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Your No-kill Shelter
No More Homeless Pets Forum
February 17,
2003
Going No-Kill
Nathan Winograd
No-kill
overnight? Can't be! Nathan
Winograd, director of Tompkins Country SPCA shares how he made his community
no-kill, virtually overnight with his innovative programs.
Introduction from Nathan Winograd:
In 2001, the Tompkins County SPCA
divorced itself from its 100-year history. In one year, by sheer will, we
stopped the killing of healthy dogs and cats. The next year, we stopped the
killing of treatable sick and injured pets, as well as feral cats. In the end,
92% of the animals were either returned to their responsible caregivers or found
loving, new homes, an achievement unparalleled anywhere in the country. The
remainder were either too sick or too injured to be rehabilitated, or were
vicious dogs who were clearly a threat to public safety, to other animals, and,
in many ways, to themselves. There were no excuses, no blame shifting. The
animals came, the animals were cared for, and the animals were saved. It is,
after all, what an SPCA is there to do.
In two years, the Tompkins County
SPCA went from a shelter:
- that was killing 100% of feral cats to killing none
- that was killing healthy dogs and cats to killing none
- that was killing treatable sick/injured dogs and cats to killing none
- that reduced the death rate by 75%
In those same two years, the
TC SPCA increased:
- the animals spayed/neutered before adoption from 10% to 100%
- the number of volunteers from a dozen to 181 the number of animals
fostered from a handful to close to 800 per year
And we did it
without big bucks and without a big shelter. During the same period, the
SPCA:
- reduced its expenses by approximately $150,000 per year
- reduced the number of employees from 16 to 12
- went from a $250,000 a year annual budget deficit to a $23,000 surplus
- and has so far raised $2.8 million dollars to build a new shelter
- We opened relationships with rescue groups in five states, engaged every
veterinarian in the community, and forged alliances with the media that
resulted in being either in the newspaper, radio or on the local television
news 251 days out of 365 last year -- with a total advertising budget of
zero.
The Tompkins County SPCA has shown what can happen when we
make a commitment to stop the killing and sweep away the employees, the policies
and procedures, and the defeatist mentality that gave legitimacy to the
past.
If we believe in our dreams, hold on to our principles, and work
hard and persevere -- we will succeed. So that compassion will win the day. And
thousands upon tens of thousands upon hundreds of thousands of dogs and cats
will leave shelters across the country after finding loving homes -- finding in
animal shelters, a new beginning, instead of the end of the line.
We did
it in Ithaca. And you can too. Today.
Recruiting new foster homes and support from the community
Question from Patti:
Our group has really come a long way, but we still
don't have a shelter. Lately our foster homes are experiencing burn out.
It
is hard to turn away animals and we end up over loading ourselves. Everyone is
just worn out.
I would be interested in getting ideas on how to recruit
new foster homes and obtain more financial support from our community.
Response from Nathan:
"MORE MONEY"
There is no
secret to fundraising. It can be summed up in three sentences: 1. Do Good Things
for Animals; 2. Tell People About It; and 3. Ask for Their Help.
When I
took this job, I did not know the first thing about development. I also knew
that those syrupy letters I get every week from one animal group or another were
mediocre pap that ended up in my recycling basket. I also knew that I never read
stuff about the barrels of dead animals or that two unaltered cats equal 420,000
in seven years--more pap that ended up being recycled. There is an old cliché:
the definition of insanity is doing the same thing, getting the same result, and
yet still doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
Why does a shelter that kills most of its occupants struggle to find
volunteers, donors, and supporters? Is it really that much of a mystery? Why
does a newsletter talking about dead animals and the millions of kittens that
are born because people are irresponsible not bring in the dollars?
People do not want to donate their money so the shelter can replenish
its sodium pentobarbital. Volunteers do not want to socialize a cat that will
end up in a body bag the next day. The public doesn't want to be told they are
the cause of the killing, and yet should donate to you so you can kill.
The answer is simple: stop the killing, start saving, tell people about
it, and the support--more volunteers, more adoptions, more money--will follow.
When I worked at the San Francisco SPCA, I heard over and over that San
Francisco could save lives because the SPCA was wealthy. Indeed it was. Over 200
employees, 7 full-time veterinarians, dog trainers, a full service hospital that
saw tens of thousands of patients every year, 8,000 free spay/neuter surgeries
per year, and 40 million dollars in the bank.
But it wasn't always that
way. In fact, two decades prior it was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. But
by focusing on the fundamentals (1. Save lives; 2. Tell people about it; 3. Ask
for help), Richard Avanzino took an SPCA and turned San Francisco into the
safest urban city in the U.S. to be a homeless dog or cat.
When I took
over the Tompkins County SPCA, we were running a significant annual operating
deficit, we had an exhausted and angry volunteer base, and few foster homes.
We began saving the animals, putting out press releases, doing offsite
adoptions, putting up posters, and saturating our community with who we are,
what we are doing and the lives we are saving. We attended every church bazaar,
every grand opening, and every town festival. Everywhere you turned, the SPCA
was there--adopting out animals, recruiting foster parents, recruiting
volunteers who in turn were sent out to do more events, more offsite adoptions,
hang up more posters (all designed on my lap top and copied at the local Kinkos
cheaply).
When the letter came asking for money, it wasn't out of the
blue--they were getting a letter from an SPCA they saw at the mall, at their
church, at the Farmers Market, whose flyer is in the window of their bank, their
favorite restaurant. And the letter wasn't the kind of traditional junk that
chastised them for not spaying their cat or telling them that they (the public)
was to blame for the barrels of dead animals. Instead, the letter told them
about what the shelter was doing to save lives and asking for their help. In six
months, we had 600 animals in foster care, over 150 volunteers, our dogs were
being walked four times a day, and our average gift doubled in size.
Save the animals, tell people about it, and then ask for their help. To
expect money and volunteers first is putting the cart before the horse, and that
is not such a good idea when your cart and your horse have such a long way to
go.
"MORE FOSTER PARENTS"
Don't overwork your foster
parents. What we do here is maintain an e-mail list of all foster parents. When
I have an animal who needs fostering, I e-mail the entire list and let people
decide if they are ready to foster.
So the trick is to be flexible and
keep recruiting. When you do an offsite adoption at the local mall, set up a
list for people to sign up and be foster parents. Is there a college or
university in your town? You might not adopt to undergraduates because they are
not ready for a 10-year commitment, but they are ready for a 10-week one. Have
them foster for you. Is there an assisted living housing for elderly folks in
your town? They too might be gun shy with a 10-year commitment, but how about 10
weeks? Do you put out press releases every spring to recruit foster parents? We
have posters all over town asking for foster parents. What about a military
base? They can't adopt because they might be shipped out, but they sure can
foster. The possibilities are endless.
Make your program FLEXIBLE and
you should be able to recruit foster homes. We let them foster as long or as
little as they like, dogs or cats, puppies or kittens, healthy ones or sick
ones, they can adopt them themselves free, they can come and go as they please.
This prevents burnout and allows me to keep the assembly line of animals moving.
But there also has to be an exit strategy. Burnout usually comes because
the animals sit in foster for too long. Fostering should be temporary until you
have space, you have an adoption event, or the animal is healthy. We are
constantly at the mall, Farmers Market, community fairs, church bazaars, grand
openings, etc. adopting out animals. It is 100% volunteer-run and the animals
that go there are foster animals.
I also allow foster parents to adopt
their animals for free or if they can find homes for them (family, friends,
etc.) that is OK too. If you trust them to bottle feed a kitten for four weeks
or nurse a sick dog back to health, trust them to find homes for the pets.
From Celeste in OR: Regarding foster programs
I wanted to add that no
matter how trustworthy a foster is, altering an animal BEFORE it gets released
into the community-at-large is a very wise and farseeing practice.
Winograd:
Tompkins County SPCA alters all animals prior to adoption.
That's probably because they realize that's the ONLY way to ensure that none of
those pets will go on to contribute to pet overpopulation, either by accident,
procrastination, or breach of adoption contract.
The same risks of
non-compliance are inherent, whether the adoptee be an adult or 2 pound juvenile
(any other system, including deposit programs, has about a 20% non-compliance
rate--that's 1 in 5).
NBA (neuter-before-adoption) is good for the
animal rescue community, but it's also good for the individual animals starting
their new lives with a truly 'fresh start'. Adopters like it because they never
have to be 'the bad guy' who has to put up with feelings of guilt imagining how
'Buffy will never forgive me'.
And veterinarians, once they give it a
chance, like it, too! I work at a veterinary clinic in close proximity to a
major shelter that started practicing neuter before adoption over a year ago.
Guess what?! Clients are still spending as much when they bring their newly
adopted, already "fixed" pet in for the first-time exam--it's just that now
they're free to spoil their new friend with health tests, elective dental
cleaning, healthy treats, or vet-approved toys, instead of a sterilization
surgery.
Your intake statistics
Question from several members:
Could you share some actual numbers (in
addition to percentages) from Tompkins County such as:
What was the
shelter intake when you took over?
What were the euthanasia numbers when you
took over?
What were your adoption numbers when you took over?
What is
your shelter intake now?
What are your euthanasia numbers now?
What are
your adoption numbers now?
Response from Nathan:
2002 (my second year):
Cat Intake:
1,609
Saved: 1,487 (92%)
Killed: 122
Dog Intake: 845
Saved: 782
(92%)
Killed: 63
2001 (my first year):
Cat Intake: 1,762
Saved: 1,526 (87%)
Killed: 236
Dog Intake: 1,128
Saved: 991
(88%)
Killed: 137
2000: (the year prior to my arrival):
Cat
Intake: 1,868
Saved: 1,068 (57%)
Killed: 800
Dog Intake:
1,187
Saved: 818 (69%)
Killed: 369
In 2000, all feral cats were
killed, treatable cats and dogs were killed, and healthy dogs and cats were also
killed.
