroy the shelter, I would have received some notification.

“Heck is among those currently being sued by the shelter”. Apparently, Ms. Spring doesn’t realize that first amendment rights do protect blogs, especially when the truth is posted and the letters on said blog have the names of the people who wrote them. I will be happy to testify on behalf of the people who really care about the cats and not the murdering thugs running the place now. Killing a cat in contrast to the mission of a no-kill shelter and the fraud around getting donations under the guise of a no-kill makes her the worst kind of criminal.

“”That move was taken because of the confidential information that was being essentially stolen–financial information, comments made by board members, things like that.” Dear Tom doesn’t realize that the financial information is NOT confidential but required by law to be made public like any good charity does. All the other charities I donate to send me yearly reports on it. Why would that or board comments be confidential when this is a nonprofit that gets federal tax exempt status?

“Neal who decided that some of the animals should be killed”. Yes, the same Neal whose background is for the Humane Society who DOES kill cats for various reasons as part of their mission. The problem is, the Hermitage is the opposite…it is set up to care for those cats with various medical issues that the Humane Society normally kills off. As far as not knowing that cats had various issues…likely the cats declined due to improper care when all the volunteers and staff were fired. The cancer issue could easily be something that progressed but I do remember back in 2004 a kitty that was known to have cancer and it was not a reason to kill it…just like with humans. You can still live out your days and depending on the type of cancer and meds, pain free.

I had a tour of the shelter when I donated years ago. The structure of the building need a lot of work and repairs (that was before the later add-on) and yes, it could have been cleaner but that was more of an issue with funding and having enough volunteers during summer months. The lack of good air-conditioning and proper shade exasperated odor issues that would not have been an issue in a better building. Overall though, it was not what is described by Spring or Neal so if it declined that badly in the two years Spring was there…she is responsible and the board…no one else.

The rest of Ms. Springs’ claims are all bull. The volunteers and staff definitely cared about the cats and if there was abuse, the board is ultimately responsible. I don’t believe there was an abuse. Heidi, the former president, was there on a regular basis and new the status of all the cats and staff members. Yes, staff was entrusted to do a lot as were volunteers. That is whole point of having staff. The board at the time set the agenda. Is Ms. Spring saying Heidi was incompetent in her role…the same person who hired Ms. Spring? I went and Googled Heidi and she doesn’t even list her job as President for Hermitage and she was there at least two years. That is really interesting.

Regarding adopting and hording, more bull. I went there and they asked me all kinds of questions when I donated and really were encouraging me to adopt. When I went to fundraisers, the same thing. I knew they did home inspections which any responsible agency would do and since my home was not set up for cats, I could not adopt at that time as much as I would have liked to. Under the new management, they would give me a cat without even knowing if I was set up for it.

Why is Spring hiding the financial information? Maybe the donors, former staff and volunteers need to file a class action suit or several lawsuits. The reporter mentioned lawsuits but no specifics on who was filing and what the claims were. I can think of misappropriation of funds, refusal to supply federally mandated nonprofit documents to keep that status, wrongful termination, fraud (getting donations under the pretense of no-kill, murdering cats then not telling the donors who keep paying for the sponsored cats), libel and slander against donors, volunteers and staff…the list goes on.

When you bring in someone whose background is NOT animal welfare but fundraising…and give her the power to make decisions on the welfare of cats, you have failed as a board. Furthermore, Ms. Spring is a complete failure at the one job she was actually hired to do…fundraise. I didn’t know they got a new person because Heidi was always who I dealt with but it explains why in the past two years I have only received one fundraising solicitation and have not received any of the communication I used to. The website completely sucks…the old one was better. There is less information not more and the stated goals in the 2006 year-end report have not been achieved. In fact, they have gone backwards so hiring the ED was obviously a grave mistake. I believe the actions of Ms. Spring are typical of someone completely incompetent in their job who is scrambling to blame everyone else so she doesn’t get held accountable. Those who have been in the corporate world long enough see this all the time. If you don’t ask donors for money and don’t update on the status of the cats, it stands to reason they won’t donate. The Board and Spring all need to be ousted and there needs to be an accounting of what they have done with our money, including the sponsoring of cats they have since killed.

My guess is they have had a dramatic decline in funds and decided to just murder a bunch of cats to lower their expenses…yet with firing volunteers end up paying for cleaning and higher vet bills so in the end…really don’t reduce costs anyway.
C.W. says:

December 18, 2008 at 12:19 pm

The other thing I noticed, they used to have nice t-shirts, stickers, and car magnets on sale on the website with the logo of the shelter. These were part of the fundraising. I see none of those items on the site now. You would think the Christmas season would be the opportune time to solicit donations and ask people to buy from your site to benefit your cats. They had a nice stock of items and were going to expand it. Now there is nothing but links to other sites that they get a commission on…which is such a small % versus buying a shirt for $25 where the shelter gets at least 40% of that.
Retrorv says:

December 19, 2008 at 9:56 am

Been out of the loop but can pop out a 1500 word opinion on the topic? Pretty impressive.
K. P. says:

December 31, 2008 at 3:08 pm

Seems to me that any INTELLIGENT person could develop an opinion on the matter if they’ve spent a day reading the available websites and articles. Perhaps that just seems impressive to those who can’t do it and have missed the point completely.