At a Utah animal shelter, cats face gas chamber for failing ‘test’ that experts say is flawed

At the North Utah Valley Animal Shelter, failing a “temperament test” is essentially a death sentence for cats.

Tug Gettling, the shelter’s director, said the test is meant to determine whether a cat will be aggressive toward people. “We want to make sure that we’re not putting our citizens in danger by adopting out an animal,” Gettling said.

A cat can “fail” the shelter’s temperament test by hissing, swiping, biting, putting its ears back and other behaviors that could be seen as aggressive. But it can also fail by hiding in the corner of its kennel, he said.

In the month of April, almost all cats euthanized at the shelter failed this test, according to animal intake forms obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune through a public records request. Many were euthanized — through the use of a gas chamber — the same day.

Experts and advocates say such behavior shows the cats were afraid and stressed, not necessarily dangerous. And a local cat rescuer and advocate argues the shelter’s temperament test is resulting in needless euthanasia.

“You cannot expect an animal who is terrified to behave in a shelter environment the way they would in a normal setting, with people they are also fearful of,” said Jessica Vigos, founder of Whiskers, a volunteer-run cat rescue for senior and special needs cats. “So [the shelter’s] temperament test unfortunately causes the death of many cats that should not be euthanized.”

Gas chamber vs. injection

The North Utah Valley Animal Shelter is an open-admission animal shelter, which means it is mandated by the state to accept any and all animals and can never say it’s full.

The shelter currently euthanizes animals through the use of gas chambers filled with carbon monoxide, but since at least 2018, Gettling has been trying to lead the shelter in a transition to the use of euthanasia by injection instead, which utilizes the drug sodium pentobarbital to cause an animal’s death.

Gettling said on Aug. 1 that the shelter is close to that goal, and only needs to obtain the necessary drug to proceed.

At a meeting of the animal shelter board in June, when Gettling was asked by a member of the board when the gas chambers would be gone for good, he replied, “We would probably still have the carbon monoxide as an option if something happened,” pointing to a previous sodium pentobarbital shortage documented by the Food and Drug Administration in 2021.

The American Animal Hospital Association states that injection by sodium pentobarbital is considered “the only acceptable method for most companion animals.” The position of the American Veterinary Medical Association is more nuanced, and states that euthanasia by carbon monoxide is acceptable as long as certain contingencies are met.

Still, protesters have pleaded for the shelter to discontinue its use of a gas chamber. The Humane Society of the United States says euthanasia by injection is “the most humane method of euthanasia currently available.”

However the method, Gettling told The Tribune that the shelter will decide to euthanize an animal for two reasons: if the animal is suffering, and if the animal is deemed too dangerous or aggressive to be put back into the community.

No options for feral cats

By design, cat populations can be difficult to manage, according to Randee Lueker, special programs coordinator for Salt Lake County Animal Services, which operates the largest “no-kill” animal shelter in Utah.

“The hardest part of achieving the no-kill mission for a lot of the shelters has been the cats, because cats are far more prevalent and they breed faster, and cats don’t always live in the house,” she said.

“You don’t have tons of feral dogs roaming the community, but you have feral cats and they have their own little communities,” she continued, “and if they are not spayed or neutered, then their communities just keep growing and then they become a problem for business owners, etc.”

Out of the 276 animals that passed through the North Utah Valley Animal Shelter in April — which were either adopted, euthanized, or died in the shelter of natural causes — 32 cats were euthanized, compared to six dogs.

Out of those 32 cats, half were considered feral.

The Tribune requested the April animal intake forms to review a snapshot of the shelter’s general intake practices. While Gettling said that the April forms weren’t indicative of a typical month for the shelter, they were indicative of a typical April. Animal sheltering is affected by the time of year, he said, so “every month is different.”

The North Utah Valley Animal Shelter does not currently participate in any trap, neuter and release programs that involve spaying and neutering feral cats, then returning them to where they were found. The shelter also does not currently participate in any “working cat” programs that involve pairing feral cats with an adopter, such as a farm or warehouse, in need of natural rodent control.

According to Gettling, any feral cat that is brought into the shelter and then isn’t claimed after five business days is euthanized.

Gettling said the shelter was partnered with a rescue for a time that would put all of the shelter’s feral cats into a working cat program. During that roughly year and a half, cat euthanasia rates at the shelter “just plummeted,” he said.

But since then, that rescue hasn’t been able to access the same spaying and neutering services that it could before, and it stopped being able to take feral cats.

The shelter board voted down a proposal from Best Friends Animal Society to implement a trap, neuter and release program in 2019, stating in a report that such programs “not only fail to adequately mitigate the significant threat to public health or alleviate the negative impact on wildlife that feral and free-roaming cats pose, but actually exacerbate these issues.”

Lueker said Salt Lake County’s working cat program; trap, neuter and release program; and return to field program (which is similar to trap, neuter and release) have helped the county successfully manage the community cat populations in its jurisdiction.

“They are more work, and they do take more time and and definitely have a learning curve to perfect,” Lueker said. “But they are super helpful to all of us and to the animals. Obviously, [the cats] get to go out and live their happy feral cat lives after being spayed or neutered, not having to worry about having more babies.”

She added that if feral cats aren’t euthanized, they can live long, healthy lives during which they have tight-knit relationships with the other cats in their colony.

