I hope it was a no-kill shelter. Otherwise you might as well have shot them all. Dead is dead.
I hate to say it, but on reading this, the woman who rescued the cat should have taken it to a vet. The vet would have been able to tell her if it could have really been saved. The Humane Society will put cats to death suffering from nothing more than abcesses.
True enough, she should have had it treated immediately, but the costs probably caused her to pause. I don't fault the humane society either. They have to do the best they can with limited resources, and sometimes they can't afford to spend all their resources on the sick and wounded, when healthy animals are put down because of overpopulation.
No more backyard litters of puppies and kittens is the answer. Leave breeding to the few... It is not cute to have litters for the fun of it when we are killing so many every day.
As I understand it, they keep them on the adoption list for 30 days. I could never shoot an animal. If they are going to die, I would rather the Humane Society take care of the matter in a painless fashion. They were tearing up the insulation and going to the bathroom under the house, so I could not let them stay. If people would spay and neuter their animals I would not be forced to make that kind of choice.