In 2001, none of the dogs or cats killed was healthy, although a
small percentage was reasonably treatable. In addition, 70 feral cats were
killed.
In 2002, none of the dogs or cats killed were either healthy or,
if sick or injured, treatable. Also, none of the feral cats we took in were
killed either.
Saved means adopted or redeemed and, in the case of feral
cats, TNR. More detailed breakdowns by adoption, redemption, TNR, use of rescue
groups is available on our website at www.SPCAonline.com. Click on the menu
under "The Shelter" and then click on "Our Mission." You can download our
statistics and annual report.
To stay or not to stay in animal control contracts
Question from Kathi in MO:
Our local humane society is under contract
with many surrounding rural towns to accept the city's unclaimed animals from
animal control. They receive $15 for every animal surrendered by one of the
contracting towns. Obviously, it costs more than $15 to store an animal for 5-15
days, and the humane society is losing significant money. I asked why they don't
cancel the contracts (so they can get out of the killing business), and they
answered "What would happen to the animals if we didn't take them?"
The
humane society is essentially letting itself be blackmailed because they care
about the animals. How can I make the board see that the situation will never
improve if they continue to make it easy on these towns? Obviously, they can't
just cancel the contracts without providing some guidance to these towns, or the
animals will most certainly suffer. But what can the humane society do to make
it win/win for both groups? And what do they do with the towns that won't be
willing to work toward a solution?
Response from Nathan:
Unless they are content to continue killing
animals on behalf of local government, every SPCA and humane society under
contract for animal control is going to find itself in this dilemma.
We
too hold the contract for animal control, with all ten townships, the City of
Ithaca, and the health department for rabies control. By way of example, our
largest township paid $13,000 for animal control services last year and we spent
$114,000 servicing just that town. We lose money on each and every contract. We
contract with the town for stray cat control at $36,000 per year. Last year
alone, we spent $82,000 on stray cats--and that doesn't include medical care,
spay/neuter, and services past the five-day holding period. A significant
portion of our funds is essentially going to underwrite animal control services.
Should we get out of animal control? Prior to my arrival, several of the
towns did use an alternative provider for animal control. The dogs were housed
in barns, staked to the ground, not vaccinated, and virtually all of the dogs
not redeemed were killed. We naturally worry about what would happen to the
animals if we did not provide the service. And the towns know this. They know we
want the animals coming to us, so there is little incentive for them to pay
more.
Many humane societies and SPCAs find themselves in this dilemma.
What will happen to the animals if they don't take them in? But because they are
spending donor dollars subsidizing animal control, they can't use their
resources for more spay/neuter, behavior modification, medical care, adoption
promotion and the like, the types of programs that reduce intakes and save
lives.
There are three main scenarios as I see it:
1. If your
community is a major metropolitan area, it will likely build its own municipal
shelter due to the volume of dogs and cats, so the humane society in this
situation SHOULD get out of animal control. This is what Richard Avanzino did in
San Francisco in 1989.
Because the San Francisco SPCA owned the current
shelter, the city built a brand new facility. Now there would be two shelters,
instead of one, taking in and trying to save animals. And no longer subsidizing
animal control, the SPCA could use its money for more spay/neuter, more medical
care, behavior rehab, and other programs to save lives. Eventually, this proved
so successful, and the public support so overwhelming, that the SPCA was able to
start taking animals out of animal control and saving them too. By 1994, healthy
dogs and cats were no longer dying in San Francisco.
2. If you live in a
rural area and the alternative is what we call a "pickup truck, barn and a gun,"
you still SHOULD get out of animal control if you are killing healthy animals
and your money is going to subsidize that killing. SPCAs and humane societies
were never created to kill animals for local government and it is a function
they should not do.
It will be difficult to get public support and donor
dollars if you are using that support to kill animals because your township will
not pay an adequate share for animal control. If the town takes over or if they
go with an alternative provider, the animals will still die, but it matters who
is doing the killing because you will never get the kind of support you need if
the public perception of your shelter is that it is a place where animals go to
die. (Admittedly, some organizations are very wealthy despite killing the
majority of the animals they take in, but most of these are in major
metropolitan areas.)
Once you sever the chord, you can focus on those
other programs such as building up your volunteer base, foster homes,
spay/neuter, medical care so that there are fewer strays, fewer unwanted births,
fewer animals ending up with the alternative provider. Over time, you could also
begin to take animals from the alternative provider who they can't or won't
place.
But you WILL see an increase over time in lives saved because
there will now be two shelters (admittedly, one may be a barn) for the town
(yours for owner-surrendered pets and the alternative provider for strays). And
you can begin to use increased donor support for spay/neuter and other programs
which will cut down the number of strays (things you can't do now because your
money is being eaten up by stray control).
I have also seen where the
public clamors for change and the towns capitulate and begin to pay their fair
share, so it is not always true that the towns will not pay more. When the
public created enough clamor, the towns in Tompkins County who used the
alternative provider finally caved in and signed multi-year contracts with the
TC SPCA at significant increases over past contracts. We thought it was
hopeless, that they would not pay more, but the public didn't stand for it. In
fact, this year the county cancelled our stray cat control contract. The public
was so outraged, the county caved in and signed a 3-year contract tied to CPI
two months after saying they had no money to do so. It is not hopeless.
3. If you live in a rural area, the towns are not paying their fair
share, but if you are NOT killing animals, you may want to keep the contracts,
even at a loss. This is where the TC SPCA is. Although the towns do not pay what
it costs the SPCA to service the contracts, we are saving 100% of the healthy
animals, 100% of the treatable animals, and 100% of feral cats. We also had a
budget surplus last year. Under these circumstances, I want all the animals to
come to our shelter because we will SAVE them.
There are myriad
scenarios, but the bottom line is this: IT MATTERS WHO IS DOING THE KILLING. If
the humane society is killing and the alternative provider would kill too, get
out of the contract. Use the money for lifesaving programs. Because it matters
to your conscience, it matters to volunteers, it matters to potential donors, it
matters to the public, and it matters to the animals--if you use your money for
lifesaving programs now that you are not subsidizing animal control, over time
you can begin to save animals who you are now forced to kill.
FeLV/FIV cats in shelters
Question from several members:
I was wondering how your shelter copes
with feline leukemia-positive cats. The group I am a member of is a network of
foster homes. Since we all have our own cats none of us are comfortable with
having FeLeuk+ cats in our homes, and for our local humane society it is next to
impossible to get these cats adopted. I would love to hear your ideas for
getting these special cats adopted. How are they housed at your shelter?
Response from Nathan:
Our shelter does not test for FIV. Cats with FIV
can live long, healthy lives and most will fight off the virus over time. In
addition, because transmission of the virus is difficult (even housemates can
live together without transmission), the costs of testing make it prohibitive.
At about $8-12 per test over 2,000 cats per year, with a 1-2% risk (less if you
exclude asymptomatic cats who are either false positive or have as much as 90%
chance of fighting off the virus), the risk is small, the cost is great, and you
can reduce the incidence of transmission by using that money for spay/neuter
which will reduce the likelihood of transmission (births and bites). If adopters
want to test after adoption and return FIV+ cats, they are free to do that with
a full refund but that has only happened one time in the last two years.
Personally, I would not test for FeLV either for the same reason - the
costs of testing are great and the incidence of the virus is low (again, 1-2%).
If there is a positive saliva test, we need to blood-test to prevent killing
false positive cats; if adopters are concerned, they can do the test at their
own veterinarians and return positive cats, and that money is better spent on
spay/neuter which would reduce transmission (bites and births). But the
Committee of the Board which helps monitor vaccination protocols insists (with
two veterinarians on that Committee and so it is a battle I do not wish to
wage), we do so. So be it. We do. Admittedly, FeLV is somewhat different in
transmission risk than FIV, since FeLV transmission is a more likely than with
FIV. We do saliva screen for FeLV. All saliva-positive cats are then
blood-tested to ensure a true positive. FeLV positive cats are almost always
killed, but not as a matter of policy. We have been able to adopt some, but,
unfortunately, not all.
Your concerns about bringing them into contact
with your own cats are not out of bounds. The larger issue here is where the
shelter is in terms of its feline lifesaving. If the humane society in your
community is still killing either healthy cats, bottle-feeding kittens, kittens
with URI, ringworm kittens, cats with treatable injuries like broken bones,
etc., trying to save FeLV-positive cats is laudable, but shouldn't be your first
priority.
I am a firm believer in working your way strategically to
saving the most lives. First, save all healthy animals. If your shelter is still
killing healthy animals, why invest in medical care? Once the animal gets
better, the animal still faces a risk of being killed or may displace another
healthy cat who will be killed. So start out with healthy cats. Saving all
healthy cats ensures you have the infrastructure and policies to begin saving
sick and injured but treatable cats so that once they get better, they can be
guaranteed a loving, new home. In addition, it is important to set these types
of initial goals (healthy animals first) so that you have some success, so that
you have measurable impact, and so that the community can support the next round
of lifesaving.
In Tompkins County, our first goal was saving 100% of
healthy animals. Once we did that, and shared our success with the community, we
asked for their support in saving sick and injured but treatable animals (a more
costly undertaking because of medical and behavior rehabilitation costs such as
staff, medication, surgery, etc.) We used our success in saving healthy animals
as a springboard to more challenging cases, and the public supported us. First
is medical care for URI and ringworm animals, and then it's on to more and more
complicated cases, such as Hit By Car dogs and cats with multiple medical
problems.
