Even before a judgment has been made, the state sends a bill to the owner.

This invoice was sent before the final hearing and covers just seven and a half months. Note the date, 10/21/19, at the top for "Setup for Housing/Care provided by AWP." This is just one day after the state was notified of Possum's death. So, with no investigation and while I'm spending thousands of dollars complying with their orders, they prepare to seize my cats.

There are no original receipts provided to go with any of the invoices. I am a full-charge bookkeeper by trade and I do not think the invoices provided by the state are acceptable. There is no proof of purchase or proof these expenditures applied to my cats. When a business is expected to reimburse actual expenses, they expect copies of the original receipts as though the business itself purchased the product or service. How many bags of food were bought? What did they weigh? What type of food was it? How many bags of cat litter? What type was it? What was the price per bag? Was there a discount? How was it applied? How much sales tax was paid? Who was the vendor? All of this information comes off an original receipt. And by the way, accruement is spelled incorrectly.

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The following invoice contains inappropriate charges for capital improvements to the shelter's barn. If you were boarding your animal somewhere, would you expect to be charged for the new walls that were put up while your pet was staying there? Of course not. That would be outrageous. Those costs should be born by all the pets who will use the facility over the expected lifetime of the improvement. That is why the expected costs of improving and maintaining a boarding facility over its lifetime are figured into a boarding fee. In addition, the work has been done by the shelter owners to their own property thereby removing objectivity in pricing. I was also expected to pay for three people to spend 16 hours at $15 an hour doing some type of work that would allow me to view my cats before the court hearing. This includes them standing around while I view my caged animals. Does that sound fair and reasonable? The state chooses to take the animals. The state chooses how to spend money. The state should bear the costs of their own choices. Otherwise, this looks very much like robbing from Paul to give to Peter.

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The following invoice includes the World's Best Cat Litter. When pricing this litter, I find it costs $0.9625 per pound. I buy litter at $0.34975 per pound. The state is paying more than half what I normally pay. Is it worthwhile because they use much less? We can't tell from the invoices and it seems unlikely in this situation. I tried the World's Best Cat Litter just once. It didn't work in our multiple cat home. I used clumping litter for years and finally gave up on it because it was so difficult to scoop. The clay version is not as good at controlling the ammonia odor, but it is much easier to remove the solid waste and you just dump the entire box once a week. Despite having to dump it all once a week, the clay version saves a lot of money. It is not only less expensive, it is lighter, so you actually get more per pound. In looking at this invoice as a business owner, how would I justify to the IRS one item of this litter having two very different prices? This is why you need the original receipts.

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Let's talk about other charges. The shelter is charging $6 a day for each animal or $480 a day for 80 cats. The invoice below is just one of many. The charge changes depending on how many animals have died that week. All the costs of food, supplies, etc. are billed separately. Plus they are charging $17 an hour to administer medications. Plus mileage to take animals to the veterinary. So what is that $480 supposed to cover? Is this supposed to cover electric or heating or daily labor? You can pay $25 a day for heat and electric and hire five people for eight hours a day. That's absurd, so where is that money really going?

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Let's talk about administering medications. For this, they are charging $17 an hour. What is that for? According to Indeed, a veterinary technician in Maine averages $15.68 per hour. Is that what this is for? Why is it so high? Notice the invoice below is for January. That's three hours a day for 31 days. At this point, the cats have been under state care for two months. Why and who are they still medicating? Here they are also charging to take the cats to the veterinary. So now we have more and different people doing that? And these people are getting $15 an hour to drive a car, move animal carriers and sit in a waiting room? Why are there no volunteers working at this shelter? Why would I pay someone else to do what I could do for nothing, especially a stranger who doesn't care about these animals as individuals? You will see that in at least 22 cases, visits to the veterinary resulted in no treatments, so why were they taken there? Where is the accountability?

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Many of the products billed on this receipt are reusable and have a long life beyond their use for my cats. There are permanent improvements to the owner's barn inappropriately charged on this billing. What are they using bag balm and stall dry for? Disposable litter boxes are convenient but an expensive alternative to cleaning and sterilizing reusable boxes. Tide Pods are significantly more expensive than Tide liquid. Farmer's Union has to be one of the most expensive places to buy cat food. This shows how easy it is to spend other people's money. (I did not block out any areas of this invoice. That was already there when I received it.)

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This billing again includes permanent improvements by the owners to their barn at $40 an hour. (I did not block out any areas of this invoice. That was already there when I received it.)

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This billing from January includes $360 for 10 tubes of opthalmic ointment because there was a veterinary distributor shortage. Who was this prescribed for? Why are they still needing treatment in January? There are charges for 6' tables and dry erase boards. These are clearly assets with a long useful life. There is candy for the triage team. That is certainly not a necessity. There are purr pillows and cat toys and cat trees. Also not necessities. Around $500 for supplements. Not a necessity. Over $600 for wormer and $100 for Revolution. Only a necessity if they are being exposed to these organisms in their environment. More of the expensive World's Best Cat Litter. It is unnecessary to spend this much money. The law that allows the state to charge someone else for this spending needs to be changed.

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Let's talk about the veterinary bills. Multiple fecal tests were done in response to the bloody diarrhea. They provide clear evidence that these were collected at those times from the housing in which the cats were being kept. Why should I pay for that or the treatment of the bloody diarrhea? Every Convenia injection has a different cost and they are mostly over $30, some over $40. Convenia is being used off-label and as a matter of convenience. If an antibiotic was needed, there are much less expensive alternatives. And if the caretakers are unable to manage my cats, they shouldn't have agreed to be responsible for them. Do you think I should pay for the removal of the head from my beautiful Toxic because of their misdiagnosis? That's offensive. They are doing pregnancy checks on cats at a cost of $75 when it would cost nothing to call me and ask if the cat is spayed or could be pregnant. The cost of taking Beebs in for a consultation on a known condition was completely unnecessary, as was the antibiotics given to her and two other cats for a diagnosis based on prejudice. I know exactly what condition these cats have and it isn't treatable.

Documentation Updated February 15, 2021 by Elmvale Farm

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