From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

ANAHEIM–Another way to describe the “no-kill movement” might
be “the democratization of animal sheltering.”
The no-kill concept had already won the battle for public
opinion decades before no-kill sheltering existed on any significant
scale. Dogcatchers were a familiar film villain even before animated
cartoons and “talking pictures” were invented.
Fritz Frelang and rival Walt Disney merely revitalized the
stereotype in Dog-Pounded (1954), starring Sylvester the Cat, and
Lady & The Tramp (1955). More than half a century later,
bird-catching feral cats are still at imminent risk of landing in a
pound full of ferocious dogs, licensing is still advanced from many
directions as essential to end shelter killing, the public still
does not like dogcatchers, and animal control officers still don’t
like their image.
Winning over animal shelter management is a battle still
underway–but increasingly irrelevant to tens of thousands of
volunteer rescuers, donors, and upstart shelter founders, who have
taken the work of saving animals into their own hands.
After decades of railing at “irresponsible” pet-keepers,
animal control agencies and humane societies are facing activists who
are claiming responsible roles, whether or not they can fulfill them.

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