THE CAT'S EYE PROJECT

The Cat's Eye Project is a group of animal lovers whose purpose is to stop euthanasia of feral and stray cats and promote a program of neutering/spaying. The Cat's Eye Project stands for :

Counties' Alliance To Sterilize and End Yesterday's Euthanasia
"Watching over animals and being their voice."


Monday, April 11, 2011

THE CAT'S EYE PROJECT NEWSLETTER

SANCTUARY, Please!
 
Just a little Volusia County land – just temporary use of it, not ownership – can save thousands of lives and
millions of dollars.

The numbers of healthy, innocent puppies and dogs, cats and tiny kittens being killed annually by Volusia County and its cities’ local governments are still in the thousands and taxpayers are still stuck with paying the exorbitant cost of these killings we don’t want!

Yet, these heartless killings are not making even a dent in our out of control pet overpopulation crisis. Obsolete animal control policy is not controlling the problem!

Citizen volunteers’ alternative solutions – spaying-neutering, trap-neuter-return, fostering and adoption – are succeeding, but cannot complete the transition to a No-Kill animal control-and-care system until sanctuaries are established for relocating sterilized animals that don’t get adopted and cannot be returned to their original
outdoor homes.

Animal activists are begging our county council (working with our city governments) to provide property for sanctuary. Council members appear to be listening and considering. Council knows hundreds or thousands of this county’s citizen volunteers who already give time, energy and most of our income to saving cats and dogs by our own means gladly will help care for animals housed in sanctuaries. Readers, please confirm – quickly! --via phone calls, letters and emails to your Council representative that a Volusia sanctuary is needed!

Pet overpopulation can be contained without killing. San Diego proved it decades ago. Other cities across America copied. Jacksonville-Duval is proving it. Our time is now!

Sterilization of all pets – which can cost as little as one-third the million dollar cost of killing – and sanctuary, backed up by smaller trap-neuter-return colonies, is the solution. In a few years, killing our surplus pets will be only a bad memory. Our only concern will be how could we have been so barbaric in the past? There will be peace for our pets and a clear conscience for us humans. Hurry that day. Tell County Council we need a
sanctuary!

RESCUE ME!

 
This is BAXTER. He and his family were used for target  practice and were full of beebees when they were rescued. His mom and siblings now have forever homes. Baxter is friendly and playful. He is about 11 weeks old, is neutered and has had his first set of shots. Please call (386) 740-0651 if you have space in your heart and home for him. 

TRIBUTE TO LOST LOVES

IN LOVING MEMORY OF WESLEY 2000-2011 

BUDDY
IN LOVING MEMORY OF BUDDY 1999-2010 Buddy is the dog in the story of how he was abandoned with a whole litter and survived while being abused until I stopped my car, lifted him into the back seat and took him to his forever home. The whole story of Buddy is on this blog. 
Buddy died last summer while being treated for severe diabetes and other health problems. The last time I saw him, he did not know me and his time was very short. He was being lovingly treated by Dr. Evers. We all miss Buddy and think of him every day.


The Legacy of St. Francis!
Did You Inherit It?

America’s historic 20th century battle for human rights, we keep our eyes on the prize, knowing it’s been a long time coming, but “change is gonna come” again, and this time it will be for animal’s rights that the times, they are a-changin’! From Ponce Inlet to Deltona to DeLand, here’s what’s happened today to St. Francis’ legacy.

SAVING BUCK -- A DELAND STORY WITH A VERY HAPPY ENDING.

“Buck” is alive and well, because a Good Samaritan intervened in a split.

A handsome life-loving young brindle pit dog, Buck spent much of his life chained in his back yard. By day, it was a heartbreaking sight. At night, his loud barking brought neighborhood threats of shooting him. His family knew they couldn’t keep him. Sadly, they arranged for a family friend to pick him up and take him to a “shelter” to be killed. Why? Like 20,000 Volusia animals annually, Buck was going to be killed only because there was nowhere for him to go.

Buck had different ideas. An hour before the scheduled pick-up time, the family unchained him for a final few minutes of freedom. Buck seized his chance to live. Literally running for his life and with all the family’s small children in pursuit, Buck ran toward busy Amelia Avenue.