When we finished the year saving 100% of these animals as
well, we knew we could turn to the community for more challenging scenarios
since they knew we would use their donations wisely and for the benefits of the
animals. Last week, we took in 59 dogs from a residence in our county. All the
dogs ranged in age from 5-9 years old, many were blind, had cataracts, had
tumors, rotten teeth, you name it. If we were still killing healthy animals, it
would not have made much sense to try and save a 9-year old dog with a mammary
tumor and cataracts. Investing in that dog could have saved a dozen puppies
instead. But because the puppies were being saved anyway, we asked the community
to send us money for medical care and to help us place these dogs. That was
Friday. By Monday, 57 dogs were placed and all of them have appointments for
dental and other surgeries. Why? It's because the community believes in our
mission, and because they know what can be accomplished when they are called to
action.
The whole point is to work your way up the pyramid. Once you
save healthy animals, then save sick cats with relatively easy issues like
ringworm, URI, or bottle feeders. As you save these, you can move on to broken
bones, etc. Once you are saving healthy and treatable cats, the next frontier is
obviously more challenged cases--like FeLV, cancers, etc.
What the no-kill movement is about
Question from Michelle:
No-kill is such a dirty phrase to most shelters.
For example, we cannot even use the phrase when talking with our local shelter
or county government lest they kick us to the curb. If a shelter director
refuses to embrace the concept, how can we make the case that this is what our
community really wants?
Response Nathan:
Let me lay out what I believe to be true, and then let
me back peddle and give you a practical answer. In other words, let me tell it
like it is (which is usually the first draft of my letters) and then let me give
you a more practical answer (my second draft).
Here is draft one:
This year, four and one half million dogs and cats will be put to death.
For far too long, we have accepted it as a "necessary evil." In reality, for the
3,000,000 or more who are hardly suffering, it is just evil.
The No Kill
movement is fundamentally a story about heroes and villains. It is about those
who have dedicated their lives to the truth, and those who have made careers out
of obfuscation. And it is about a social movement as noble and just as those
that have come before.
The movement that began in San Francisco, and
spread East toward the State of Utah, to a rural community in Upstate New York,
and points in between gives us one fundamental lesson. That No Kill begins and
ends as an act of will.
To save the lives in a community - the healthy,
the sick and injured, those who are traumatized, or those wild by nature - an
SPCA or humane society needs a leader with a desire to do what is right, and a
philosophy that what must be done, will be done. All traits critically missing
from the "old guard" of the animal shelter industry.
There are those,
particularly directors running shelters who continue to kill the bulk of their
occupants, who will nonetheless say "what happened in Ithaca can't happen here"
or that "No Kill is smoke and mirrors."
If No Kill isn't happening in
Atlanta, or Denver, or Los Angeles or New York, or anywhere and everywhere that
killing is the primary method for achieving results, it is not because of some
singular trait that makes that community different from Ithaca. To imply such is
a misrepresentation of the highest order. It is a lie. If a community is still
killing the majority of shelter animals, it is because the SPCA or humane
society has fundamentally failed in its mission. And this failure is nothing
more than a failure of leadership. The buck stops with the shelter's director.
Whatever title he or she takes, with it comes the reality that at the end of the
day, every death of a healthy, sick or injured treatable animal, or feral cat is
a profound failure - the responsibility for which is his or hers alone.
That is what No Kill requires. There is no doubt about it.
And
therefore it is not surprising that the two major actors in the killing will get
defensive. Why? The answer is simple.
For decades, most of these
directors turned to Sodium Pentobarbital, a barbiturate that "painlessly" ended
life to manage their shelter populations under the theory that the best we could
do for the bulk of these animals was to provide them a humane death. They even
created a euphemism: "putting them to sleep" to make the task of killing easier.
More importantly, these shelter administrators killed hundreds of
thousands of animals without much public condemnation by deflecting the blame
for the killing back unto the public itself: According to the Fund For Animals,
people "who do not spay and neuter are the greatest single cause of the
companion animal tragedy… Each day an estimated 70,000 puppies and kittens are
born (25.5 million a year). Six to ten million, we classify as ‘surplus' and
kill… The problem is simple: we have too many dogs and cats. Too many for the
too few homes available."
The buck was passed. If you blame the public
for the killing, the shelter not only shields itself from public scrutiny and
accountability, but the question of how to stop the shelter from killing is
never even asked. It was a brilliant strategy. But to imply that this was all
orchestrated would be too cynical. The logic appeared inescapable. There are
only so many cages, limited numbers of kennels, few adoptions, and day after
day, the wave of animals keep coming through the door: kittens that were
unplanned, a dog that has become a burden, the stray cat nobody wants.
A
shelter director explained it like this: "You build a shelter with 200 cages.
Today, you get 50 homeless animals and you place 10. The other 40 go into cages.
Tomorrow, you get 50, but only 15 total go home. When the fictional shelter is
full [people] suggest building more cages, which we do, but then those cages are
quickly filled… The inflow of unwanted animals is an ongoing phenomenon." What
do you do with the rest?
In just one American city, Los Angeles, of
25,000 cats who come in through the doors every year, 21,000 will be put to
death. Over 80% will die, most never even offered for adoption. Multiply that by
every city, every county in the United States and the picture is bleak. But the
irony is that much of this suffering is conducted under the watchful eye of
self-described "animal lovers" who feel they are doing the right thing. In fact,
it is often these "animal lovers" who administer the "cocktail" to disorient the
animal, who bring the dog or cat into the "euthanasia" room, hold him down while
he struggles to make sense of what is happening, and then administer the fatal
dose -- day in and day out, until the numbers simply become staggering.
While most shelter workers simply believed there was no other way, for
the bureaucrats who had spent the prior two decades overseeing a national
infrastructure that killed 5 million dogs and cats per year, No Kill hits a
darker, more raw nerve. If it succeeds, the changes would mean a fundamental
alteration in their public standing. Never before had the killing in animal
shelters really been questioned, most accepting the killing as a necessary evil.
In fact, shelters could kill most of the animals in their care, and their
directors and presidents were still being paid handsomely, upwards of $100,000
per year and more, often giving national conference workshops, hailed as pillars
by colleagues.
Despite the killing, many of these organizations had also
amassed impressive endowments: 20, 30, 50, 70 million dollars, some with state
of the art veterinary hospitals, complete with cardiologists, neurologists, and
more, for those wealthy enough to pay, while homeless, unowned animals in their
own shelters were killed, outside of public scrutiny, behind closed doors for
something as simple as a cough, a cold, or worse, being the wrong color - one
too many black cats in a shelter that already had a handful of them.
But
No Kill proponents are now challenging that. Successful No Kill communities now
threaten to bring public scrutiny to their own operations: "If they can do it in
Ithaca, or Utah, or San Francisco or somewhere else, why can't we do it here?"
The best summary of the situation I have ever read is by Merritt
Clifton, who wrote the following in ANIMAL PEOPLE:
The bottom line is
that too many animal control departments and humane societies have a vested
interest in doing what they have always done. Going a different and more
successful route would mean accepting some of the blame for causing barrels to
fill, day after day, with furry bodies. Complain though many animal control and
humane society people might about the stress of killing, they still find killing
easier than doing what is necessary to stop it.
County government has a
different agenda: animal control. Animal Control (which the TC SPCA does, mind
you) is fundamentally about protecting PEOPLE from ANIMALS. No Kill is the
opposite. It is about protecting ANIMALS from PEOPLE. County government wants to
do animal control at the cheapest possible price. If they can get away with
paying $5 per cat, they will do so. What happens to the cat after the stray
period is of little consequence. This does not mean everyone in county
government lacks compassion. I am not casting aspersions on people. I am
summarizing the fundamental logic of county government.
When you start
talking about "No Kill," county government starts clutching to its coffers very
tightly because of the notion that if you stop killing, you need to spend more
money: $5 per cat becomes $500 after you include medical care, vaccinations,
food, shelter, and spay/neuter. So it is not surprising that they would "kick
you to the curb." But the notion that No Kill means bankrupting the general fund
or your own endowment is a myth, and the public is ultimately behind you.
So after you are done kicking the shelter director to the curb, kick
your elected officials there too. The public will support you! Two months ago,
the Tompkins County legislative voted to eliminate stray cat control after 20
years--with about 45 seconds of debate (and that is being generous). In one
swoop, our contract was eliminated. They didn't have the money in light of the
current economic downturn, we were told. The public did not stand for it! And we
just received a unanimous resolution to reinstate it for 3-years with annual
increases tied to CPI.
Revolutionaries do not fear the truth, because
the truth is revolutionary. And the No Kill movement is fundamentally a
revolution in animal sheltering.
OK. Now that the truth is out, here's
Draft Two:
Some shelters have used the term "Low Kill" because they feel
that "No Kill" is too adversarial. But I believe this is a mistake. The term No
Kill inspires the public, it excites the community, it means you are saving
those animals who can and should be saved. It is about ensuring the community's
faith in the shelter. It also brings in the dollars, and those dollars are
crucial to save lives. Yes, No Kill costs money. But it also creates money in
the form of more support. And if you realign your priorities, you can actually
spend less and save more. Keep in mind that the TC SPCA reduced its staff from
16 to 12, reduced its expenditures to the tune of about $150,000 per year, and
went from a $250,000 annual operating deficit to a $23,000 surplus--at the same
time we reduced the death rate by about 75%.
When you announce your No
Kill goals, and begin achieving them, the community will rally. To announce a
"Low Kill" goal carries the implication that you are still killing animals that
do not need to be killed, though at a reduced rate. It is like President Kennedy
announcing that we were not going to land a man on the moon; we were going to
send him almost to the moon. That is not the stuff of community inspiration.
But you can alter your message with the shelter director and speak to
him/her in terms that are more amenable to his/her worldview: reducing the
shelter intake, reducing the death rate of healthy animals first, then
sick/injured animals, etc. Save the No Kill message for the public.
