The Kool LA Kats

Anyone who read my old blog might remember that last summer, the LA Animal Shelter tried a different tack with its kitties Important Cat News For a short time there will be no adoption fees for cats. Instead, cats may be adopted with a minimum donation of $25. Our cats are spayed and neutered and have had their needles. We are doing this in order to free up more cat spaces at the shelter so that we can help deal with the overpopulation of homeless cats in Cumberland County.
I have been pleased to see them continuing with this bit that I refer to on the site as the Kool LA Kats ... it certainly doesn't mean that they've put their cats on sale because adopters still have to apply and meet screening criteria. Its a great idea for several reasons:

• all adoption incentives get attention and boost all pet adoptions for a group or shelter,
• everyone of their adoptables are altered and so will not add to the cat overpopulation problem,
• it is the screening process, not the fee, that weeds out the folks who can't or won't properly care for a pet,
• every cat that gets adopted out becomes a little 'word of mouth' ambassador that in turn encourages more adopters.
• it undercuts the 'competition' of the free kitten and could encourage some people to get their own cat fixed if homes aren't so easy to find and they face harder options as a result, and of course, last but definitely not least,
• every cat that they can adopt out represents one more that they will have room to save.

These are hard times for everyone, including rescue groups. Its a hard sell to convince folks to 'let go of the rope' and drop adoption fees. After all, that's been the traditional way to recover at least part of the rescue costs.

But in hard times like these, groups can't afford not to let go of the rope. Nothing impresses the animal loving public like results. Saving a good pet is only the first half of the equation. The opera's not over until the Forever Home is found.

No matter how big the shelter, no matter how many fosters there are - eventually it fills up until there is no more room at the inn if the pets do not get adopted. Even higher adoption fees get swallowed up by long term sheltering costs.

One of the biggest arguments that is used against No Kill is the 'stockpiling' of pets. And before the keyboards catch on fire, I would never suggest killing a healthy adoptable pet. Instead, I'm suggesting that revisiting adoption fees is one way to improve the turnaround so that more lives could be save. Otherwise, its a just a lottery where lives are saved by good luck instead of good management.

Two by two

In the course of my work with the homeless site, every now and then a 'pair' of good friends will pop up. Lulu & Rusty are a sweet pair of senior sisters who are depending on NS Labrador Rescue. to find them a safe new home. Bright and Lion are a brother and sister who are available for adoption from CAPS.
If its tough to be a homeless pet, how much rougher is it to be a couple of bonded close lifetime friends that no one wants to see separated?
That's only because folks forget how much dogs and cats like, and need, the company of their own kind.
Really clever people know that adopting 'pairs' or 'friends' have several very important advantages:

• adopters already know they get along together
• 'pairs' already know each other well so not everything will be strange for the pets in their new home
• 'pairs' are good company for each other when their humans aren't there. and of course
• animal friends are just so darned interesting to hang out with. Its fun to watch them play and spend time together.

Not everyone wants or needs the pet that is going to put all one's dog experience to the test. For those who are looking for an easy transition, pairs are well worth thinking of. They wind up being less work and more fun ..... all they need is someone with a big enough heart to add the love.