Somewhere along his escape route a car driving by stopped and the driver asked the children what was going on. “Buck’s going to be killed, because we can’t keep him,” the children explained, repeating by rote the words they had told everyone they met that sad day. “Then, I’ll take Buck home with me, if you want me to,” the man told the kids.

The relief in their happy eyes celebrated their joy that their good dog Buck was not going to die after all. The impromptu dog rescuer was a member of the family that owns the popular long-time store on the corner of Amelia and Voorhis in the No-Kill City of DeLand, a town with a big heart where people care about animals and if one needs rescuing, somebody will step up and do it.

The Legacy of St. Francis Did You Inherit It?

 
THE BROKEN CAT -- ANOTHER DELAND STORY, ONE TO BREAK YOUR HEART.

She was just another restaurant parking lot cat, one of the multitude of overpopulation-caused starving homeless cats struggling for survival on food scraps found in nightly foraging. She lived with other cats in the woods behind a popular drive-through fast food enterprise.

The animal activist heard about the unfortunate cat from a friend who saw her at the restaurant, dragging her back legs. Deeply touched by the description of the cat’s severe injuries, probably from being run over by a car, the activist hurried to the site, determined to catch the suffering cat and get her to a veterinarian for treatment.

Time after time, for weeks, the would-be rescuer fought her way through dense woods thickets in search of the broken cat, sometimes sighting but never able to get her, grievously saddened each time she had to leave without the hurt cat. After a while, she never saw the cat again.

She later learned that a month earlier – the last day she saw the cat -- animal control had been called, had trapped the cat and taken her to a veterinarian where a broken back spinal injury and two broken legs was the diagnosis, with no hope of recovery, and a decision was made to euthanize.

She had not been contacted and informed of the cat’s demise during that long month she continued to search desperately for the cat almost daily, because the animal control officer she was working with was hospitalized that day and his substitute was unaware of her  efforts.

The activist’s terrible grief was doubled by the fact she had earlier succeeded in persuading a well-know local animal refuge to take the cat in and give her a home, if caught.

“It haunts me,” the grieving would-be rescuer said later, “but at least I know I tried. She is in heaven now.”

PONCE INLET: LEADING THE WAY FOR TRAP-NEUTER-RETURN SOLUTION!

Based on the very successful TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return) procedures established by Animal Control Officer Suzanne Holy in Ormond Beach, Ponce Inlet has a well managed community TNR program that provides indisputable proof that the TNR solution works as an alternative to yesteryear’s obsolete animal control policy of killing animals.

And, Ponce Animal Welfare, Inc.Welfare, Inc. (PAW) president Jo Ellen Basile is doing a great job of spreading the word that well managed TNR colonies like Ponce Inlets’ are the only solution to the problem of free-roaming cats that has the support of the public.

“Most people,” she stated, “would agree that preserving the life of innocent creatures instead of routinely killing them when they multiply out of control is the right thing to do. Tax dollars are saved through donations and through a reduction in animal control needs and humane society fees. Google ‘TNR success’ and you will be overwhelmed by the countless reports and studies showing the success of TNR.”


Halifax Humane Society just took a giant step forward toward Volusia County animal advocates’ goal of “No More Euthanasia 2014” by providing 400 free spays or neuters during eight days in early February. What a wonderful surprise gift that was for animal rescuers!


Especially to be praised was Halifax’s inclusion of not just household pets but free roaming (feral) neighborhood cats as well in these free-spay days. Halifax’s generosity was a huge help to the county’s hundreds of financially overburdened citizen volunteers who maintain TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return and Trap- Neuter-Relocate) colonies at our own expense and we are grateful!


Those four hundred sterilized cats will add up to inestimable generations of homeless kittens not born just to be killed, not slaughtered victims of the surplus pet overpopulation crisis.


We mourn the too many innocents who have already died – like The CAT’S EYE Project’s logo cat Que Sera – but we celebrate an end in sight now, the day when no more innocent healthy kittens, puppies, cats and dogs will be killed just because till now there was no place for them all.