And
when speaking to county government, talk about "public-private" partnerships and
shifting costs from local government to private organizations. When I meet with
government officials, I inform them that the SPCA's expenses on spay/neuter (all
paid for by private donations) reduces their animal control expenses because we
are taking in less animals over time. That is what they want to hear. I tell
them that our partnership (public funding of animal control and private funding
of SPCA programs like spay/neuter, adoption, medical care) allows us to save
more lives. So that their public money goes further, saving more lives. That
way, they can take credit for the lifesaving without worrying that I am going to
raid the treasury -- different audience, different message.
If, however,
at the end of the day the shelter director still stands in your way, take it to
the people. Look what is happening in cities like New York and Atlanta. A
grassroots effort is sweeping away the policies of the past.
In 1989,
Roger Caras who then headed the ASPCA in New York called No Kill a fabrication:
"It is essential that some agency take on the responsibility of killing an
animal when that is the ethical, compassionate thing to do. It is a hoax when
the public is led to believe otherwise."
And now, although New York City
is used to setting trends, rather than being swallowed up by them, already No
Kill advocates - inspired by the successes in San Francisco, Ithaca, and
elsewhere - are challenging the status quo and sweeping away the directors and
policies of the past. A hoax? No. After more than a century of silence, the
voice of compassion re-making itself heard.
Nathan's three things to remember for success
Question from Susan:
If you had had a crystal ball two years ago, or
could go back and start all over again, what four things might you do
differently...In such a huge undertaking, what mistakes did you make, or
situations did you encounter, that you would want others to avoid when following
in your footsteps?
Response from Nathan:
Since I never make mistakes, this question is
meaningless. Ha, ha. OK, this is actually a great question, but I am going to
stick with three.
The first is "BE DIPLOMATIC WITHOUT
COMPROMISING YOUR ETHICS."
The skill I most lack, the one thing
totally out of character for me, is diplomacy. I am from the Dr. Laura school of
animal sheltering. The best thing about Dr. Laura (I hope people know the
reference) is that she is NOT morally ambiguous. You might not agree with her,
but she doesn't hide behind ambiguities, nor does she pull any punches. You
call, you ask, you get it right between the eyes. I LOVE Dr. Laura.
When
it comes to animal sheltering, I believe there is a right way and a wrong way. I
also believe that there is only one golden rule--don't kill the animal if the
animal does not have anything wrong with him/her that requires her to die (the
animal is not a vicious dog, or sick/injured but not reasonably treatable
animal), policies and procedures be damned.
I believe there is a model
for sheltering that can be implemented in every community to achieve No Kill
results and I believe that model can be implemented in a wealthy urban
environment like San Francisco, a rural community like Ithaca, or points and
parts in between. The end result will be the same: the animals will live instead
of die.
Having said that, I wish I had a twin who could put a more
diplomatic face on some of my ideas and beliefs. I have been told that if I were
the mayor of a town, it would have a population of one.
I believe you
can get more if you know how to be diplomatic. But it is a deep character defect
that I cannot seem to overcome. If you can get the results you want without
compromising your beliefs, being diplomatic will ensure that things will go
smoother (with your staff, your board of directors, local veterinarians, etc.)
if you can do it with diplomacy and tact.
The second is "PICK
AND CHOOSE YOUR BATTLES."
The best books ever written on the
Civil War are from a father-son team, Michael and Jeff Shaara (Gods &
Generals, Killer Angels, and The Last Full Measure). If there is one lesson in
those books and the civil war, it is to pick and choose your battles. The most
obvious example is Gettysburg. Had General Lee not felt compelled to attack
simply because the enemy was there, right in front of him, a different outcome
might have resulted (although thankfully he did feel compelled and the forces of
good won the day--and the war!)
At any rate, there are so many issues
that can confront you as you try and make change in a community: 1. How the
district attorney handles animal cruelty cases (not very well), 2. How much
money the county pays for animal control (not very much), 3. How you can offer
low-cost and free spay/neuter (and not alienate the local veterinarians who can
make life difficult). The list goes on. Each issue should be developed and
thought through strategically, and not fought all at once. Take your time. Play
it out. Attack when you can; retreat when you should; and keep your head about
you.
The third is "BE DECISIVE WITH STAFF."
I
knew my shelter manager would not work out from day one when I arrived and the
sick cats and kittens in the infirmary had no water. I knew she wouldn't work
out day two when I saw rabbits in cages that had the same bedding as the day
before (in other words, weren't cleaned daily). I knew she wouldn't work out day
three when I got to know everyone on staff that she hired. I should have fired
her right then and there. But I kept thinking, she'll change, she needs
mentoring, she is from the old school. I let it go too long and it compromised
morale of the staff (those I hired after firing 7 of the 16 within a few months
of my hiring) and the volunteers.
I also knew that the changes--other
than THOU SHALT NOT KILL--I wanted implemented (not enforcing technical
violations of the leash law, not handing out citations for dogs impounded at the
shelter for first offenses, etc.) would have thrown staff into a tizzy because
it so thoroughly violated their worldview that I made a lot of these changes
over time after softening the ground for a while. I should have done them day
one. The staff that complained was fired over time anyway.
I knew what I
wanted to do and the transition took longer than I wanted. I could have been
building earlier (including rebuilding our relationship with the community) had
I just been more decisive with staff.
I thought some of the changes I
wanted to make would have been easier to swallow for the shelter manager
(fired), animal control officers (fired), front desk staff (fired) and cleaning
crew (fired) if I soft peddled them and implemented them over time. It didn't
happen. I could have saved others and myself a lot of grief had I been more
decisive from the get go.
How to change views on euthanizing ferals
Question from Denise:
How did you go about ending the euthanization of
feral cats? In Nevada, our state law requires local animal services to "deal"
with at-large animals. The general feeling is that property owners have a right
to not have feral cats on their property.
The rescue group I work for
and our local SPCA (great folks) collaborate to TNR as many cats as possible. We
have neutered more than 1,400 in the last two years and expect to do more than
1,000 this year. Animal Services is aware of the program and are spreading the
word but we would like to do more. Any suggestions on helping our animal
services to reduce the number of feral cats euthanized?
Response from Nathan:
As the animal control authority for Tompkins
County, we also accept all stray cats and ferals are no exception. Tompkins
County is what I would describe as a semi-urban/rural community. There are a
number of large farms that do not mind the cats and are willing to feed them so
long as the cats are vaccinated against rabies and altered. So while we do get
feral cats in and sometimes the folks do not want them back, we manage to find
an alternative release location. All we ask the farmer to do in return is to
leave food out for the cats in a barn or other location.
Having said
that, let me take it one step further. If you do not live in a rural community
or you do not have a known caretaker, should the feral cat be released back to
his/her habitat anyway? The answer is YES.
When I first moved to upstate
New York, I was asked by a local SPCA about releasing ferals. They were
interested in starting a TNR program but were hesitant because they bought into
the old garbage that "feral cats live short, miserable lives" and that TNR
amounted to nothing more than "subsidized abandonment."
I asked her to
do what I ask all SPCAs to do. For every feral cat who comes into your shelter,
keep a list and document whether the cat is healthy and robust, or thin and
sickly--regardless of whether there is a known caretaker. What I told her was
that after 6 months or so of doing that, she would probably find that the vast
majority would fall into the former category. Well guess what? In fact, the vast
majority was healthy and robust--and she became a true believer.
We try
to categorize everything to make sense of our world. But too often we fall into
the trap of mistaking the category for the reality. In biology, for example, we
divide living beings into two kingdoms--plant or animal. Plants do
photosynthesis. Animals can walk/fly/move. But what happens when you have a
living being that can walk but also can photosynthesize? Is it plant or animal?
Reality is much more complex than our categories.
Take the feral cat. Is
a feral cat a domestic animal that is not socialized? Or is the feral cat a wild
animal? We don't have "caretakers" for wildlife and would never think about
"euthanizing" a wild animal for his or her own good, even if they do not lead
extraordinarily long lives or are subject to dangers in the outside world (take
mice, foxes, deer, etc. for example). But because we see feral cats as domestic
animals that happen not to be socialized, somehow the humane movement thinks it
is OK to kill them because life outdoors is filled with risks. Is this fair? In
reality, feral cats are extremely hardy survivors even without caretakers. The
fact that the vast majority who enter shelters are healthy and robust proves
this. Try it in your own shelter.
At one point, I too believed that only
feral cats with caretakers should be released under a TNR program, but I believe
that view is also outdated, even in harsh winter climates like upstate New York.
Although we do NOT release ferals without some caretaker, if you live in a state
where this is not prohibited, I think you should.
If feral cats are
offspring of former pets who were abandoned, and if they are reproducing and
thriving, if they come into the shelter healthy and robust even without a known
caretaker, then they seem to have found a niche. So why not release them without
a caretaker since TNR makes them healthier and better able to survive since they
are not longer mating and nursing?
The notion that you should kill feral
cats NOW because some of them will suffer LATER is--whether we are talking about
feral cats, field mice, deer, foxes, or other animals--yet another cruel
deception of a bygone era.
From Sandy in IL: Regarding promoting TNR to officials
One tactic we use
when promoting feral cat TNR to village officials in our county is to say that
TNR will save them money, that no taxpayer dollars will be used to subsidize
spay/neuter. I think we're shooting ourselves in the foot by saying that we are
using only our organization's money (and funds donated by caretakers) to pay for
spay/neuter. We will run out of funds as we get more and more of these villages
on board for TNR. However, before we talked about the potential for villages to
save money, some of these officials were dead set against TNR. Once they saw
that cash didn't have to come out of their pocket, they became more willing to
listen, and possibly "ignore" ordinances that prohibited the return of the
neutered cats.
What a trade off - using the potential for villages to
save money as a means of getting them on board while risking the long-term
financial viability of our organization!
From Vanessa in OH: Regarding returning ferals with no caretaker
I have
to say I have never entertained this line of thought: release a feral cat rather
than return one. I have been doing TNR (return) for 7 years, with 3 years being
high quality work and four years where I muddled thru with no help.
