COUNTY TAKES ON ISSUE OF STRAY CATS?

By Al Everson
BEACON STAFF WRITER

posted Jun 23, 2010 - 4:49:34pm

In one month this spring, 1,024 stray cats and kittens were taken in by Halifax Humane Society in Daytona Beach.

Of those, 883 were euthanized. 

The tragedy, along with the cost of dealing with cat overpopulation, has the attention of the Volusia County Council.

Upon the recommendation of Animal Services Director Becky Wilson, the County Council on June 17 directed the Animal Control Board to study the stray-cat problem and propose solutions. 

The council was told free-roaming cats account for 75 percent of the animal impoundments countywide, and 80 percent of the animals euthanized at shelters. 

"Cats reproduce a lot. They actually can produce three or four litters per year," Wilson told the County Council. "The number continues to increase, and so does the cost." 

Council Member Carl Persis said statistics show one male cat and one female cat are capable of producing 427,000 descendants over seven years. 

"It really would help if people would keep their cats indoors," Persis said. "Unless they are neutered or spayed, they will do what animals do." 

Wilson's plan for a study of the problem includes asking veterinarians, nonprofit organizations and other local governments to share ideas and advice. 

Council Member Jack Hayman emphasized involving Volusia's 16 cities, because the problem of stray cats is not confined to the unincorporated area. 

"Somebody, somewhere had better get the message to our colleagues in the cities," Hayman said. 

Wilson discussed the possibility of a partnership of local governments and private animal-welfare groups to head off cat overpopulation. She said governmental or private grants may be available. 

Residents attending the meeting offered possible solutions, including broader use of the Pet Vet Cruiser, a mobile spay-and-neuter clinic for low-income residents of the unincorporated area. 

"Open your Pet Cruiser to all residents of Volusia County. That's critical," urged Donna G. Flood, a DeLand resident. "Eliminate the billing issue between the cities and the county." 

Flood also suggested the county do more to protect cats. 

"Build a shelter at Barkley Square, a sanctuary," she told the County Council.

Barkley Square, near the old Plymouth Avenue Landfill northwest of DeLand, is a county park for dogs and their owners. 

"You build dog parks; build a cat park," agreed Bob Baird, another DeLand animal-welfare advocate. 

Baird said he has personally paid to have about 500 strays sterilized.

Kevin Hancock, a spokesman for the Halifax Humane Society, agreed spaying and neutering is part of the solution to the problem of large numbers of unwanted animals.

He said Halifax offers low-cost sterilization, and invited residents to call 386-274-4703 for more information. 

Halifax has temporarily reduced the cost of cat adoptions, to encourage people to give homes to the hundreds of cats flooding the shelter. 

Flood said cat overpopulation has been aggravated by a surge in home foreclosures, as hard-pressed families have been forced to dispose of pets. 

For local governments, the cost of dealing with the problem is rising. The county and many of the cities in Volusia County contract with Halifax Humane Society to shelter and dispose of animals picked up within their jurisdictions. 

Recently, Halifax Humane Society raised its charge to $87.37 — up from $80 — to keep an animal for three days. If the pet is not reclaimed by its owner or adopted within three days, the Humane Society may euthanize it.

— al@beacononlinenews.com

ANIMAL ACTIVISTS CONVENE

June 19th about 60 people representing themselves and animal rescue and anti-abuse groups met at the Volusia County Fairgrounds as guests of County Councilman Andy Kelly, his wife Cissy, and his family. During the first hour attendees were invited to introduce themselves and give a brief description of the scope of each group.

Represented were: Sophie's Circle, Rescued Hearts, Angels Have Whiskers, Halifax Humane Society, Dale Arrington, Prison Pups and Pals, The Cat's Eye Project, Bob Baird, Jeanine Colletti, Volusia County Veterinary Medicine Association, West Volusia Humane Society, We Help Animals, Inc., DeLand, Animal Hospital, Becky Wilson, West Volusia Friends of Felines, West Volusia Kennel Club, Tomoka Correctional Institution, DeLand Animal Hospital, A.R.K., Volusia County Spay-Neuter Bus, Concerned Citizens For Animal Welfare, Lake County Animal Control, and others. Many in the crowd were individuals who spend all their extra time and money feeding and caring for abandoned or abused animals of all species, or maintaining a feral colony. Several young people and children helped greet and seat animal lovers when they entered the meeting room.

