Two months after buying Tuna the cat from a Lexington pet store, Fallon O’Byrne decided to have him euthanized after he got ill.
“I know I had such a strong connection to that cat and in hindsight, I think this was meant to happen to me,” said O’Byrne. “I gave him a comfortable life here with our family for the two months that he had and, you know, animals don’t have a voice so if I can be Tuna’s voice then it all makes sense.”
Now, O’Byrne is using her voice to speak out against pet stores.
She said she believes when Tuna was first purchased, he already had a condition that ultimately caused him to be sick. The owner of the pet store said there’s no way to prove that.
Pet stores that sell dogs and cats have been under scrutiny because of allegations that many of them purchase the animals from puppy and kitten mills. According to the Humane Society of the United States, about 99% of puppies sold in pet stores come from puppy mills.
“That’s only one part of the problem,” said Todd Blevins, the Kentucky state director for the Humane Society of the U.S. “Another part is that we’re often finding that pet stores that sell dogs and cats are selling them in such fashion that they’re getting sick shortly after they leave the store, and what could be worse than a new family buying a dog or a cat, they come home and the animal is sick shortly after they purchase it?”
Blevins said that kittens and puppies falling ill is endemic to all pet stores, which can cost customers thousands of dollars in veterinarian bills.
Arelis Shimizu went through this when she bought a dog named Daisy back in 2019. Shimizu purchased her dog from the same store that O’Byrne bought Tuna from; the store was under different ownership at the time. Two weeks later, Shimizu made the difficult decision to have Daisy euthanized after the dog got sick.
“Even though we had her for such a short amount of time, she was already part of our family,” said Shimizu as she clutched a clay mold with Daisy’s paw prints on it.
Blevins said he believes this is a bigger issue than what has been reported and said anyone who has purchased a dog or cat from a pet store who got sick, whether they died as a result or not, should report it, here.