Where I live (Cleveland, Ohio) TNR is viewed by rescue groups as too
cruel to begin with (this is the "release to caregiver" idea). They resist this
greatly and refuse even to work with caregivers who need help with adoption of
socialized kittens. Many rescue people practice TNR without letting other group
members know they do this, because they would be asked to leave the group.
The thought of selling Trap/Neuter/Release to these groups is beyond
comprehension. Of course, we are an urban area and I believe feral cats do
better without a caregiver in a rural area.
You have given me something
to think about.
From Cyndi in KC: Regarding returning ferals with no caretaker
I would
like to strongly disagree with advocating on releasing ferals to a place with no
caretaker. In my opinion, this is inhumane, they are NOT wild animals but
domesticated animals. They may not be socialized to humans, but that doesn't
make them wild. In my opinion, releasing ferals where there is no caretaker
instead of relocating or killing them is no better than the shelters not
counting them in their "killed" statistics. If there is no caretaker and no
chance of relocation, dumping them back should not be an option. Another post
about not saving the sick until you can save the healthy was posted earlier this
week. It would make sense to me that you TNR the colonies that have caretakers
and with proper spay/neuter programs, etc. in place eventually colonies without
caretakers will be non-existent, but until then feral cats should not be
released without caretakers as they NEED someone to care for them.
Response from Nathan:
The above post about returning ferals with no
caretaker is totally off the mark. Let me be clear where I may have been vague.
What I wrote is not a matter of opinion. It is FACT. Killing a feral cat with no
caretaker is not defensible.
On what basis is the claim that "...this is
inhumane, they are NOT wild animals they are domesticated animals. They may not
be socialized to humans, but that doesn't make them wild." Is the writer
offering a biological basis for this argument? A sociological one? A spiritual
one? One based on anecdotal evidence? Field studies? What? In fact, the
statement is totally groundless.
The cat we deem our house pet is
biologically identical to the African Wildcat, who is categorized as a true wild
animal. So, the claim that feral cats are merely unsocialized DOMESTIC animals
has no basis in biology.
These animals live and act as many wild animals
do, in virtually all respects, with perhaps one exception: they seek out close
proximity to humans (in some cases) for a free meal. But that is true of much
"urbanized" wildlife.
They share mortality rates similar to other
wildlife, they share hardships similar to other wildlife, and we would NEVER,
NEVER, NEVER, NEVER as a humane movement recommend killing skunks, deer, field
mice or other wild animals for "their own good" because they share hardships. In
fact, the very foundation of the pro-hunting lobby is that they are helping deer
survive starvation in the winter. Hunters, remember, call themselves
conservationists. Anybody out there buy that B.S. or agree with it?
Why
do we do that for feral cats? For one reason and one reason only: social
conditioning, thanks to national groups who peddled the garbage that TNR "is an
inhumane act," that all cats "belong in a home," that TNR is "subsidized
abandonment," that feral cats live "short, miserable lives."
POPPYCOCK!
The bottom line, which the person missed completely, is that we all
agree that feral cats are the unsocialized offspring of abandoned pet cats. And
if they are reproducing, and if your shelter's experience is like ours, like San
Francisco, like Palo Alto, like virtually every shelter I have talked to, most
of the feral cats are coming in plump and healthy, with or without a known
caretaker. That means they are doing well out there. If your state allows it,
neuter them and return them with a good meal and a hearty "go to it."
Killing them is not only wrong. It is pernicious to boot.
Getting shelters and the public to spay/neuter
Question from Gloria:
We are a small grassroots organization DETERMINED
to change the idea that euthanasia is the only way to stop pet overpopulation.
However, we have run into a snag that has us a little stumped.
The
county itself is adding to the overpopulation problem, since animals adopted out
from Animal Services are not altered and last year they euthanized over 7,000
cats and dogs. Not only does Animal Services adopt out pets unaltered but a
couple of people in management positions breed dogs.
Still, we were able
to open a discussion with county commissioners about the need for change in our
county. The chairman urged the manager of Animal Services to work with nonprofit
groups and come up with an action plan and come back to them during a budget
workshop that will be held in June. We don't want to lose this opportunity with
the commissioners, but the Animal Services manager has cut us out of the picture
altogether and we don't know what to do now. We are afraid he will only make
small changes to satisfy the commissioners and then go back to "business as
usual." Do you have any suggestions?
Response from Nathan:
I am going to give you a long-winded answer so
bear with me here, because I believe some background is in order. I am not a big
believer in legislative solutions to pet overpopulation, with one exception:
when the legislation is aimed at the shelter.
In order to force the
public to become "responsible pet owners," the old guard animal organizations
came up with a plan that was aptly nicknamed "LES." LES was an acronym for
Legislation, Education and Sterilization. The first prong promoted legislation
at requiring people to keep better track of their pets, usually through
licensing and confinement laws. The second prong was aimed at educating children
about "responsible" pet ownership, in hopes that they would grow up to do the
"right" thing. The third involved forcing people to spay and neuter their pets.
It was widely popular among local shelters. Indeed, LES was sweeping the nation.
But, in my view, it was doomed to failure from the start.
Prong
One: Legislation
A flurry of legislation aimed at making people
responsible was promoted by the large national organizations and passed in
localities nationwide. Among the many laws favored, the most common were those
that: 1. required dogs and cats to be confined in homes; 2. required dogs and to
a lesser extent cats to be licensed with local authorities; 3. limited the
number of animals a family could care for; 4. prohibited the feeding of stray
cats; and, 5. provided authority for animal control officers to seize and
destroy pets they deemed a "nuisance." The theory behind all these laws was to
severely curtail not only the public's behavior, but also that of the animals.
Instead, the laws ended up being ignored, or worse - targeting the wrong people.
In a convoluted reading, anyone who fed a stray animal - or left food
out for a hungry cat - was considered that animal's owner for purposes of these
new laws. As the animal's "owner," these individuals were required to do a host
of things often including licensing and confining the animal indoors. Failure to
comply would often result in fines, or worse, the confiscation and killing of
the animal.
In towns and communities throughout the United States,
well-meaning people, many of them elderly, found themselves threatened by animal
control authorities for feeding the stray cats who wandered to their backyards
in search of food. As "owners" under these new ordinances, they were violating
the law for "allowing" the cats outside, a curious twist of facts since these
people were not allowing anything, other than allowing the animals to have
occasional food. Although these people did not own the animals by any stretch of
the imagination and were acting to curb their hunger, they were now accused of
"allowing" the cats outside in violation of local laws, and being punished
because of it.
Dogs fared little better under these new laws. Dogs who
were picked up by the "dog catcher" were held on threat of execution if their
owners did not pay licensing fees, impoundment penalties, and other fines for
the return of their pet. Many localities passed laws prohibiting dogs from being
on any street or public place unless collared and leashed, thus preventing dog
owners from exercising and socializing their dogs in parks and other places.
Since the Legislation prong of LES was premised on the fact that the
public was "bad" and had to be "punished" and "coerced" into doing the right
thing, it ignored the obvious - even if the national organizations were right,
the law would nonetheless miss its intended target, since responsible people
acted responsibly whether there was a law or not, while truly irresponsible
people would merely ignore the laws.
More importantly, making an "owner"
more responsible could hardly result when they ended up targeting non-owners,
such as those who fed stray cats. And limiting the number of animals a family
could own to often small numbers - three or four in some cases - merely limited
the number of animals a family could help and thus prevented adoptions. In the
end, however, since failure to comply often resulted in the pet's impoundment
and killing, the net effect of the legislation was to exacerbate shelter
killing.
Prong Two: Education
While the national
organizations were encouraging localities to pass such laws, they was also
encouraging shelters to educate school children in the hope that they would grow
up with more humane views than their parents. And so, in communities nationwide,
shelter employees, often with dogs and cats in tow, would enter classroom after
classroom across the nation where overworked teachers needing a break met them
with relief, and wide-eyed school children petted animals while grinning from
ear to ear. Meanwhile, generations of shelter directors boasted to their
constituents about the number of school children they were reaching with their
humane message and promising that the light at the end of the tunnel, the
mythical place where animals were loved and had lifetime homes, was as close as
the emancipation of these kids. It was, and remains, a lovely thought.
But this effort was never challenged to see if it could actually get
results. In fact, no shelter director - not a single one - could point to any:
Were more animals being sterilized because of these efforts? Were people keeping
their pets longer? Was the death rate at the shelter declining because of it?
Would these children grow up to be more responsible pet owners? No one had any
answers. Despite tight budgets and cuts in the areas of animal care, shelters
continued to send legions of staff members into classrooms without any proof
that it was having or ever hoped to have an impact whatsoever on the death rate
in shelters. Over twenty years of humane education has yet to produce a single
study showing it has made a damn bit of difference.
Prong Three:
Sterilization
Here is where the old guard organization hit pay dirt
(almost). Had they focused on prong three, had, in fact, promoted it, pushed it,
paid for it out of its tens of millions of dollars sitting in bank accounts, the
end result would have been TODAY a No Kill nation. But they didn't and wouldn't.
They were afraid to alienate private practice veterinarians and their industry
groups.
In order to increase the number of animals sterilized - the one
thing that would have had dramatic results - they predictably encouraged the
passing of even more laws, this time to force pet owners to spay/neuter at their
own expense. Many localities took up the banner, passing such laws that required
pet owners to spay or neuter their dogs and cats on threats of fines, increased
licensing costs, impoundment and killing of the pet, and, in at least one case,
the potential for a jail sentence.
Despite studies showing that simply
providing a low-cost alternative doubled the number of poor people who spayed or
neutered their pets, and that the wealthiest communities voluntarily
spayed/neutered their pets at four times the rate of their poor counterparts,
localities failed to provide meaningful solutions to obstacles that prevented
people from acting the way shelters wanted them to. While laws were passed to
force people to spay or neuter their pets, little was done about the high cost
of the surgeries charged by private veterinarians that kept poor people from
complying. Even in the poorest communities where the federal government was
subsidizing the cost of home heating oil to prevent families from freezing
during the winter, in order to appease veterinarians who continued to oppose
perceived threats to their profits, no effort was made to provide a meaningful
alternative to a $150 dog spay.