Mr. Kelly began the program stating that there is no email list for the combined groups and the movement needs a web site and a Facebook page. He suggested that someone might be responsible for keeping the dialogue open between the groups and that public awareness and advertising might bring recognition to the problems facing the county concerning animal control. A representative of West Volusia Friends of Felines offered information provided by an authority on feral cats (Dr. Julie Levy of University of Florida) estimating there may be 4000 to 4500 ferals in the West Volusia area.

The first speaker, Becky Wilson -- officer with Volusia County Animal Control, told the group about the challenges that animal control faces and their many accomplishments in the past.

Dale Arrington also spoke as did several others. We will provide a more elaborate description of the remainder of the meeting when we have double-checked our information.

A second meeting was scheduled for 10 A.M. July 17 at the same location in building 2 behind the Agricultural Center at the Volusia County Fairgrounds. For more information email

ANDY KELLY
(386) 740-5224	Fax: (386) 822-5707
E-Mail: akelly@co.volusia.fl.us

PROGRAM PRISON PUPS AND PALS

IT'S NOT EUTHANASIA

IT’S NOT EUTHANASIA!

   What’s wrong with this sentence: “Six million beautiful, healthy, happy kittens, puppies, dogs and cats are euthanized each year in our country, thousands of them annually in your county, killed by your taxes!” Clue to answer: See the dictionary’s definition of euthanasia.

   Answer: IT’S NOT EUTHANASIA!

   “Euthanasia” is derived from a Greek word that means “easy death”. If you think “euthanasia” is the correct term for governmental kill contracts taken out on dogs and cats, go see how “easy” these life-loving victim’s deaths are. Choose a Kill-Site and go watch sweet-eyed dogs become dogs with terror-filled eyes as, one after the other, they are led from their cages to Death Row and the assembly line killings. Watch doomed dogs drag their feet all the way to the executioners, because they know they are going to die! “Easy”?

 

   Observe life flow from the innocents when the official “euthanizers” suddenly press a deadly, often painful, heart-stick needle on the trusting, surprised animals’ hearts.

   Witness the executions of tiny, squirming, adorable little kittens mewing in protest of their just-starting-out lives being stolen away from them. See and understand why gentle grown cats are mistakenly identified by euthanizers as feral or “wild”, only because they fought so ferociously to defend their lives from murder.

   Go witness these killings for yourself (if you’re allowed, or can find a way to)  and that horrible firsthand experience will change your attitude toward “euthanasia”. If you have a heart, you will immediately be turned into an animal advocate and animal activist. You’ll join the nationwide No Kill movement, like the growing masses of other concerned citizens.

   Unlike the victims of erroneously labeled “euthanasia”, you don’t have to go through all that, not if you can see the truth and comprehend the injustice of this situation just by reading this article intended to educate about the cruel inaccuracy of the word euthanasia.

   “Euthanasia,” by dictionary definition is “the act or practice of killing persons or domestic animals that are hopelessly sick or injured, for reasons of mercy.”

   How, in anyone’s misguided mind, can killing a healthy animal possibly be defended as a “mercy killing”?

   It is time to stop the killing! You, the citizens, working with your local government, have the power to demand reform in national and local animal control policies, choosing life for the animals, not the erroneously labeled “euthanasia,” which is not euthanasia at all!

   Simple sterilization of pets is the effective, economical and humane alternative solution for getting our pet overpopulation problem under control without killing!

   Please help us hurry the day when no more innocent healthy cats and dogs will die by humans’ hands and humans’ stupidity. Please do your part to help us take a first step toward creating ositive change by making it a point always to correct anyone you hear or read who uses the word “euthanasia” when referring to the killing of a healthy dog or cat.

