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US animal shelter, zoo allow the heartbroken and vengeful to ‘neuter or neutralise their exes’

2024-02-03 00:00:00.0 海峡时报-世界原网页

Can’t stay neutral after a bad break-up, what with Valentine’s Day around the corner?

A pair of American animal-related organisations are offering the heartbroken and vengeful the chance to either neuter or neutralise their “former partners” for a fee.

The Homeward Bound Pet Adoption Centre in New Jersey is allowing people to name its stray cats after their exes.

The animals are then neutered or spayed before being released as part of its trap-neuter-release programme.

The shelter said that five cats have been named after exes so far, for a donation of US$50 (S$67) each, with another 40 to 50 people requesting to also do so.

The shelter’s director of development, Mr Eric Schwartz, told Wasaw-TV that no former boyfriends or girlfriends have filed complaints about being “neutered”.

He said: “There are cats all over our community, and if we don’t all work together to proactively trap-neuter-return them, they’re just going to keep breeding and just making a lot more cats that have no homes.”

If neutering is not enough, one can go a step further with San Antonio Zoo’s “neutralisation” option.

For a donation, visitors can name a vegetable, cockroach or rat after their former partners, before the newly christened pests or vegetables are fed to the zoo’s animal residents.

The yearly initiative is part of the Texas zoo’s yearly Cry Me A Cockroach fund-raiser, and similar to previous ones by several zoos in the United States and England, such as El Paso Zoo in Texas, that allowed visitors to symbolically exterminate their exes.

“San Antonio Zoo will help squash your past, a true heartbreak healer, by feeding your selection to an animal resident,” the zoo’s website reads.

A US$5 donation allows one to name a slice of cabbage, while US$10 and US$25 contributions give one the chance to name a cockroach and a rodent respectively.

Pre-frozen rodents, which are part of the zoo’s regular daily scheduled feedings, are used, along with live cockroaches, sourced from professional roach breeders, according to the zoo’s website.

A digital and downloadable Valentine’s Day card will also be sent to donors.

In a video posted on Instagram by the zoo on Feb 1, a white rodent is seen being offered to a large yellow snake with black spots, which immediately snaps it up with its fangs.

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While most netizens were positive about the initiative, some commented on the platform that the post was tasteless.

The snake probably thought otherwise about its meal.