Not surprisingly, the effort didn't pay
off.
Study after study had already confirmed that unaltered pets tend to
belong to the people with the lowest incomes. If there was a solution in front
of them, it was not hard to see: make spay/neuter affordable.
The first
organization to do this to a significant degree was Mercy Crusade of Los
Angeles. On February 17, 1971, it opened the first low-cost spay/neuter clinic
in the country for owned pets, with the City of Los Angeles paying for the
veterinary staff. By 1973, two more clinics opened, the first was expanded a
year later, and a fourth clinic opened in 1979. The program was so successful
that Los Angeles shelters were killing half the number of animals than they were
prior to the clinics in just the first decade of the program. Every dollar
invested in the program was saving taxpayers ten dollars in animal control costs
because of the reduced numbers of animals they were handling. And despite outcry
from private veterinarians and their associations, there was no discernible loss
of business.
With four clinics operating, private practice veterinarians
were still performing 87% of all neutering within Los Angeles, because the
clinics were used by poor people who would not otherwise have had their pets
altered. While national "leaders" were trying to appease private veterinarians,
Los Angeles had begun the march to save the animals.
But the effort
wasn't allowed to play itself out. After two decades, the clinics were closed,
and Los Angeles began following a different path: the thoroughly discredited
road to LES. On March 22, 2000, the city council passed the nation's strongest
spay/neuter law. During the legislative process, the shelter director proposed a
misdemeanor for violators, with penalties of up to six months in jail, making
failure to license a dog on par with weapons possession and domestic violence.
But the final ordinance, while less draconian, nonetheless punished the poor
with fines of up to $500 and empowered animal control officers to go
door-to-door with the ability to fine, confiscate, and subsequently kill
animals. Low-cost spay/neuter was not written into the law and no effort was
made to reopen the spay/neuter clinics that had brought Los Angeles to the
lowest third of per capita U.S. killing. Not surprisingly, the law has thus far
predictably failed to achieve the desired results.
In 1998, however,
California passed two significant pieces of state legislation, one sponsored by
Assemblyman Ed Vincent requiring shelters to spay/neuter before adoption, and
the other by Senator Tom Hayden requiring shelters to give rescue groups animals
they plan on killing.
As no fan of legislation (people celebrate when
they are passed and then realize implementation and results are elusive), I
nonetheless believe Hayden/Vincent are excellent pieces of legislation. So, if
you can get someone at the local or state level to take the banner up, requiring
shelters in larger counties to spay/neuter before adoption is worthwhile.
Keep in mind that in rural communities, many shelters will simply
respond by killing the animals instead to forego the revenue costs, so requiring
a spay/neuter deposit may be a reasonable alternative. Vincent makes the split
based on county population of 100,000: if the county's population is less than
100,000, shelters must either alter the animal or take a deposit. If the
county's population is greater than 100,000, they must alter the animal (a
deposit is not allowed).
The alternative, of course, is to try to get
public or private funding for low-income spay/neuter, since this availability
will actually impact shelter intakes and deaths to a significant degree. (A good
resource for public funding information is Peter Marsh (Ed: See past schedule
for transcript of forum with Peter Marsh). I prefer the private route by
fundraising for it and then setting up a system with veterinarians who will do
it at a reduced fee with SPCA vouchers we give out). In other words, never mind
the laws, just fix the animals.
When the state won't let you adopt FIV/FeLV cats
Question from several members:
What do you do when your Dept. of
Agriculture requires shelters to test for FIV/FeLV and does not allow them to
adopt out cats, or even transfer to another shelter/facility, if they test
positive? How can you convince them to re-think this policy?
Response from Nathan:
This question is really a legal and political
process question, more than an animal sheltering one. There are various vehicles
for changing state regulations including petitions for rule making, changes in
law, legal action, etc. and so I would simply refer the person to either a
sympathetic legislator, to an attorney, or a political advocacy group.
There are also different legal rules that may vary by state as to how
agencies can interpret regulations. A lawyer might find the Department's
interpretation of the statute that gave rise to the implementing regulations to
be beyond its mandate. I can't offer more legal or political guidance beyond
common sense stuff like educate them, meet with them, petition them, that sort
of thing.
But there is another issue here. I don't know if the person
involved specifically rescues FeLV and FIV + cats. And if they do, bless them
and take up the fight. I do not want, in any way, to imply that these cats are
not worthy of our compassion and that we shouldn't do everything we can to try
and save them. We should.
But there is a larger community issue here for
the animal shelter involved. Is the community saving 100% of healthy cats? Is
the community saving 100% of sick and injured, but treatable cats (ringworm,
URI, broken bones, eye injuries, that sort of stuff)? If not, the focus should
be there.
Once you cross those bridges, you are in a better position to
take on the tougher and tougher challenges: cancer, FeLV positive cats, etc.
In Tompkins County, I found a home for the first cat who tested
FeLV-positive. (We don't test for FIV and I don't recommend it, but I see in the
question where it is mandated by the writer's state). We found a home for the
second one, and the third and the fourth, and the fifth -- but not all. We do
not save 100% of FeLV positive cats. We do not kill them as a matter of policy,
but they do die here. It is the challenge in front of me. But in a community
that is still killing, say, URI kittens, the focus should be on those.
Having said that, on an individual or rescue group level, or even with a
no-kill shelter who holds no contracts, it is a worthy fight and I would say
take it up. First, put out a position paper with plenty of facts. Send it to the
department and petition for a change in the rules. If that fails, you have a
full-blown political or legal campaign on your hands and can get some allies
with experience in that area.
How can all-volunteer groups with no budget go no-kill?
Question from Cheryl:
I volunteer for an all volunteer-operated humane
association. We operate on donations and fundraising only and have no paid
employees. Presently, we have no other animal control programs in our
city/county. So far, the local entities have refused our pleas to work with us.
We would like to see our shelter become no-kill. Do you have any suggestions for
a volunteer group who has no annual operating budget? Any help would be
appreciated.
Response from Nathan:
No annual operating budget? Why? You can't blame
that one on "local entities who refuse to work with you."
I use
volunteer designers, volunteer fundraisers, volunteer coordinators, volunteer
mechanics for our vans, volunteer carpenters to make repairs at our shelters,
volunteers to build and maintain our website, volunteer socializers, volunteer
adoption counselors, volunteer front desk staff, volunteer foster parents, local
veterinarians volunteer to do our volunteer-run spay/neuter clinics. If I can't
find a volunteer, I do it myself (last year my wife and I bottle-fed 60 neonatal
kittens!)
You can be a professional organization that applies for
grants; sends out fundraising appeals; has an active spay/neuter program such as
vouchers for low-income pet owners; has adoption events at local pet stores and
malls; has a website with available animals and the ability to donate online,
and still be all volunteer.
And then as you build up your funds, you can
hire staff. But you should be professional through and through and that means
having an operating budget, with set income and expense goals, and a strategic
development plan to get it.
And finally, if all you are doing is killing
animals and this is keeping you from building for the future, you aren't doing
anyone any good--especially the animals. You might want to consider not taking
in more than you can handle since they are going to die anyway--and build up
your capacity over time.
At the same time that you take personal
responsibility for professionalizing your own organization by covering your
bases (fundraising, spay/neuter, adoption, etc.), you can begin to take your
built-up public support to do battle with local entities to help you in your
efforts.
Good luck!
Weeding out the bad foster homes
Question from a Member:
The group I volunteer with is very small and
relatively new to the area. We are doing well with adoptions and money but have
a tremendous problem attracting and keeping good fosters. Many of our fosters
find that they grow too attached to their foster critters and feel that they
emotionally can't foster for us again. Another great problem is "crazies". We
recently had one new foster who felt that he could do whatever he wanted within
the group, to the extent that we could not trust him not to transfer the animal
to a breed rescue group. (We ended up removing the foster from him.) We have a
problem with enthusiastic but misguided animal lovers and this is causing
problems in our group. How do we screen out these types of people before we
approve them for foster or volunteering with us? What types of questions should
we ask? I have no problems saying no to an individual, I would rather have fewer
good fosters than a larger number of iffy ones that I have to keep tabs on.
Please help!
Response from Nathan:
I am a firm believer that a foster parent should
be allowed to adopt their foster pet. In short, if I trust them to care for them
while they are sick, injured, unweaned or traumatized, I will trust them to keep
the critter as a lifelong pet. The reality is you will always lose foster
parents as they adopt out their charges and then drop out of the program. The
key is to keep recruiting and there are many avenues for that: high schools and
colleges, military personnel, elderly, non-custodial parents who have their kids
for the summer, regular volunteers, newsletters, offsite adoptions, press
releases, speaking to community groups, etc.
The question here is the
"crazies." My gut feeling is that people who have difficulty relating to people
are often drawn to animals, for obvious reasons: they are not judgmental,
dismissive, or sarcastic, and they don't talk back. That's my two-penny
psychoanalysis. But whatever the reason, you want to screen them out.
We
temperament test dogs to make sure they are not vicious before placing them into
foster, and it is an excellent idea to temperament test people to make sure they
aren't nuts, either. But I find that the best method, to begin with, is an
indirect approach.
Make people jump through a few hoops, keeping in mind
that there is a balance between too much bureaucracy, which will result in fewer
foster parents (even good ones) and too little, in which you open yourself up
not only to wacky folks, but to other problems as well.
Here is our
process:
1. We start out with an application to foster. Time and time
again, we get people coming to the shelter who want to foster--and they are
obviously nuts--and they get annoyed with having to fill out an application.