From today's Herald
Great pet digs
Brighter, renovated SPCA shelter to ease adoptions By PAT LEE Staff ReporterMon. Mar 9 - 11:26 AM
Sassy, two, enjoys some attention from SPCA manager Sandra Flemming at the agency’s Dartmouth shelter last week. (Christian Laforce / Staff)
DARTMOUTH — What a difference a few months can make.
The SPCA Metro Halifax Shelter in Burnside, which had been looking a little worse for wear, has had a recent facelift, making the facility more user- friendly for staff, clients and the animals in its care.
"The first of January is when this all started and we’re not done yet," said Sean Kelly, who is on the board of directors of the Nova Scotia SPCA and chairman of the shelter management team.
Thanks to donations and countless hours of work by staff and volunteers, Kelly said they’ve been able to expand and redecorate the entranceway to the building — formerly a dark and cramped space, now open and painted a cheery yellow — as well as renovating a room where potential adopters can meet and interact with the dog or cat they hope to take home.
They’re also going to add a new window and doorway into the cat adoption room. He said these improvements will make the experience of adopting a pet more enjoyable.
"In the past we had been focused on getting the animals in and getting them out instead of fostering good relationships and choosing the right animal for the right person," he said.
Kelly, who is in the navy, said probably the most important change has been the reorganization of the shelter to contain animal illnesses. In consultation with a veterinarian and shelter managers, they have established a new protocol for isolating animals for assessment before allowing them to be near animals already in care.
They’ve also put new staff procedures in place to ensure those dealing with potentially sick animals do not inadvertently infect other animals.
"The proof is in the pudding," Kelly said during a recent tour of the shelter. "In my five years as a special constable, I had never seen the cat isolation room empty. Last week it was empty."
They hope to renovate the kitchen, which has leaking pipes and counters and cabinetry that are prone to spreading germs.
The shelter houses kennels for Halifax Regional Municipality’s animal control services — a contract that helps pay some of the bills at the shelter — as well as providing adoption services for stray or seized cats and dogs.
Kat Horne, also a member of the board, said finding homes for unwanted pets is not part of the SPCA’s mandate but they do it because it’s the humane thing to do.
"That’s not our role, but we do it," she said.
The organization’s primary role is to prevent cruelty to animals, investigate reported abuse and to educate the public about humane treatment of animals.
The provincial body receives $3,000 a year from the province to investigate the abuse of farm animals and relies on fundraising to do the rest of its work.
The renovation of the metro shelter has also come on the heels of an overhaul of the SPCA’s board of directors.
Rocked by the Celtic Pets case last year, accusations of mismanagement led to the resignation of the organization’s long-time president and vice-president. Those positions are expected to be filled at the annual meeting on April 25.
Along with shaking up the board, which included the addition of new members and formation of new oversight committees, Kelly said they also needed to make improvements at the shelter and asked former manager Sandra Flemming to return on an interim bases to oversee changes in conjunction with assistant manager Kathy Thomas.
They are currently looking for a permanent shelter director.
Kelly said despite the positive changes they’ve made at the shelter, there’s more work to be done.
"If there’s something we need to change that hasn’t been changed, it’s probably because we don’t have the funding or the resources," he said.
( plee@herald.ca)

