Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: challenges, change, environment, famine, food, food crisis, heartbreaking, horn of africa, how much food is wasted in Canada, waste, wasted food
That proverb, waste not, want not means If we don’t waste what we have, we’ll still have it in the future and will not lack or want it.
I learned this from my grandmother. My grandmother lived through the depression and was a farmer’s wife; she knew how to take care of precious things so they would last into the next generation. She new how to re-use and recycle. She new that helping your neighbour was the right thing to do and that if you had food you were lucky and if you had more than you needed, you shared it with those that didn’t. She is the reason I have boxes of all sizes in my closet, why I have a collection of used ribbon and wrapping paper, why I have recycling embedded in my soul and leftovers in the fridge. She is the reason I do not like throwing anything out and feel so out of step with today’s world where everything seems disposable; appliances, pets, people and food.
My grandmother would be appalled at the waste in our world. When she grew up, things like oranges were special because they only appeared in the store once a year, and if her Mum & Dad were doing well enough, she would enjoy one in her Christmas stocking. You ate seasonally…the things you grew or the things in the store that were available during growing season.
Now we have food from all over the world at all times and in huge piles in our stores. If you could see how much of that food is wasted, you would understand my pain.
Hundreds of pounds of meat, cheese, frozen food, produce, that is thrown into dumpsters every day. Produce that isn’t perfect, so it is not saleable…food close or at it’s expiry date…things like bananas or meat someone decided they did not want partway through their shopping and so left it in the cereal aisle to rot. There is more food in our stores than they can actually sell…it is to produce an effect, a display of plenty…to make you buy.
“Studies have shown that 63 percent of the average supermarket’s waste is food. . In California alone, more than six million tons of food products are dumped annually. An estimated $20 billion worth of food is thrown away each year by supermarkets. Stores in the U.S. waste twice as much food annually as those in Europe, and a recent U.N. report found that total American food waste—including what we pitch from our refrigerators—is worth $48 billion each year.
Although federal and state laws protect grocers from liability, many stores expressed concerns that donated food could sicken recipients, even if it has yet to reach its expiration date. While some major chains donate food, others do not. Major retail grocery chains are more likely to throw away fruits, vegetables and even entire hams and roasts than donate to distribution centers.”
But it is not just stores…40 % of food waste occurred in our homes.
“Every month, residents in the city of Toronto (Canada), toss out 17.5 million kilograms of food. A recent British study determined that about one-third of food purchased in the UK is thrown out every year. This equates to £10bn (about CDN$19.5 billion). A 1997 U.S. study found that 27 per cent of edible food is never eaten. In Toronto, the picture is not all that different: single-family households produce an average of 275 kilograms of food waste each year. Twenty-five per cent of this food goes into the garbage. Most of it edible. Much of it still in its original packaging.” Worldvision
The problem is, that we are consumers and wasters of food, and yet we allow so many in our world to go hungry. And there are rules and standards that sometimes preclude us from helping. At a fundraiser I attended a while back, there was a large amount of food left over, good, well made, nutritious food…enough to give to the local food bank for several family’s meals…untouched food, but the containers had been opened, although not used. Because they had been opened…we were not allowed to donate the food, it had to be thrown away. It killed me to see so much food go to waste. I suppose I understand the concerns over opened containers, but we all knew it had not been touched or spoiled or contaminated in any way, and it hurt, physically hurt, to know it was wasted.
It hurts me to think about wasted food…and hungry people in my own backyard.
It hurts to know there are people dying from the lack of decent, nutritious food the world over…particularly in the Horn of Africa…one of the worst hit places by famine on our planet.
“The world produces enough food to feed every man, woman and child on earth. Hunger and malnutrition therefore are not due to lack of food alone, but are also the consequences of poverty, inequality and misplaced priorities.” – UNICEF Deputy Executive Director, Kul C. Gautam
And yet, 30,000 children have died in the last 3 months in the Horn of Africa.
And yet, famine exists….what is famine?
According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Reference Table (the standard used by the UN), famine occurs when the first three of the following conditions occur:
- 20 percent of population has fewer than 2,100 kilocalories of food a day
- 30 percent of children are acutely malnourished
- Two deaths per 10,000 people, or four deaths per 10,000 children per day
- Pandemic illness
- Access to less than four liters of water per day
- Large-scale displacement
- Civil strife
- Complete loss of assets and source of income
There are places still on this earth, where famine and drought exist, where the first three of the conditions exist, where all of the conditions exist, and people are dying from lack of food and clean water. It is obscene, when so many have so much, that so many have nothing.
We see the bounty (and so much waste) in our stores and are bombarded by advertising for fast food and we do not know what it is like to be hungry, homeless and constantly at risk…we send food aid to countries without realizing that much of what we send is nutritionally deficient, particularly for children. We saddle poorer countries with so much debt they can never get out from under. We can and do do so many good things…but there is so much more a species so intelligent and creative could accomplish…needs to accomplish. We need to reconnect with our planet and the people on it, or we will never care enough to bring about the changes that need to be made to save ourselves from ourselves.
