PEOPLE HAVE to do something about the animal abuse, cruelty, neglect and abandonment that goes on here.
That's the word from a resident who's tired of finding animals that have been hurt, injured or worse, in the city.
Susan Turnbull says she came here seven years ago with two dogs and now has four dogs and 12 cats and has helped more than 20 cats and nine dogs treated badly by humans.
The other day she helped a girl try to catch a kitten downtown that looked like it had been dumped off.
“People say 'oh yeah, we saw it running around.' Why didn't you try to catch it?” says Turnbull.
She's found kittens in the garbage, under trailers, and rescued a dog that had a sweater on all winter that had to be surgically removed from its skin.
She recently helped rescue a puppy that had developed a eye infection and then was dumped by Findlay Lake Road to fend for itself.
Someone saw the puppy and called Dogs Deserve Better, who took it in and now the puppy received treatment and is slowly getting better.
And people seem to think a cat can fend for itself if it's just abandoned.
“People think you can let your cat go in the wild because it will catch birds and mice," said Turnbull.
But she noted a cat will only survive if it has been given hunting skills.
Turnbull wants people to know what's going on and says other animal lovers are as angry as she is.
She has to clean her house every day because of all her animals but wouldn't change a thing.
“Morally I wouldn't do anything different,” she says about helping out animals in distress.