Bracing for the flood

From www.novanewsnow.com
Good Samaritan, caring professionals save cat's life BY WENDY ELLIOTT welliott@kentvilleadvertiser.ca NovaNewsNow.com It was a cold morning in late January when Wolfville storeowner Julie Page was driving through Canning on her way to work. Page noticed traffic was avoiding something on the road near the convenience store. “I saw it was a kitten in the middle of the road so I pulled over.” She discovered a tiny, unmoving creature with its eyes sealed shut due to a crust of infection. “It was half frozen to death,” she said. “I felt awful.” Page knocked on the door of the nearest house, but no one was home. Then she thought of the Wolfville Animal Hospital, which is located near her Retro Runway Fashion Boutique. “So I put her on the front seat beside me and cranked the heat up. She fell asleep.” Page had taken another stray cat there and knew the staff would help. Dr. Peter Bligh was shocked when he saw the kitten. Staff member Kathy Whitewood says the little feline they named Retro looked as if she had been run over. No home, no food “Her body was flattened against the blanket, her eyes and nose were so crusted it was impossible for her to see or hear properly,” Whitewood said. Bligh detected no broken bones, but one of her eyes may be sightless. He took a blood sample for feline leukemia and it was negative. “Retro was simply exhausted. She had no home, no food and weighed less than three pounds. Her bones poked out from a lustreless coat of fur,” recalls Whitewood. Technician Elissa Quimby took over Retro’s care. The cat was given antibiotics and a special hand-fed diet. Heating pads warmed her and brought her back to life. After over a month of tender care at the shelter, Retro is now ready to be adopted. An affectionate, short-haired tabby cat, she is about seven months old. Page has been back to visit Retro and was glad to see her thriving. “We already adopted a stray in the store, so I couldn’t take her,” she said. However, Whitewood invites the public to drop into the Valley Animal Shelter on Front St. to see Retro or the other cats. Wolfville and Area Animal Group spokesperson Pam Smith says Bligh and his staff do an awesome job. She fears with many unspayed cats having three or four litters a year, many people do not understand the extent of the problem. “We have to start taking responsibility for animals,” Smith says, “of the estimated 40,000 to 50,000 strays in Kings County.”
The Valley Animal Shelter has been around for a long time - at one time they had a shelter in Middleton until NIMBY got in the way of that. Now the shelter works out of the Valley Vets Animal Clinic in Wolfville and focuses their work on cats.
There's been a lot of discussion about stray cats since the Five Dollar Decision. A lot of neat and seemingly simple solutions have been offered all around.
When conservative estimates place the number of stray cats in the province at a minimum of 300,000, its no wonder that the rescue groups and the society combined do not have the resources to tackle this.
Even worse, because they have all had to set selection criteria for help, an environment has been created where most people do not believe there is any help forthcoming with strays and ferals, so by extension they believe there is no point in even asking.
Whenever there is a natural disaster such as a flood, the provincial and federal government do not abandon the region. Funding is found for emergency relief in the short term and infrastructure solutions are found to minimize recurrence.
The homeless cat problem is often referred to as the annual river and/or flooding of cats. Its an apt metaphor for a recurring problem. Without some type of provincial and/or federal 'disaster relief' funding, there may never be an achievable solution. If the proposed town hall does nothing else, it should be prepared to present a unified proposal for assistance to the provincial government.
Stories like this one should be shocking exceptions instead of being all too familiar.
I know I tend to see the world through very optimistic rose colored trifocals.I'm the same kind of cheeseball that just finished putting up a St Catrick's bit on the homeless pet site in (yet another) attempt to promote pet adoption.
Yet even this middle aged granny understands that until the 'tap is turned off' there will be no real solution. On any given day there are at least eight or nine good cats in rescue for every dog. Why is that?
Until it socially unacceptable to treat cats as disposable, this horrible wheel will just keep on rolling. The free kitten doesn't get spayed so it gets taken out to a country road and dumped.
The people who live out on the country road are generally kind, but 'fill up' pretty quickly. Many of them harden their hearts and either drive off/ shoot or poison the strays or send them off to animal control. Its not right for them to do that, and its of course still animal cruelty, but here in the real world, if it is to stop ,a better solution would be to stop the dumping. It is, after all, not right for people to dump the animals in the first place...... but ranting about the Five Dollar Decision is a post for another day.
Right here, right now, there are not enough resources to stop the flood. If it was runoff from the snow on the mountain instead of fallout from generations of human carelessness the government would have already stepped up to the plate.
If this town hall achieves nothing else, it should shoot for that.

Stray Cat Musings

I'm a middle aged grandmother, not a feral cat expert, but its clear that there is no "one size fits all" solution to the stray cat problem in Nova Scotia. I'm fifty four years old and it has been my experience that things are never that neat and simple.
To start with, there are such a wide variety of strays:

• adults who have been recently dumped or abandoned
• first generation strays who have survived on their own for a while
• the offspring of the stray momcats who are supported by a caretaker
• second generation strays who live in the wild without any human assistance, and last but sadly not least
• the kittens that were born to a domestic pet and then dumped or abandoned

Coming out of the gate, its clear any solution has to start with stopping the dumping. What would that take?