Canada sends food aid around the world…so do many other countries…and that is a good thing…partly. So much of what we send is doing so little for the children who are starving, because what we send is nutritionally deficient and even with our help, children are malnourished and face the effects of that immediately and throughout their lives.
“Diets that do not provide the right blend of high-quality protein, essential fats, carbohydrates,vitamins and minerals can impair growth and development, increase the risk of death from common childhood illness, or result in life-long health consequences. Yet the cereal-based fortified flours donated as food aid do not meet these basic nutritional standards.
The Starved for Attention campaign hopes to rewrite the story of malnutrition, by convincing governments to ensure food aid also targets the specific needs of young children with adequate nutritional products.”
MSF, Medecins sans Frontieres or Doctors Without Borders has launched a campaign, Starved for Attention, to try to ensure that world food aid actually nourishes and helps children who are starving. You can find out more at their website…
Famine is obscene…so is the massive waste of food in richer countries.We need to do so much more for hungry people, here in our own country, on our own doorstep, and in our “global village”. We are responsible on every level, from what we buy and where we shop and what we waste right through to our neighbours and neighbouring countries to those who live a world away…they are on our global doorstep after all.
I really do think one of the reasons for humankind’s lack of stewardship of our planet, our technological advancement at the cost of something deeper and more meaningful, the problems we face as a species, are brought on, partly at least, by the continued urbanization of and lack of connection with nature. We live more and more, in places where you cannot see the stars, where you cannot truly see and feel the seasons, where foods are available year round from far, far away instead of being seasonal and local, where children do not know where their food comes from, what growing vegetables look like, who have never met a cow. We isolate ourselves further and further from our own world, the planet that nurtures us and which we rape and pillage daily. If we grow up knowing only that food comes from a store, how do we care about what it costs to produce it, how do we care about the loss of the family farm to huge conglomerates, how do we care about the death of honey bees, or the cruelty to the animals we eat or the underpaid workers who harvest our coffee and other crops. If gas just comes from a pump…how do we care about a faraway oil spill, the toxic waste in Alberta or Ecuador…the cost to our oceans and marine life…to our air and climate?
Even with the internet and television there are too many people who do not seem to be able to care that children are dying from hunger and thirst in a world that has more than enough food and water for all. We demand that our food be available at all times and in huge supply and not too expensive. We consume far too much of the world’s supply of food, resources, and water. It is time to re-think our ways.
Take a moment or two today (and every day) to assess your own habits, to open your eyes to the plight of the hungry. Follow a link, read about hunger…look at the faces of the children…and of the parents who would provide if they could, but instead see their children starve. Sign a petition…write a letter…make a donation.
Waste is obscene. Famine is obscene…allow yourself to be disgusted…and then add your voice to all those hungering for change…and help.
Please get involved. Now, before it is too late for one more child.
Filed under: cats | Tags: animal welfare, animals, babies, bottle babies, cat, cats, challenges, foster animals, foster kittens, fostering, fosters, hand raising orphan kittens, kittens, love, orphan kittens, OSPCA, OSPCA fostering, pets, raising orphan kittens, struggles
I am sure we have all heard of the “aww” factor, right? The cuteness, the sweetness that makes you go “aww!!! ”. The warm fuzzies. That is what everyone thinks of when I tell them I am fostering kittens…particularly baby kittens…orphans of a day old, or about a week old, or two weeks old…everyone says ”aww”. Everyone who has never done it that is.
The reality about tiny baby kittens is the “oo” factor. As in poop, poop, poop and more poop.
Orphan kittens are the cutest things on the face of the planet. They are also one of the hardest things to feed, keep warm and keep alive. And then there’s the poop.
Orphans, depending on their age, need feeding every 2 hours at the start. They will take to a bottle or not. They will suck or not. They might like syringe feeding. Or not. Sometimes a dropper. Or not. It is all trial & error and a kitten happily sucking one minute will decide not to the next. And then there is the poop.
Orphan kittens need to be kept warm and dry. But not too warm. Hot water bottles need to be refreshed regularly, and heating pads need to be under lots of towels or blankies, so that there are no hot spots…and they need to be able to get away from the warmth if they need to…so there has to be part of their space that is cooler. Their blankets, or towels, or bedding needs to be checked often to be sure they are dry and just the right temperature. And then there is the poop.
Orphan kittens need to be weighed. Need to have a set amount of formula. No over feeding or under feeding. Underfeeding leads to yelling, restless babies. Overfeeding can cause diarrhea and other problems. They need to be burped after feeding. And cuddled. They need skin time and bonding and warmth and lots of love. And they need to poop.