 

   Please step in unapologetically and adequately educate anyone and everyone you hear call it “euthanasia”, anytime, anywhere you hear that grievous error, no matter who it was who made that tragic mistake. Make everyone understand: “IT’S NOT EUTHANASIA!”

   We must all effectively repeat these three little words over, and over, and over, loud and clear, wherever we go, until our message is heard and understood and the killing stops!  

  

   Letting it continue being called euthanasia is no mere matter of semantics. It’s a matter of life and death! Please help us make heard our battle cry for the innocent animals who cannot speak for themselves. Shout it out, over and over: “IT”S NOT EUTHANASIA!!!”

  

  

STAMPS TO THE RESCUE

You can now order US postage stamps and help shelter animals.

This is a pane of 20 44–cent Animal Rescue: Adopt a Shelter Pet special stamps.

On April 30, 2010, in North Hollywood, California, the Postal Service™ will issue a 44–cent, Animal Rescue: Adopt a Shelter Pet special stamp in ten designs, designed by Derry Noyes of Washington, DC.

With these 10 stamp designs, the U.S. Postal Service hopes to raise awareness of the need to adopt shelter pets. Go to any USPO web site or search Adopt a Shelter Pet Stamps on Google.

RAMONA RELATES THE BEGINNING OF THE CAT'S EYE

Two things inspired this new The CAT’S EYE Project blog. One is Que Sera. Once she was my precious lively, feisty and sweetly-semi-ferocious little gray tiger-stripe kitty. Now she is dead, killed by obsolete and senseless animal control policy.

The other is our blissfully unaware human citizenry that, year after year enables with its taxes funding for the barbaric killing of five to eight million other cats, kittens, puppies and dogs in the USA alone.

My Que Sera came into my life as a tiny, terrified kitten clinging to a palm frond being battered by blustery winds from a passing off-shore hurricane. Her deafening, demanding-rescue MEOW screams called me out into the dark night. She landed in my hands. There she was safe forever more, or so we both thought.

This blog is because of a promise I made to my now-dead Que Sera that her tragedy would not be in vain, because her dying would create this blog remembering and  honoring her and all the billions or trillions of other dogs and cats who suffered her same fate of needless deaths over too many dark decades of ignorance.

This blog’s goal is to stop that killing!

Primary purpose of the blog -- and its sister The Cat’s Eye Project publication (via traditional paper medium) -- is to stop the wrongful killing via education.

Specifically, this blog’s purpose is to bring a new depth of understanding to all the blithely unaware mainstream masses of humans who are ignorant about the horrible truth ... that when dogs and cats are taken to humane societies and most other “shelters,” eighty to ninety per cent of those dogs and cats not are going to be not adopted as is commonly believed. 

Tragically, all those healthy, beautiful, innocents will be dead in days! And, unaware citizens paid with their taxes for that hiring of contracted killers, probably never realizing that hard truth.

Shelters are desperately needed, but they need to be No-Kill Shelters. A fast-growing national No-Kill Movement is making progress in making that happen! It’s already happening in DeLand, thanks to wise and progressive governmental leadership willing to work with local animal advocates. Other cities and counties need to copy DeLand! 

This blog also is for the vast growing numbers of hands-on animal activists who work endlessly and exhaustedly to save the life of every individual doomed dog, cat, kitten and puppy they encounter via our far-reaching animal rescue networks and on their own streets. 

Dedicating their lives, as they do, to stopping the senseless killings of innocents is as physically exhausting as it is their personal-budgets depleting. For those tired hands-on rescuers, this blog intends to create a refuge, a restful place where they can retreat for a few essentially needed moments of solace when they come home late in the night to try to relax at last.

We hope this blog will become the activists’ and rescuers’ personal sanctuary, providing encouragement, gratitude, and hope and most of all a few minutes of rare rest and unwinding.

We hope they will find all that in the blog’s planned stories about successful rescues, essays on why they do what they do for the animals, poetry, art and photos about their experiences and the animals they have saved, and other pleasant animal-related literary relaxations, all dedicated to the multitude of wonderful non-human species who share our planet!

