>>4644267Most animal shelters will euthanize the animal if they've been held for too long. Basically, sheltered animals have a few weeks to get adopted and if they miss that window they get put down. "Shelters" exist to control the stray animal population, not to care for them. They're not pleasant places to live and they exist to give a lost, stray or feral pet a last hope to be found/adopted before getting culled. Feral pets are genuinely pests: they breed parasites that spread to domestic pets (and in the case of rabies, can spread to humans), they're aggressive and will often attack pets or even children, and since they largely subsist by scavenging they get into trash and make messes just like racoons or other urban vermin. But unlike racoons, thousands of years of interbreeding have left them horribly unsuited for life undomesticated. They reproduce incredibly quickly and balloon in numbers, but can barely feed themselves and typically die young of infection or starvation, or breeding-related complications after a life of agony. While kill shelters are horrible and inhumane, the problem is dumbfuck rednecks not spaying or neutering their fucking pets. Idiot cat ladies let their pests wander the neighbourhood breeding like rats and are oblivious because the cat never brings its kittens home.
No-kill shelters are usually run by charities and exist to give stray animals that likely won't ever get adopted a decent life. Rather than existing to control the stray pet population, they exist specifically to rescue animals from kill shelters.