• an education campaign that would be supported by animal clinics to promote early age spay / neuter. Even in this day and age, there are still many good people who don't understand the health benefits and cost saving with this
• Promote spay and neuter benefits in the free online ad sites
• a low cost / high volume SNAP of course
• a road sign campaign in rural areas reminding people it is illegal to abandon animals.
• Where possible, rescue groups and shelters to take owner surrendered kittens and puppies if the owner will keep and spay the mom
• Approach the Guides and Scouts about starting a Kindness campaign
• The RCMP should at least be asked if they would be willing to do (and fund) an ad that stated that it is illegal to abandon animals. Being reminded of that by the RCMP could be a big deterrent.

The second thing of course is to promote pet adoption. First generation strays and feral kittens are great candidates for pet adoption. In addition to the great things that different groups and rescues are already doing, its time to look at:

• off site adoptions. If Pet Projects can get over half of its adoptable cats and kittens adopted in a little fire hall well off the beaten path, just imagine the possibilities for success elsewhere.
• more adoption incentives. Build on the success of the November Adopt a Senior Month and the Home for the Holiday's program. SHAID's Senior to Senior special is another good example. There is still considerable resistance to adoption incentives by groups who feel they 'cannot afford them" With a proven track record of drawing attention and boosting all their adoptables, how can anyone afford NOT to?
• It would not cost the society anything to use its influence with provincial papers to post petfinder widgets for Nova Scotia Adoptable Pets in their online editions
• Nor would it cost anything to entice the same widgets to be posted on different government websites, from the municipalities up to the provincial level.
• Feature a pet of the day on the society website. No word of a lie, the site traffic for the homeless pet site doubled when I did that.
• Develop a logo for NS pet adoption and encourage NS businesses to include it in both their paper and online sales flyers

The third thing is to establish some protection for feral cats:

• municipal 'at large' bylaws need to be addressed to protect both the cats and the caregivers of tended cat colonies.
• municipal websites need to address the misconception that wild feral cats are somehow less deserving than any other wildlife. For instance, when I had a bank beaver last spring in the upper pond, I could go to the Natural Resources website. Not only do they make it clear that they do NOT interfere with wildlife, but they offer tips for living with them.

In the fourth place, funding has to be made available for people to vaccinate and spay or neuter the stray cats they start feeding. These are hard times and, while people want to be kind, very few people have the personal resources to do the initial 'start up". That way they can be part of the solution instead of adding to the problem.

Last but not least, some otherwise very intelligent and compassionate people do terrible things to strays because they are utterly unawakened to feral cat issues. How can that be changed? Use a fundraising campaign to heighten awareness. After all, most of the things that need to be done will need money.

• Pick a spokescat
• Designate a Stray Cat Day for NS
• Hold province wide Flealess Markets to get attention,
• but the real money will come from tickets on donated prizes and/or services
• Get the word out with a website that can also be used both to publicly acknowledge support from businesses and to instill interest for the next year's campaign
• And of course, the campaign itself can be a media event, from start to finish, at milestones along the way.
  

Like the old poster in my laundry room says "Do something! Lead, follow or get out of the way" We will never get to No Kill Nova Scotia until everyone understands what should have been obvious in the first place - that stray and feral cats are living breathing sentient beings need our protection and support and are not a nuisance to be squashed and set aside.

The process of creating a meaningful solution for stray cats will also map the way for future endeavors. At the end of the day, we may all be moved by compassion, but it will take cooperation to truly get to No Kill Nova Scotia

