Accidental Euthanasia: What If it Happened to Your Pet?

Imagine the horror of leaving your cat for a bath and coming back to find out she was put to sleep.It's a pretty gut-wrenching story, but it goes to show you that you always have to be your pet's best advocate. Last week, Jesse Conway brought his mother's 8-year-old cat, Lady, to the vet for a routine flea bath. He signed some papers and left the vet.

When he came back, he was asked if he wanted the body and it took him a few seconds to even realize what he was being asked. "It was like a blank stare back at each other for the first 10 seconds, then he immediately grabbed the papers I thought were registration forms and told me I had signed the papers," says Conway.

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It was then quickly determined that veterinarian Dr. Muhammad Malik at Broadway Animal Hospital in Gardner, Massachusetts had mistakenly euthanized a completely healthy cat.

Apparently, Conway was given the wrong paperwork and unknowingly consented to have his mother's cat put to sleep because he didn't read what he was signing.

It is devastating enough to have had her beloved cat put to death but even more gut-wrenching for Jesse's mother, Colleen Conlon, because the cat was her daughter's, who was killed in a car accident back in 2010. And Conlon adored that cat, regarding it as a lasting link between her and her daughter.

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"She was a beautiful cat and perfectly healthy. She was the one who would know when I was sad and would climb in my lap," says Conlon.

Conlon and her family have contacted the attorney general's office to make sure that the vet hospital bears some responsibility. While they don't think there was any intentional doing and believe it was a supreme lack of communication, they want to make sure it never happens again.

- By Danielle Sullivan
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