TOO LATE FOR MAYFLOWER

Too Late for Mayflower…

   A local independent rescuer of lost and abandoned cats shared this story with The CAT’S EYE Project in hope of broadening public awareness about the work being done by thousands of animal activist volunteers across America.

 

Before Mayflower came into my life, I had already taken in a neighborhood cat to get her fixed. She always came to eat at my house, and I got tired of seeing her knocked up time after time. I wondered who she belonged to. They did not seem to take good care of her, as she was a bit dirty. Her tail was long and had a yellow stain on it. She was white, with one green eye and one blue eye. I named her Mama Mia. When I caught her I thought she was going to be a wild one, since she was so stand-offish compared to my small colony of cats I take care of. She was just the opposite. I was quickly able to hold her and she let me know she loved being held. I kept her in for one week. Then I let her back outside. I am pregnant and cannot be changing the litter of a cat that has been outside (because of infection risk. Mama Mia kept coming around for about two weeks. Then, I didn’t see her anymore. Had her owners moved and taken her away? Had Animal Control picked her up? Or, had something else happened? 

I looked up a local shelter’s website and saw on it a white cat with one blue eye and one green eye. The shelter listed her by the name of Mayflower. Since I was sick with flu or a bad cold and home in bed, my husband went to the shelter for me to see if it was my Mama Mia. He called me from there. Even though Mayflower looked like Mama Mia and was fixed like Mama Mia, all details didn’t match. Her location of pick up was not in my neighborhood. Mama Mia’s eye that was green was in Mayflower blue, and Mama Mia’s blue eye was green in Mayflower, totally opposite from each other. Mayflower was not my Mama Mia.               

I was fostering another cat and I knew it could take months to find a home for a cat. I do not get paid for my animal rescue work. Like all animal rescuers, I am a volunteer. I use my own money to neuter, feed and care for my rescues. I am a registered nurse and in graduate school. I had too much going on to think clearly about Mayflower’s fate without intervention. I let my husband leave Mayflower at the shelter. I was so sick. I was so worried about Mama Mia.     

I had been reading about, what to me and other animal rescuers are, mass murders taking place at our local -- too trusted animal shelters. My husband said that Mayflower, whom he said seemed like a real nice cat, was in the back ready to be put down. This was a Friday. With a weekend ahead, I thought I could assume she would be safe until Monday. 

I have online connections with other independent rescuers that I have never met. I sent out an e-mail request for advice and help. Right away one of these rescuers volunteered to contact a local rescue organization to see if it could take her. On hearing that good news, my first thought was, “I better check to see if she is even still alive.” I called the shelter. The lady who answered the phone said, with a perky voice, “No, that cat is no longer with us!” I knew then that they had killed her. That back room she was in the day was a death row. They had let my husband back there only because he was looking for our cat. 

I felt so guilty, like I had given the OK to pull the trigger. My husband tried to ease my guilt by saying, “This happens all the time. You should have seen it. There were so many of them there, in different rooms. Some had towels over their cages. There were a lot of kittens too!”  

This did not comfort me. I felt responsible for Mayflower’s death. The next day made me feel even worse, as more e-mails filled with possibilities and hope for Mayflower poured in. One e-mail said she could have gone to a well-kept colony. Another local rescuer said she would have taken Mayflower.      

Had Mayflower not been scheduled to be killed on November 26^th.  she could still be with us now. If they had not been so quick to murder this sweet, innocent, beautiful cat she would now be cuddled in a happy home.

Mayflower, your legacy lives forever in my heart. I hope your death will not be in vain and that readers will learn from your story and with this lesson be inspired to fight for the right of innocent cats to live out their lives. All the beautiful dead animals, like the No Kill animal rights issue itself, are out of sight/out of mind for the majority of Americans. Let your story shine light on the truth for those who read Mayflower’s Story and set the multitude of other doomed cats and dogs free.

Animal Rescue Groups and individual rescuers are welcome to email your animal photos and descriptions to thecatseyeproject@gmail.com for inclusion in our monthly publication and on our blog. 


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