Clever and Bella: Neglected, Abused, Tortured and Killed by NYC DOH's ACC
NYC DOH Acting Commissioner Dr. Michelle Morse continues to ignore queries about ACC brutality on her watch.
The Scoop New York is a website and newsletter covering the movement for a true no-kill New York State, from BUF to BK. NYC ACC KILLS, published by TSNY, enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.
Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn
It’s October 3, 2025. This is The Weekly Poop.
This week, New York City companion animal advocates are mourning Clever and Bella, who were neglected, abused, tortured and exterminated by the NYC health department kill pound, under the supervision of NYC DOH Acting Commissioner Dr. Michelle Morse, for the crime of arriving at NYC ACC scared and alone.
Dr. Morse doesn’t want to talk about it.
Nine-year-old Clever (aka Terror and Chai) was reported missing in the Bronx on September 6. Found wandering the streets alone the next day, he was taken to ACC’s Manhattan death house.
By September 22, Clever’s person knew where he was. Yet DOH/ACC — where healthy dogs are “untouched” — had already marked him for death:
It gets worse for Clever.
At some point during his ordeal, Clever’s person reportedly came to reclaim him, only to take him back to the “shelter,” where rather than finding a confused, scared senior a safe and loving home — rather than doing their actual jobs — Dr. Morse’s crew poisoned Clever to death and stuffed him in a trash bag bound for a Long Island ash heap.
ACC euphemizes owner-involved exterminations as “end of life services,” but IRL they’re discretionary killings, and they occur scores of times every month. Whether the victims are surrendered or admitted as strays, ACC watchers call them “silent kills”: cats and dogs (and rabbits and guinea pigs, one assumes) exterminated by DOH’s ACC without being offered for adoption, with many killed within minutes of arrival.
The truth is, Clever was doomed the moment he entered ACC. The kill quota demanded it.
Since the pandemic, at least, DOH’s ACC generally puts to death between one and two cats of every 10 admitted, and between 2.5 and 3.5 dogs out of 10. The numbers hold true month after month, year after year.
As previously reported in this space:
The data strongly suggest ACC and DOH have settled on a percentage of cats and dogs for “live outcomes,” with the rest to be exterminated, and the exterminations supported during and after the fact (as far as ACC and DOH are concerned, anyway) by medical notes that attempt to excuse them.
Life and death decisions at DOH’s ACC, in other words, are made not based on health or “behavior” or whatever retconned horse shit malpracticing ACC vets and techs put on the extermination forms. Every indication says DOH and ACC have instead merely settled on the amount of work they feel comfortable doing: rehoming three or four of every 10 intakes themselves; dumping four or five of every 10 onto BOBAR rescues; exterminating the rest, and pretending the victims never existed. Hence “silent kill.”
With his person having abandoned him, frightened and confused Clever was defenseless against Dr. Morse and her dead-eyed exterminators.
The photo on the left, from his “missing” flier, is Clever at home. The photo on the right is Clever after a short time at the “care center.”
A picture is worth 34,000 exterminations. Like Maverick, whimpering in terror as he was dragged to his death, Clever knew he was in trouble. And no one at DOH’s ACC was about to help him.
The life he knew suddenly and inexplicably upended, Clever died in a cold room under fluorescent lights, surrounded by unfeeling strangers, terrified and utterly alone. This was fine by Dr. Michelle Morse.
Clever had it relatively easy compared to what DOH/ACC had in store for Bella. Not Bella the 6-week-old puppy DOH disappeared earlier this year, whose fate Morse continues to guard as a state secret, but a different dog unfortunate enough to find herself in the good doctor’s care, whom ACC exterminated in a gruesome fashion advocates call “spay-neuter-kill,” a practice so viciously cruel it was once investigated by the state.
Found abandoned in a motor vehicle, 6-year-old Bella was admitted to ACC in Manhattan on August 18. On August 20 she was said to be “highly fearful … hypervigilant and trembling.” On August 27, ACC had Bella spayed.
Less than a month after subjecting her to the scalpel, on September 25, ACC gave Bella the needle, for “behavioral concerns.”
Here is the dog Dr. Morse’s ACC considered so irredeemably ferocious she had to die:
Here’s what medical professionals say about unnecessary surgery:
Recommending or performing unnecessary surgery is inconsistent with ethical practice because all surgical procedures bear some degree of risk. Performing unnecessary surgery is a major betrayal of the surgeon’s paramount obligation to place the patient’s best interests first in therapeutic decisions.
Law enforcement may believe unnecessary surgery on cats and dogs is no less immoral than when performed on human beings. Dr. Michelle Morse apparently does not.
Above is the official account of Bella’s descent into madness during the one month NYC ACC allowed her to draw breath. A month when she would have been subjected to such horrors as being confined to a cage for 12 hours at a time, living in her own waste and getting all of 10 minutes per day of human interaction outside her crate. Except when she was cut open for the fuck of it à la Dr. Moreau’s island.
According to ACC watchers, Bella was DOH/ACC’s 16th spay-neuter-kill victim this year. At that rate, Dr. Morse will have overseen 21 unnecessary surgeries on cats and dogs in 2025 alone.
The Scoop New York queried DOH and ACC regarding spay-neuter-kill and silent kills. We asked why they continue to kill animals without offering them for adoption. We asked whether Dr. Morse considers exterminating animals in recovery ethical and moral. When they didn’t answer, we queried them again. In response, DOH and ACC went as quiet as a dog in a trash bag.
On the other hand, we haven’t even started.
Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:
You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized by the government, but not both.
Next.
Related: New Yorkers and their pets are going hungry and The City frames it as a force of Trump + nature rather than the result of a history of inaction and indifference from NYC and NYS officials.
A loose and extremely photogenic pet parakeet is hanging with the sparrows in Central Park as birders try to corral her before it gets cold.
It took Suffolk County just 40 years to shut down a taxpayer-funded den of open-air animal cruelty in Holtsville.
Rabid raccoons are still showing up in Nassau County and unf I don’t have time to cough up a TOHAS joke.
Authorities in Warwick seized 84 animals, including a wallaby, from a serial hoarder who is apparently somehow still allowed to have animals.
And finally, [dog sniffs own fart].
TSNY on social media
Food recalls
The FDA announced a pet food advisory this week:
Darwin’s Natural Pet Products [listeria, salmonella]
Check here for info on FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on prior FDA advisories and outbreaks.
Thank You much for advocating for the defenseless homeless pets in NYC! You haven’t even begun to uncover the true happenings in the so called shelters called NYCACC. There are thousands of advocates praying for a voice for the homeless animals subjected to neglect, abuse, dangerous conditions, imcompetence, corruption in NYCACC. The pounds are only a part. Thousands of cats are kept out of the shelters in NYC by volunteers that give their time, hearts & more money than they have, by caring & managing cat colonies, paying for their spay/neuter & release, rehoming the ones they can & fostering until homes are found for them. They beg the city for help each city council meeting. Their literal cries fall on uncaring deaf ears.
NYCACC murdered a one yr old puppy, Jupiter, today along with sweet boy CoCo & Elevator. Their reign of terror is endless. Thank God you are giving the animals a voice.