Fosterer gives his love to all

SPCA volunteer Gary Hurley shows his affection for a 3-week-old kitten he is fostering until it can be adopted. Photo / Janna Dixon

A one-eyed cat and a three-legged dog have been rescued and raised by Gary Hurley.

For four years, Mr Hurley has been a foster carer for kittens that are too sick or too small to stay with the SPCA.

He takes care of the kittens until they are healthy and weigh about 800g and can be cared for at the SPCA Adoption Centre.

It costs the SPCA more than $8 million to use 90 animal inspectors around the country who attend 13,000 complaints of abuse each year. The SPCA's annual appeal week starts today.

Mr Hurley came across Josie the one-eyed cat in March last year.

A woman brought the four-month-old kitten to a vet clinic to be desexed, and the vet found a serious untreated infection in the kitten's right eye. The woman abandoned the kitten at the clinic. Staff had to remove the eye.

The woman was charged with ill-treating the kitten. She was sentenced to 60 hours' community work and ordered to pay reparations of $2250.

Mr Hurley said that when the kitten came to him, it was clear she had suffered.

"It must have been in a lot of pain."

He also adopted a dog that had been run over by a car about April this year. Its owners surrendered it to the SPCA when they wouldn't pay for an operation to remove the dog's leg.

Coinciding with its appeal week, the SPCA has chronicled the worst cases of animal abuse in the past year in its annual List of Shame.

Chief executive Ric Odom said he hoped the list would open eyes to the way some animals were treated.

"It's not about making people feel sick with what they read, it's about saying, 'This is what goes on, this is what happens to animals'," he said.

Whangarei man Joshua Heka topped the list for filming himself mutilating possums by nailing them to trees and chopping off their limbs. He received this year's harshest penalty for animal cruelty - imprisonment for two years and four months.

*Donations to the SPCA can be made at ASB Bank, online or to street collectors on Friday.