Thanks, Halifax, for this splendid reinforcement of hope and faith in the No-Kill Revolution!

AND YET, LOCAL GOVERNMENT IS PUTTING OUT MORE KILL CONTRACTS!

From the West Volusia Beacon: “Disposing of strays, Deltona has allocated as much as $10,000 for the Southeast Volusia Humane Society and as much as $80,000 for Halifax Humane Society to impound and possibly euthanize the dogs, cats and other living things caught within the city limits by animal control officers.

Volusia County has allocated $300,000 for animal confinement and euthanasia during 2011.”
This adds up to a $390,000 kill-contract price tag for taxpayers! Just visualize how great a sanctuary program nearly $400,000 could buy for our doomed beloved animals with no place to go now but to Death Rows and the killing chambers. A combination of sanctuaries and TNR can save thousands of cats’ and kittens’ lives and, indirectly, dogs and puppies as well!

The only way that can happen is for citizens to tell County Council and City Commission elected representatives you don’t want to kill again!

Tell them to stop killing our healthy innocent animals and to start sending those homeless pets to a sanctuary with overpopulation-ending sterilizations at only half the current cost of killing!

Tell them today!


WE’RE KILLING KITTENS, PUPPIES, DOGS AND CATS…


Only YOU can save them. PLEASE VOLUNTEER!

Dedicated animal activists are winning the “No-Kill” war to end misnamed and unnecessary “euthanasias” of healthy, harmless, lost or abandoned pets whose only crime is homelessness.

Victory, however, requires quick arrival of new reinforcement troops, because veteran animal rescuers, fosterS and adoptions workers are too weary to keep carrying our heavy loads alone. We’ve been fighting this battle too long without rest, some for decades, and we are worn out! Energetic fresh volunteers are desperately needed!

YOU are needed, if you care enough about innocent animals doomed to premature deaths to volunteer a bit of your time and energy to rescuing them and helping find homes for them or providing back-up support in many ways, from fundraising projects to telephone work at home.

Please call (1-386) 740-0651 today and let us put you in touch with field workers desperately needing the assistance of new volunteers with the very skills you possess. Call back if no reply, because the volunteer manning the phone for recruiting new volunteers is busy with overseeing a cat colony requiring time and attention and is frequently out in the field. Evening calls are best.

Halifax Humane Society just took a giant step forward toward Volusia County animal advocates’ goal of “No More Euthanasia 2014” by providing 400 free spays or neuters during eight days in early February. What a wonderful surprise gift that was for animal rescuers!

Especially to be praised was Halifax’s inclusion of not just household pets but free roaming (feral) neighborhood cats as well in these free-spay days. Halifax’s generosity was a huge help to the county’s hundreds of financially overburdened citizen volunteers who maintain TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return and Trap-Neuter-Relocate) colonies at our own expense and we are grateful!

Those four hundred sterilized cats will add up to inestimable generations of homeless kittens not born just to be killed, not slaughtered victims of the surplus pet overpopulation crisis.

We mourn the too many innocents who have already died – like The CAT’S EYE Project’s logo cat Que Sera – but we celebrate an end in sight now, the day when no more innocent healthy kittens, puppies, cats and dogs will be killed just because till now there was no place for them all.

Thanks, Halifax, for this splendid reinforcement of hope and faith in the No-Kill Revolution!

Editor................................................................Jami Baker-Nebeker
Photographer…………………………………Rik Nebeker
Staff writers…………………………………..Janice Potter,
Jennifer Shackley,
Charlotte Jones.
Ramona Whaley
Circulation ………………………Robert Baird, Janice Potter
Proof Reader………………………………….Linda Shuhy
Blogmaster……………………………………Nan Smith
The CAT’S EYE Project Director……………Ramona Whaley

The CAT’S EYE Project publishes quarterly, in Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn. The publication and accompanying blog are independently operating projects of Animal Rescue Konsortium (ARK) based in DeLand, Florida. Blog address http://thecatseyeproject.blogspot.com


R.E.S.P.E.C.T. for Pets
Volunteers and Donations needed for this non profit
Cat Tail Corners P.O. Box 952
Deleon springs, FL 32130