No kill is a nasty little euphemism, the sooner the public knows the truth behind the masquerade, the better for the animals. For the record curse words don't shock me, as a former military chaplain I've heard my share. But I do intend to send this blog out some of my church members and as such need to keep it in their comfort zone, in order to better carry the message. I am not an active pastor, currently I am very active member of my congregation, which numbers approximately 1000 members. My goal is to get this truth to as many people as I can.
The first myth is that cats are colony creatures and love being thrown together in big batches. The truth is, cats are rather solitary creatures and would prefer not to be thrown into a herd. Their (cat ) rooms in the shelter that I was visited (comprised of two seaparate agencies ) were very overpopulated in areas of space. The colony room does not allow floorspace per cat as designated in the Nevada Revised Statute. So these poor animals huddle, each on their little cat ladders trying to stay out of each other's way. If each cat is out of the cage for half an hour day, that means 23 1/2 hours a day in the cage. That can't sound reasonable to any sane person. If the civilian pet owner treated an animal that way they would get the animal taken away from them rather quickly. There can't be two sets of rules one for shelter and one for rescue; although that seems to be the trend. All the regulation focus on open admission County shelter and let the rescues run helter-skelter over the countryside. I believe Winograd creates dissension solely for the purpose of diverting people from the real issues at hand, and the real conditions in these No Kill shelters. I continue to follow Nevada animal welfare events through their paper, although the animal blog is a poor source of truth. While living in Nevada, I met several people who truly do care about the animals, most of them as you mentioned in your post do remain in the shadows. We tend to recognize each other as kindred souls as we walked through the hall's. I believe my chaplaincy bars gave me an air of trustworthiness, though I'm not sure I'd consider myself worthy.
I will do what it takes to bring about a reform of this insane movement. To bring before the general public, a clarity and understanding of the agony these animals suffer at the hands of this policy. These animals do go crazy, they are often beyond redemption. I stumbled some time ago across the blog post called "beyond redemption", it was an excellent blog. I hope to grow readership among my new friends here as well as my old friends in Reno and Carson City; I know there are many of us out there, we just need to unite and fight. If any of my readers are familiar with the post that I'm talking about, could you tell me where I could find it again? below is a link to an oldie, but a goodie.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/02/17/18479756.php?
Peace to you, until the animals we love are free, we shall be practicing war and peace.
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4 comments:
what you are looking for in on a little blog called advice from oreo, there are several good post on there.
Cornell University had a student do a thesis on the "garden room" for cats at Tompkins County SPCA, Winograd's claim to fame. He found the same thing, that cats are not pack animals and actually having to endure being in the same room with lots of other cats, was cruel. I had a link at one time but I don't think it is now online. Those who have cats and love cats can see that putting cats together is not in the best interest of the cats.
I was just re-reading a great post and thought I might share it with you. http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/02/17/18479756.php?show_comments=1
I particularly like this comment showing how "No Kill" by Winograd is misrepresented. Lori Tyler was the director before Winograd and she signed her name to this comment.
"As a previous shelter manager of a shelter Nathan Winograd "saved" and a board member of an SPCA in a neighboring community, I absolutely believe that the "No Kill" movement has failed us in Tompkins Co.- once touted as the "safest place in the US for animals"
I was the manager at the Ithaca SPCA two years before Nathan was hired. Under my management, the euthanasia rate for all animals (not just those deemed adoptable) decreased by about 50%. We were developing programs to achieve "no-kill" before he came along. In fact, the board resolved to stop euthanizing BEFORE Nathan was even working at the shelter.
What he did do was raise money and he built a new shelter (which we had already been planning and had already bought the property for). However, this shelter is not sustainable for the shelter. They cannot afford the operate it- its too big. Now, Nathan has gone away, the donors have dwindled and they are in a danger of losing their animal control contracts as they have had to ask for large increases in money from the towns and city.
At my shelter in a neighboring county, we have been lured into "trying to keep up with the Jones'" attitude. We tried to change our euthanasia policy to be similar, but we didn't have the programs to keep the animals moving, and we ended up with a warehouse situation and we couldn't care for the number of cats in our care. We now have more stringent euthanasia guidelines- including euthanizing for issues such as dental disease and poor socialability.
"No-Kill" is a euphemism for "limited admission". Animals aren't truly safe if they are being dumped on animal control or left in the street. I personally want to be part of an organization that accepts all homeless animals in the community and tried to help them- even if that means some will be euthanized. There are worse things in this world than euthanasia- I have seen them. I choose to euthanize over leaving an animal to suffer in a cage, starve on the street, or suffer from a treatable- yet un-affordable to care for disease.
You can limit the number of animals being euthanised in your shelter by creating programs to increase adoptions and reduce the number of animals coming in. It is not, IMO, a front-loaded proclamation- it the the result of sustainable programs within the shelter and in the community. Once the population is stable and the community sees your results- the money will come to help you help more animals be adoptable. We are far from this in Chemung Co. It is far easier to get a cat from your neighbor than the shelter and far easier to just leave your cat to breed recklessly than get her spayed. This is where we need to work- not making sweeping proclamations about not killing animals."
Winograd also misrepresented his credentials at the San Francisco SPCA and this was brought out in an article by Patricia J. Ruland. http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=696455
Wow, there was a lot of information in the last comment. I hope the members of your congregation do become involved, so far it has been the wackos who have been all over the web and frankly mainstream America is getting a little tired of the watered down extremists who would like to be really, really bad if they weren't afraid to go to prison. The extremists are the ones who hurt real shelters. They make things up, they hide the the realities of institutionalized shelters/rescue hoarding. It's a feel-good world for everybody except the animals. I would hate to see this garbage crawl across the valley into northern California.
One of the first things Winograd cuts from shelter budgets is the funds for educating the public. Most education is done in schools with the future pet owners, the children. Winograd says that children don't own pets, their parents do and therefore we need to educate parents. Yeah, right. The recycling effort is a success because of children. They are the ones who learned it in school and came home to teach their parents. Again, Winograd ditches the future for the present and his stance that we can save them all right now. The only thing we can save is the future and he totally disregards that.
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