This will screen out those who are completely over the top.
2. We then
follow up with an orientation, about an hour or so long, where the program is
explained, the expectations are set out, they sign a statement agreeing to abide
by certain rules, they waive liability, and they can ask questions. This too
will give you a good insight into your future foster parents. If people start
giving you trouble here (and a few will), you simply never call them back, and
avoid the confrontation.
3. Following the orientation, we do a home
visit. We want to make sure the home is clean, we want to see where the foster
animals will be kept, we want to meet the resident pets (if they are relaxed,
you can relax!), and we want to make sure all pets in the home are current on
vaccinations and are spayed/neutered--a sign of responsibility.
4. We
then start new foster parents with "easy" animals, say six week old kittens that
just need to get chubby so we can neuter them at eight weeks. If they do well
there, we continue. If not, we end it there. Not formally, we simply do not call
them back for more fostering.
5. Remember, stay flexible. The key is to
find a balance between protecting the integrity of your program, saving the most
lives, and screening out the crazies.
Even with that process, people
will slip through the cracks. It is unavoidable. But you will find that these
are the exceptions and not the rule. You just adjust and move on.
From Jude: Regarding screening out bad fosters
I feel you missed two
points in this discussion. Following your apt description of social misfits who
are drawn to animals, some of these people can do very well with animals in
their charge. If we judge them solely on their ability to competently and
responsibly care for animals and not by how we feel about them in human social
terms, you may have a very good foster home. We don't have to think of everyone
who volunteers as a potential best friend or "equal." However, with some of
these people, the group needs to be strong in its boundaries, for example,
letting these people know they will not be allowed to represent the group at
adoption fairs.
Contrary to this is an admonition for groups who take
all comers. The group I worked with in Florida had a young woman who had no
obligations (work/children/etc.) and was able to donate a lot of time. Because
of this, she was "all over" this group. While not "crazy," she definitely had a
personality disorder and managed to anger everyone involved with the group. The
group's leader was shortsighted, seeing this person as an asset to be utilized,
but she lost literally every single good person associated with the group
(including myself) as a result. The lesson being, just because someone is
willing and able to work full-time for your cause, pay attention to your group
at large. If everyone is getting angry at one person, that person is probably a
problem and should be eliminated.
Response from Nathan:
My response was never about judging people based
on IQ, social skills, or any other criteria. It was about making sure foster
parents followed rules and helped the animals. This is a movement about saving
ANIMALS. If the person can do that, fabulous! If not, they have no business in
your shelter or its programs. I couldn't care less if they are introverted or
extroverted, speckled with tattoos, have pierced body parts, or claim to hail
from another planet.
Ed. Note: we recommend reading Nathan's
manual on the subject: Starting a Foster Community (.pdf).
How to find the right director to lead an organization to no-kill
Question from several members:
Our humane society is looking for a new
director/manager. My personal belief is that the right person is nowhere to be
found in our community -- too much history and strife. Attempts at coalitions
haven't been very successful, because even at a population of 300,000, our town
is "small" when you're in animal welfare. Pretty much everyone in animal welfare
has done something to offend someone else. Nobody has demonstrated the kind of
leadership ability necessary to bring our region around.
Where do we
find someone with the vision and experience of a Nathan Winograd to clean up our
town? And what kind of salary can we expect to pay to attract him/her? What made
you decide to relocate and take the position as Executive Director at Tompkins
County SPCA?
Response from Nathan:
I believe that the best, most successful shelter
directors around the county have no animal sheltering experience. Why? Because
they are not schooled in the defeatist mentality that has thoroughly defined the
soul of our nation's animal shelters for over a century. They have not adopted
the excuses, they have not betrayed their obligations to the animals, they do
not kill with impunity, they are not content to parrot the same old tired
clichés, and promote the same old worthless programs without examining whether
they are actually having an impact.
The primary difference between
for-profit and non-profit organizations is not the mission, is not the quality
of the people who work in them, is not a different principle of doing business.
It is, quite simply, accountability. Non-profits, at least animal shelters in my
experience, don't seem to aspire to any. The CEO of a for-profit business that
failed to meet his bottom line would not survive, nor would the business.
In the non-profit world, however, very few CEOs seem to feel they need
to be accountable to the public for their mission. They could merely decry the
"sad state of affairs" and continue to ask for money without ever being required
to get results.
Hard work is laudable, but efforts do not mean anything
to the feral cat in the alley, the dog with separation anxiety, or the sick cat
in your shelter. What they need are results! Are they going to live? Are they
going to get to keep their home?
You need a shelter director who is
going to make the shelter accountable--the bottom line in our "business" is how
many animals the shelter saves. We have one goal: reducing the number of animals
that are being killed in our community.
And to do that, you need to do
two things - adopt more animals and lower the number of animals surrendered to
the shelter. In short, you need to know what programs work? What programs don't
work? And why?
You need accountability.
And that might be hard
to find with the "experienced" crowd. Look around the country, who do you see
saving the most lives?
Is it the gentleman from one of those "premier"
national organizations who is making a fortune running a shelter in California?
No.
Is it the gentleman from a city in the South who has been at it for
decades? No.
Is it one of the leaders of the large, well-established,
well-funded organizations from New England? No.
No. The promise of No
Kill is built upon a former pharmacist who took over an SPCA in Northern
California with no sheltering experience (no longer there); a former minister
who helped found a sanctuary in the Utah canyons; another minister who settled
in the Arizona desert; a former police officer who hung up his badge for a dog;
a lawyer who wanted to help animals; a former business executive.
No
animal sheltering experience, just an abiding sense of what is right, and an
understanding that you are being paid to get results, not pass the blame to
others.
Hire someone who comes from a field where it is not acceptable
to meet your goals by killing those you have been hired to protect.
Setting the salary depends on too many factors to give a short answer.
It depends on region, economic climate, expectations, negotiations between the
parties. But keep in mind that if you set goals that person must meet, including
fundraising targets, they should be able to meet them, so financially it makes
sense to pay more.
Why did I take the job in Ithaca? One reason is that
no one else would hire me--because I did not have executive director experience!
I was dismissed as an activist, as a troublemaker, told I was too young, and had
never raised a dime. In fact, one of the "experts" told me I wasn't "executive
director" material and should stick to advocacy.
How can shelters go no-kill overnight when taking in so many animals?
Question from several members:
When a shelter goes "no kill", what
happens to the animals that cannot be accommodated by the shelter because the
shelter is full? What is a shelter to do when twice as many animals come in as
go out? Until recently I worked at a shelter that was trying to be "no-kill".
What happened in actuality is that the animals were placed in extremely crowded,
stressful conditions, where they became very ill in about a week. THEN, they
were killed, because illness is an acceptable reason. I can understand working
toward the day when the number of animals available match the number of people
wanting a pet, but until then I really don't understand a no-kill plan. Soon,
literally hundreds of kittens will pour into the shelter in my city every day.
Maybe twenty a day will be adopted. What is your immediate answer?
Response from Nathan:
For far too long, animal shelters have swallowed
and accepted the thoroughly discredited notions perpetuated by the old guard
national animal organizations that claimed to speak on behalf of animal
shelters.
Chief among these precepts was that SPCAs were required to
kill the bulk of the animals because there were simply "too many animals and not
enough homes." This view, a gospel upon which the bedrock of animal sheltering
depended, was a truth so ingrained, it was simply beyond question. A corollary
of that governing principle was that the public, in failing to have their
animals neutered and, subsequently, failing to make a lifetime commitment to
them by surrendering them to shelters, was to blame for this sorry state of
affairs. As a result, shelters - through no fault of their own - were merely
performing the public's dirty work.
At the same time, the public saw
most shelters, and they were in fact, the place where animals were killed. If
the pet loving public was slow to support shelters financially, and was even
slower to visit to adopt animals, it should have come as no surprise. Animal
lovers hated to go shelters to adopt animals because the pet they didn't choose
was likely to get killed. Instead, they went other places to get animals - to
friends, to neighbors, to newspaper ads, to pet stores, to rescue groups, even
to breeders (if there are truly not enough homes, how is it that pet stores,
puppy mills and breeders continue to make money?)
While people's
reluctance to visit the shelter seems obvious to any pet lover, to many within
the shelter industry it is not, and, in fact, still isn't today. As the vast
majority of shelters do now, they simply tally up the number of people who came
to the shelter to adopt animals and tally the number of people who came to
surrender animals and came to the conclusion that since more animals were being
surrendered every day than people who came to adopt, the number of animals
exceeded the community's ability to care for them. If there were more homes out
there, they were nowhere to be found.
The problem, of course, was that
the SPCA wasn't looking for them. In fact, the SPCA was simply expecting them to
come to the shelter. So as the cages became full and the adopters failed to
come, the remainder were simply executed.
And so the "not enough good
homes" myth was perpetuated, when there were/are plenty of good homes in the
community. The homes are so good, in fact, that potential adopters refused to go
into a shelter that did little more than exterminate the occupants because they
didn't want to look into the eyes of the animals they left behind to be killed.
But with national agencies vindicating their point of view, thousands of
shelters nationwide continue to kill dogs and cats under the belief that there
are no alternatives - except at some mythical time in the future.
That
is, in short, a whole lot of BUNK.
But that doesn't mean that cages do
not get full. They do. What to do about it is what separates an executive
director who is earning his/her money from one who should be looking for other
work. Most shelter directors appear content to shrug their shoulders, blame the
public, fall back upon the myths, and continue the killing, as if they have no
power to effect change.
But even with empty cages, some animals come in
too young or too sick to adopt immediately and so they are also simply killed, a
failure of passivity that contradicts the No Kill movement's whole philosophy
that the shelter could be proactive in saving lives. To save these animals, you
need to turn to your volunteers for help.
A foster program--until the
animals are old enough, well enough or there is enough space in the shelter to
bring them back for adoption--allows you to increase the capacity of the shelter
without adding to staff, facility, or budget.
