Rescuer charges kittens died of distemper after surgery at Niagara SPCA

A cat rescuer claims four kittens she brought to the SPCA of Niagara to be spayed or neutered caught a highly contagious virus at the shelter and spread the disease to other cats before they died in September.

But SPCA leaders deny the kittens caught the virus in the shelter, saying an infected area was quarantined and disinfected and that no other cat owners complained about such an infection.

The dispute is the latest in a series of controversies surrounding the SPCA of Niagara in recent weeks. Three board members resigned earlier this month in protest of the way the facility has been managed.

[Related: Niagara SPCA director counters criticism from previous director, ex-board members]

Wilson cat rescuer Kathy Paradowski said this week that before her kittens died of feline panleukopenia, more commonly called distemper, the kittens spread the virus to 12 other kittens in their cat foster homes, and those cats also died.

She said the four kittens were infected at the shelter after an outbreak of the virus was discovered but not immediately disclosed to the public. Executive Director Timothy G. Brennan should have acted to keep it from spreading to the kittens, Paradowski said.

"I said to Tim, 'You need to tell the public.' That's the thing we're upset about," Paradowski told The Buffalo News.

Paradowski said she brought five cats to the shelter to be spayed or neutered on Sept. 3, but the procedure was carried out on only four. The kitten that was not operated on never entered the surgical trailer and did not become ill, Paradowski said.

The SPCA says it is not responsible for what happened to Paradowski's kittens and that it did notify the public of the virus.

"Regardless of the date Kathy’s cats had surgery, nobody at the Niagara SPCA received any other reports or complaints of other cats coming down with feline distemper after being at our facility, leaving us to conclude that Kathy’s cats must (have) caught it from somewhere else," SPCA Board of Directors President Susan Agnello-Eberwein said in an email.

Brennan acknowledged that feline distemper was present at the shelter and that 10 to 12 kittens died of the disease in September. But he said the virus was confined to a "panleukopenia holding area, which was quarantined immediately, disinfected thoroughly, thereby eradicating the distemper in the shelter."

Paradowski's kittens, Brennan said, would have been placed in the lobby and taken directly into a surgical trailer to be spayed or neutered, avoiding the quarantined holding area where distemper had occurred. "This is standard protocol for all surgical patients and is the reason we do not normally cancel scheduled surgeries when we do have feline distemper in the shelter," Brennan said.

"The fact of the matter is that the surgical suite at the Niagara SPCA has never been infected with feline distemper," Brennan said in an email.

When the public knew

Beth Jordan, the agency's former community cat coordinator, said in a Sept. 29 letter to the SPCA board that Brennan told her there was a distemper outbreak in the shelter on Sept. 2, the day before Paradowski brought in her kittens for surgery.

The letter was sent to the board shortly after Jordan was fired from the position.

Brennan, however, provided a text message that was sent to Jordan about the discovery of four dead kittens in the shelter. The date stamp shows Sept. 3, the day Paradowski's kittens were operated upon.

"Unfortunately, we discovered 4 deceased kittens in the holding area this morning from panleukopenia, so we cannot take anything in right now," Brennan's text stated. "We have a plan to sanitize the holding area, the iso room and strays."

Brennan said the facility also announced the presence of the virus on its website and on a sign on the door. He said the notices went up Sept. 5.

"The public absolutely was aware," Brennan told The Buffalo News.

"After the third day, they finally put a note on the door," said Bryan Barish, one of three SPCA board members who resigned Nov. 13 to protest the work of Brennan and Agnello-Eberwein. Barish said the presence of the virus wasn't immediately disclosed to the board, either.

The limited public notice of the outbreak contrasts with the policy followed by Brennan's predecessor as executive director.

Amy L. Lewis issued a news release and closed the shelter for two days after five kittens died of distemper on Oct. 16, 2017.

The kitten death toll

Brennan said the kitten distemper death toll for September was 10 to 12. Besides the four deaths on Sept. 3, he said two more died on Sept. 5.

"That's when Dr. Brown, to err on the side of caution, declared an outbreak and stopped taking in any felines," Brennan said, referring to Christopher Brown, the SPCA's in-house veterinarian.

"From that time until Sept. 30, when we were free and clear, we probably had another four to six before it ran its course," Brennan said.

The shelter's leadership has been under fire for several weeks after the resignation of Barish and two other board members in response to their concerns of the facility's operations. Among their concerns was the lethal injection in a kennel of a dog deemed too dangerous to be offered for adoption.

Brennan earlier this week said the shelter had passed an unannounced visit by state inspectors on Monday.

Jordan, in her letter to the board, said the facility's surgery schedule should have been cancelled on Sept. 3.

"Four cats were brought in and fixed that day, which resulted in this horrible virus being brought into a foster mom’s home and infecting up to 12 kittens which did not survive," Jordan wrote.