The temperament test

Gettling acknowledges that the temperament test the shelter conducts on its cats and dogs isn’t a perfect system. Even if an animal passes the test, “does that mean that we never put animals that are dangerous out into the public?”

“It doesn’t,” he said. “We can never guarantee behavior of a living thing, right?”

Cats are tested on four criteria, Gettling said: a kennel approach, a “pinch test” (in which the cat is gently pinched between its toes), a teeth check and a “hug test” (in which the cat is picked up and held to the person’s chest). These are all designed to mimic real-life interactions that the cat would have with people, he said.

Whiskers founder Vigos told The Tribune that it’s normal for cats to not like being picked up by someone they don’t know. The shelter environment is especially difficult for cats, which are generally more sensitive than dogs, she added, and that hissing and swatting can be expected, especially within the first 72 hours.

Many cats don’t seem to progress past the kennel approach test at the North Utah Valley Animal Shelter, records indicate. Either they act out aggressively, and earn too high of a score on their animal intake form, or they act submissively, and earn too low of a score.

Gettling said a common sign that a cat is “very submissive,” as described on the temperament test score chart, is whether the animal will try to hide in the back corner of the kennel, then stand up as if looking for a way to escape. Sometimes, they are “submissive to the point of unsafe,” defensively attacking shelter employees who may reach their hand into a kennel, he said.

If an animal fails their first temperament test, Gettling said he will typically meet with the employee who performed the test and ask to personally review the animal’s responses, or ask that a person of another gender retest the animal.

“We do that more and more than ever before,” he said. “It used to be, if it failed, it failed. Now, we say, ‘Let’s look at it again and see.’”

Nevertheless, animals that fail the temperament test and are deemed unsafe for the public are euthanized, Gettling confirmed. “We do not make them available for adoption, as doing so would put human lives at risk,” he said.

The cats that were euthanized in April after acting out may have been afraid, not necessarily aggressive, according to cat-friendly handling guidelines issued by the American Animal Hospital Association and the International Society of Feline Medicine.

“People often misinterpret cat behavior and how cats deal with stress and conflict,” the guidelines state. “... As both predator and prey animals, cats often show fear or defensiveness in unfamiliar environments or with unfamiliar people.”

Kelley Bollen, a certified animal behavior consultant and shelter behavior specialist based in Reno, Nevada, said a loud, chaotic shelter can put any cat into survival mode.

“Cats that would be perfectly fine in a home and that are nice, social, friendly cats ... could be aggressive in a shelter,” she said. “And so it’s not really fair to say that this cat needs to die based on the fight-or-flight behavior it’s exhibiting in a cage.”

The term “temperament test” itself has been outdated for 10 to 15 years, she said, adding, “we determined a long time ago that we are not testing the temperament of the animal.”

Instead, she teaches shelter workers to evaluate an animal’s behavior in response to the shelter environment as a way to determine what they need in the shelter as well as in an adoptive home.

“The word ‘test’ often denotes pass/fail,” she said. “And those are also words we do not like to use because it’s not about, ‘They failed their temperament test, so they have to be killed.’ I mean, that’s just horrible language and it’s inaccurate.”

When it comes to cats, the behavior assessment that Bollen teaches is meant to get to know the animal’s personality and guide adoption, whether someone is looking for a playful, gregarious cat or a shyer, more subdued cat.

Her evaluation form looks at everything from the cat’s response to being petted to its reaction to having its tail gently tugged (the “kid test”).

Bollen also conducts an assessment to determine which cats are truly feral. “The problem is that trying to identify a feral cat versus a socialized cat that’s just afraid is difficult in a shelter environment,” she said.

“So a lot of cats are euthanized because they’re labeled feral, when in fact they are not feral, they’re just simply scared,” she said. “... But it can be really difficult for shelters to tell the difference.”

Her assessment looks for things such as the cat’s body posture, whether it charges the front of the cage, and whether it bites. After the test, the shelter is meant to decide whether the cat will be euthanized, fostered, put into a working cat program, or put on the “adoption floor.”

“I don’t recommend or teach shelters that, ‘Here’s a behavior assessment used to determine adoptability,’” Bollen said. “Basically, adoptability is determined if the cat’s adjusting to the environment and can be cared for by the shelter staff without posing a danger to the staff.”

“Many cats,” she continued, “without being provided what they need to learn to cope, will present a danger to the staff because they’re not given a chance to cope.”

‘The community has created too many animals’

For the last decade or so, the North Utah Valley Animal Shelter hasn’t had to euthanize for space, which can involve euthanizing animals that are friendly and adoptable.

But at the end of July, the shelter housed the most cats it had received in eight years, Gettling said, and officials have been considering euthanizing for space again. “We don’t want to have to do that,” he said.

After working in several animal shelters, Vigos said she understands how difficult and depressing the job can be.

“It affects you. It is overwhelming. I mean, I think we are all in the same boat on the level of being overwhelmed,” she said. “But I do think that there are always ways that we could do better and make changes and work together more.”

For the North Utah Valley Animal Shelter, the situation doesn’t have an easy answer.

“Everybody that works at this shelter gets into this business because they love animals and want to see all the animals succeed,” Gettling said, “but the animal sheltering industry is such that the community has created too many animals for the people that want them.”

“And so all the animal shelters across the world and across the United States struggle with this, with these issues of why we have so many animals,” he continued. “What do you do with them?”