And the results will be
dramatic. Not only will the program be successful at increasing the capacity of
the shelter during peak periods, but the foster program has other big benefits.
Instead of adopting the animal only to relinquish it back to the shelter a year
or so later, fostering animals temporarily makes it easy for transitory people
who wanted to share their lives with animals - such as students, military
personnel, senior citizens, and others - to do so, even when they aren't ready
to make a 15-year commitment to a pet.
In addition, foster parents and
their friends, neighbors and colleagues will begin falling in love with and
adopting these animals - which can now be seen without having to go into the
shelter. And so, many of the animals who go into foster care "temporarily" never
come back. Instead, they are adopted into homes. The pets placed in foster care
seem to get adopted very quickly, and many of them are adopted to people who
want a pet, but who don't - or more, appropriately, won't - come to an SPCA
because they don't want to look at the faces of the many animals destined to
die.
If these animals are being adopted out of the foster homes because
people didn't want to come to the shelter, how about taking the animals out to
people? In Tompkins County, we call them the "traveling pets." We simply fill a
van full of cats and dogs and then set up temporary adoption booths for an
afternoon around the community--at the mall, at the Farmers Market, and
elsewhere. At one of our pet supply and hardware stores, Ithaca Agway, we have
two cats permanently on display looking for homes.
By taking animals to
where people work, live and play, you will make it easy for them to adopt a
shelter animal, rather than buy one from a breeder, a pet store, or elsewhere.
Immediately, you will find a large percentage of all animals adopted from the
shelter are being adopted offsite.
In addition, you'll also see that
most shelters are only open during "regular business hours," Monday through
Friday, 9 am to 5 p.m. for adoption - exactly when the working public is not
available and their children are mostly in school anyway. How could you blame
them for getting animals from pet stores who do most of their business on
weekends? Sure, there are economic issues involved in weekend hours, but how is
it that even cash strapped public libraries could manage to have hours
accessible to school kids and the working public?
The answer is easy -
follow the libraries' lead. In other words, not necessarily more hours, just
different ones. By opening later in the day, and staying open later on weekdays
and opening on weekends, a shelter could make it easier for the public to adopt
animals from the SPCA - and for those who lost their pets to come to the shelter
and reclaim them, without the risk of losing jobs or having to miss work.
At the same time that the shelter is being proactive in adopting out
animals, it should be proactive in reducing supply--and again, that means
affordable spay/neuter! And neutering animals before adoption. It simply makes
no sense to adopt out breed-able animals, and then take in--and kill--the
offspring of the pets you yourself adopt out.
Unfortunately, a large
number of organizations continue to maintain their passive policies, content to
pass the blame for the killing to others. Five employees at an animal shelter in
Virginia, for example, had long requested that the shelter start a foster
program to save younger and sick animals rather than immediately killing them.
But the organization's long-time executive director refused, saying she did not
want a foster care program at the shelter, decades after the program's success
elsewhere demonstrated conclusively that it was a cost-free way of saving lives.
Instead, tired of killing savable kittens and other sick animals, staff - in
concert with caring volunteers - began taking them home and then returning them
when they were old enough or healthy enough to be adopted. Their efforts were
discovered by the director, however, and they were fired FOR SAVING LIVES.
In 1998, with many shelters still closed on weekends, efforts to force
them to stay open until 7 pm one day a week so that working people had an
opportunity to adopt or reclaim pets by statute in California were met not only
with open hostility by these very shelters, but were bitterly opposed by their
allies statewide.
Despite successes around the county, many shelter
bureaucrats will not believe that anything could actually make a significant
difference in reducing the killing.
It is a lesson in shelter defeatism
that you should NOT embrace!
When I first took this job in animal
control, I did not know what to expect. I had my ideas, but the animals kept
coming, day after day, 10 a day, 20 a day, 30 a day, more, I had never seen that
many kittens. But I took killing off the table. We started with a few cats in
foster care, then twenty, then fifty, then one hundred, then two hundred, and it
kept going. What the hell was I ever going to do with them? To be honest, I did
not have a clue. But killing was not an option. Eventually, we found a
rhythm--foster, rescue groups, offsites, more publicity, adoption incentives,
pleas for help, you name it. And almost two years later, we still have not
killed for space.
So "what happens to the animals that cannot be
accommodated by the shelter because the shelter is full?" They go to rescue
groups, foster parents, offsite adoptions, they are in some cases (if the person
agrees) put on a waiting list, they are put on your website for adoption.
Anything and everything creative but KILLING.
So "what is a shelter to
do when twice as many animals come in as go out?" Be proactive in adoptions so
that more animals are adopted over the short-term, and provide affordable
spay/neuter, TNR and neuter all animals before adoption to reduce intake over
the long term.
So what of the scenario when "hundreds of kittens come in
but only 20 get adopted"? Fire the person in charge of adoptions because they
are doing a miserable job.
So, what is my "immediate answer"? I quote my
mentor: "What is unconscionable, abominable and outrageous is that animals,
healthy and well-behaved, are being killed because someone says there are too
many. That is something we do not accept. That is something we find
intolerable."
Increasing adoptions through adoption policies
Question from a Member:
Could you share some of your adoption policies?
(Indoor vs. outdoor cats and dogs; declawing homes vs. non-declawing; placing
kittens and puppies with small children?) Does increasing adoptions necessarily
mean accepting lower quality homes? What is your rate of return?
Response from Nathan:
Increasing adoptions means offsite adoption
events, public access hours, greater visibility in the community, a foster
program, working with breed rescue groups, competing with the pet stores and
puppy mills, adoption incentives, marketing, and a good public image. It has
NOTHING whatsoever to do with lowering the quality of homes.
I would,
however, caution people to challenge some of their accepted notions of what is
and what is not a "good" home. Or what is and what is not acceptable in terms of
alternatives.
Let's take the examples posed in the question.
The
first we can dismiss in relatively short order: Adopting puppies and kittens to
homes with small children. WHY IS THAT BAD? Puppies, in particular, absolutely
NEED to be around children to get properly socialized. The pulling of tails, the
dressing up in clothes, the crawling all over, that is good stuff that will
ensure the puppy grows up without fear, without undersocialization, with a
disposition I like to call "wet spaghetti": you pick them up, you lay on them,
you put a Halloween costume on them, and they go limp like wet spaghetti. It's
all fun and games. That puppy will grow up to be a GREAT dog!
What about
declawing? If you were to ask 100 people, would they rather have no fingers or
be dead, ALL OF THEM would answer no fingers. If the cat is facing declawing or
death, let them declaw.
If you have a No Declaw policy, you damn better
be a no-kill agency, because if that cat could talk, he would beg you to drop
the No Declaw policy before giving him the needle. (We educate people about
alternatives and why they shouldn't declaw, but don't have a set in stone
policy).
Let me give you another example. When I was doing rescue work
in California, we had an FIV positive cat. An adopter was willing to take him
but her veterinarian informed her that transmission would occur to her house
cats if the FIV cat bit them. So she asked me to remove the incisors so that if
he did bite, he couldn't puncture. Mutilation? Maybe. But that cat has now
celebrated his fifth year in that home, instead of having been incinerated.
I also adopted two FeLV positive cats to a home that agreed to take them
so long as they were declawed--I not only agreed, I paid for the declaw.
Mutilation? Maybe. But those kittens just celebrated their second birthday in
that home, instead of being ground up for pet food or whatever they do with the
furry bodies after shelters kill them.
That is not lowering the quality
of the home. That is not lowering your adoption standards. That is SAVING an
animal who does not need to die.
The final issue is allowing cats
outdoors. This, in my view, has nothing to do with No Kill. Cats should be
allowed outdoors--maybe not in downtown Manhattan, but absolutely in rural
Tompkins County. It makes them healthier and happier. I can't tell you how
tiresome the flyers are that indoor cats don't face hazards faced by outdoor
cats. How about a flyer on the epidemic of obesity, boredom, behavior problems
and mental illness as a result of keeping cats from exercising basic instincts
and keeping them confined in apartments all day?
I do not advocate for a
blanket policy either way. People should use common sense. I live on 17 acres in
the middle of nowhere. Despite an open door policy in my house, half the cats
never leave the house, the other half love to play outside. When I lived in the
Bay Area, my cats were indoor only. It depends.
But again, if the
alternative is death and someone is going to let a cat outdoors, but it is
otherwise a great adoption, why kill that cat for space? Life is about risks.
Not allowing adoptions because cats are going to go outdoors is the same
mentality that calls for the round up and killing of ALL feral cats because SOME
might suffer. That argument is as ludicrous as it sounds.
And, in the
end, I like adopters to let the cats outside for one more reason. If you were
wrong and the adoption wasn't so great, that cat can run away and find a better
home!
In Tompkins County, our general rules are as follows:
Applicants must show identification such as a driver license to confirm
their identity.
Applicants must be at least 18 years old. However, we do not
adopt out to undergraduate students or to sororities/fraternities (we do allow
undergraduates to foster animals).
Applicants must provide a permanent
address and telephone number.
Renters must have permission from the property
owner.
Animals at home must be altered unless the animal is elderly or
infirm.
Applicants must not be on our "Do not adopt" list.
Applicants
must not want animals for any other reason than as a pet. We do not adopt out
cats to be "mousers" or dogs to be "guard dogs."
Applicants must not
indicate that the dog will be outside most of the time. Dogs must be allowed
indoors as family members.
Applicants must have adequate income to support
care including unforeseen medical care.
Anyone surrendering an animal within
the last year is not eligible to adopt.
Pit bulls and Rottweilers cannot be
adopted without a home visit by one of the humane officers.
Staff may delay
an adoption for 24 hours or more until they can discuss with the Executive
Director or Shelter Manager, if for any reason they do not feel comfortable with
the adoption.
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