Nov 04, 2022

When I moved to Austin in the 90s, the town seemed a lot distinct than it does nowadays. The population stood underneath 600,000, what would become a booming tech lifestyle was in its infancy, traffic was manageable, and the city’s weirdly popular motto wasn’t even a detail. Austin was also much more than a decade away from being heralded as a top No Eliminate town in the United States.

I can nevertheless truly feel the revulsion that jolted by means of me when I learned that 85% of pets—more than 25,000—were killed in the town shelter each individual yr. Wriggly, energetic puppies and kittens. Balanced cats. Sweet canines who ended up licking people’s faces as they were being becoming injected with lethal doses of pentobarbital. The state of animal welfare in late 1990s Austin sat in stark distinction to the city’s identity as a burgeoning epicenter of