From the SPCANS website, www.spcans.ca
March 5, 2009Halifax, NS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SPCA Call to Action on Stray Cat Issue
The Nova Scotia SPCA wishes to clarify its position and mandate with regard to the stray cat situation in Nova Scotia.
The NS SPCA's primary mandate is the prevention of cruelty to animals. In order to carry out this mandate without public funding (aside from a $3,000 annual grant from the Department of Agriculture), the NS SPCA must raise several hundred thousand dollars a year to pay for the cost of 2.5 cruelty investigators plus all costs associated with investigating and prosecuting animal cruelty acts in Nova Scotia, and caring for the animals seized and surrendered through those cruelty cases.
In addition to our core mandate of prevention of cruelty, the NS SPCA also works very hard to take in abandoned and unwanted animals whenever space and resources allow. The NS SPCA provincially accepts over 5,000 unwanted cats a year. While the function of animal control falls under City/Municipal responsibility in Nova Scotia, the NS SPCA cares about the welfare of all animals and works hard to be part of the solution and, as a result, all of our branches throughout Nova Scotia take in unwanted animals whenever resources allow. Unfortunately, this problem is much bigger than our charity can handle on its own without public support and funding.
In our continued effort to be part of the solution, the NS SPCA will be announcing a public Town Hall meeting in the near future to ask concerned members of communities within Nova Scotia to work with us towards a solution to the cat overpopulation challenge in our province. The NS SPCA has material and program plans, but without the support of our communities and government, the NS SPCA's efforts in this regard continue to suffer.
The NS SPCA invites all concerned residents and City/Municipal staff who wish to be part of the solution to please attend this Town Hall and support our charity in making Nova Scotia the no-kill province that we all wish it to be. Details of the Town Hall session will be posted to our website at www.spcans.ca once confirmed.
Media requests and interviews may be directed to media@spcans.ca or by calling 835-4798.

The Stray Cat Blues

They are second class kittizens and nobody wants them. The whole cycle started because someone was too stupid or careless or cheap to spay the momcat. So they were taken for a drive and dumped off somewhere .... far enough away from home that they would neither be recognized nor find their way back.
Those who survived the traffic and the coyotes and foxes and the hawks and the owls and the eagles managed to have their litters in a cold little corner somewhere. Few of those kittens survived such a harsh beginning, falling prey to the weather or the natural predators.
It is luck of the draw for the ones that survive. Those that find their way to the wrong yard or neighbourhood are scooped up by animal control. Others are drowned or beaten or smothered or shot.
Others think they hit paydirt because someone seems kind and feeds them. Instead of finding a way to have them spayed, they are left to reproduce until there are sufficient numbers for animal control to step in and kill the lot of them.
A very lucky few find their way into the sanctuary of a tended cat colony. Even then their fate is dependant upon the good will of the neighbours. Let one of them try their luck at a neighbour's bird feeder or not understand that well tilled piece of dirt is nor there for their convenience..... they can still meet the same sad ending.
People turn a blind eye to their fate and deliberately choose to overlook one very important thing .... these are living sentient breathing things and deserving of our protection. They became homeless and their offspring grew up feral because of people.
We created the problem and now its up to us to create the humane solution. Wait a minute .... there is a humane solution isn't there? TNR, right?
So what's the big hold up? Why aren't all the stray cats and ferals spayed and neutered and vaccinated?
Money may not be the root of all evil, but in this instance it comes pretty darned close. Not everyone has the resources to spay or neuter every stray that comes by. Not every TNR group or even every SPCA branch has the resources.
So what's the solution? I was looking at Team TNR's stats from last year and part of the answer is right there. When municipalities fund a modest annual sum to their local TNR groups, every year the number of strays and ferals does decline.
What else? In the Cape Breton Municipality, they are trying to provide funding for people who will take in strays. Not of course for their upkeep, but for the initial "start up" expenses of ownership
And? Clearly the Public Prosecutors in this province need their own course in Humane Education and need to be taught that Animal cruelty to feral cats is still animal cruelty
Anything else? The compassion to get past the "not in my backyard" syndrome to be more tolerant of properly tended cat colonies and even wild ferals. Ferals and strays will never be safe until it is socially unacceptable to either kill them or turn them over to someone else who will.
I'm always saying that it is my great hope that my granddaughter's generation will look back and wonder how we could all be such barbarians. At the end of the day, they will probably see us as hypocrites who felt we had the right to decide when life counted and when it was acceptable to throw it away.