Passionate Feelings

The world of animal sheltering and animal issues is fraught with controversy and politics of the non-partisan kind. It's probably because people are so passionate about animals. On the national scale the same people who love animals love/hate and argue over groups like PETA. In the sheltering world, the no-kill shelters, the low-kill shelters and the kill-on-a-regular-basis shelters have been at each other's throats for years. There are also different philosophies about what people should know about an animal shelter. Some believe that you will never stop problem of unwanted pets until you hit the public in the face with graphic images of starving strays or piles of dead cats and dogs. Others believe that if the public knows that animals are routinely killed at shelters they will no longer turn them in. Me? I think there is a balance. When people ask me about our shelter I try to be honest without being frightening. We do kill animals. We aren't a no-kill shelter. Last year we killed 104 dogs and 746 cats and 4 other animals. I tell people that every adoptable animal gets a chance with us if we have the space. I tell them that we don't impose time limits on animals like some shelters. We keep some animals - usually cats - for as much as a year if they are adoptable. I let them know that almost all of the animals we kill are unadoptable for some reason. Most of them are feral cats. Some are sick or very old. Some have unchangeable behavior problems. Not one single animal is killed if there is some other alternative available to us. Most of the people I talk to understand this. They know we aren't some kind of magic kingdom where the thousands of animals that come in our doors are all going to find homes. But it is a fine balance. If people don't know that we fill up and have to destroy animals they don't have to think twice about surrendering them. They always think there is a safe place to take them. If we tell them too much, we scare them and they don't bring animals to us where they can be spayed or neutered and adopted into good homes. If my critics on the Board of Directors would let me actually write this thing that's the balance I hope to achieve. A book that I had hoped to model this blog on is called "One Day At a Time - A Week in an American Animal Shelter" http://novoiceunheard.org/Overview. It's a wonderful book that walks the line gracefully. (The authors were fortunate in that they didn't have a bunch of critics bitching about their work or the book would never have been written) It's worth buying and reading. Today's picture is a good example of how we do give animals a chance. This cat (no name of course) seems much older than her years would indicate. A few weeks ago it was easy to notice that she was really skinny and sickly despite the staff hand feeding her canned cat food. The week before last she was not in the cat room and I feared she had been put out of her misery. But last week there she was, still skinny but up and about looking for attention. The staff had kept her on IV fluids and gotten her back on her feet. It was a job well done.