Orphan kittens need to have their little bodies stimulated to pee and poop. Their mum would be doing it for them…so you have to take her place, with cotton pad, ball or washcloth instead of tongue…but the job is the same…to gently encourage them to produce pee and a least a poop a day or so. Never rub…you can irritate their fragile bits. Jiggling works a treat. And be sure to clean them afterwards…so they don’t get scald and so they smell good. A kitten who has a mum is kept immaculate…and we foster parents should keep them that way too. Cats and kittens like to be clean. Bathing is sometimes necessary. Not a lot of fun for either of you…but necessary.
And then there’s the poop. Regular poop should be brown and kind of jam-like….and if you are lucky…that is all you get. However, sometimes you get weird colours and textures and blood and mucus and other horrible things because there are so many things that can cause poop problems. Overfeeding. Formula too rich. Intestinal parasites: roundworms, hookworms, tapeworms or the protozoans; coccidia & giardia.Viral or bacterial infections: there are many, but two of the scariest are FIP & distemper. Allergies. Inflammatory bowel disease. Feline leukemia. Antibiotics. Toxins. Cancer. Diabetes. Some can be ruled out or in fairly easily…but sometimes you just don’t now and it becomes trial and error to fix the problem. Kittens, due to their immature immune systems are wide open to almost anything, sometimes inherited from their mother, sometimes not.
When all is normal in the poop department, thank your lucky stars. Because it so often isn’t normal. Very often very messy and very smelly. And you have to keep the babies clean…it is vital, because they can get scald, they do not smell good and because they cuddle and sometimes lick and suck on each other…you have to not let them keep re-infecting themselves. Besides, it is harder to snuggle, kiss and love a sticky, smelly baby.
When you are raising baby kittens…you have to keep them clean, dry, warm but not too warm, hydrated and nourished. All of these can be huge challenges at times. And the younger the baby is…the harder it is to even keep them alive, much less thriving.
The tiniest, the youngest will not have had enough or any of their mum’s colostrum. They often do not suck well. And if kittens do develop poop issues…keeping them hydrated is difficult…they lose fluid so quickly.
This is not intended as a “go to” instruction manual for babies. It is just my observations of some of the things you might face when trying to hand raise kittens. And in my estimation, it is the “oo” factor which causes the most puzzlement, headaches, grief and heartache.
Sometimes everything goes swimmingly…you heave a sigh of relief when they get to about 16 weeks old and they get spay/neutered and go on to their new lives. Hopefully long and happy ones. Sometimes it goes only partly bad. You spend all your time trying to figure out the poop problems and trying to keep them tidy. Sometimes you lose a baby (or more)…cry a lot, work harder (as if that were possible) on those that remain, cry some more and rejoice when they get over it and grow and thrive. Sometimes they are the litter that makes you want never to do this again…to believe you cannot cry any more tears…that you are the worst foster mum ever…that god does not exist or these things would not happen to innocents like this…that vets are useless…that you will never recover from the grief…and that no one will ever ask you to do this again, because you have just killed a litter of kittens. Because if all hell breaks loose, and kittens die…you will blame yourself, even if it is in no way your fault. Sometimes you will know why it happened…and sometimes you do not get any answers…it just happens despite your fervent prayers and diligence and love and medicine and whatever else you tried to save them…shelter visits, CPR, syringe feeding, tube feeding, antibiotics,anti-virals, sub-Q fluids, hot water bottles, emergency vet visits, all the supportive care in the world….even making bargains with the devil…sometimes there is not a damn thing you can do. Kittens die sometimes.
But you swallow hard and find the resolve to do it again…and again…because when all goes well, there is incredible joy and satisfaction in seeing these wee things nurse and snuggle and grow and thrive. There is so much joy in watching their personalities blossom. I cannot tell you how deeply it affects me to have the whole litter sitting in my lap, looking at me with love, tapping my face with their soft little paws and purring to beat the band. My heart sings! And there is seeing them spayed or neutered and head off into their new lives with their forever families. It is supremely satisfying to know they would not have had that outcome if it were not for you. Fostering kittens is about hard work, long hours, a weird fascination with poop, fun, love, joy, sadness, silliness, heartache, awe and wonder and lots and lots of smiles and laughter. It really is all about the “oo” factor…but when it works…it is also about the “aww” factor.
Filed under: cats | Tags: body awareness, body schema, cat behaviour, cat chasing tail, cats, cats & imagination, cats & play, chasing tails, foster kittens, fostering, fosters, imagination, interactive play, introducing new cats, kinesthesia, kittens, Kittens & play, pets, play, proprioception, shelter animals, tail chasing, tails
It twitches…he watches with huge eyes…tensed, waiting to pounce. It stops, holds still for a moment then very slowly starts to sway…back and forth…a white waving flag…he watches, waits for just the right moment…then attacks, grabs it, bites it, kills it. Relaxes and blinks at me. There is satisfaction on his wee face. Then…it moves again…just a small jerk…and the stalking begins again. It goes on for ages…and it never dies…he just tires of the game eventually and his eyes close and he snuggles in for a nap.
As I sit here watching Fingal on my lap chasing his tail and chuckling over his antics…it gets me wondering about body image/body awareness/body schema and something called proprioception…sometimes known as kinesthesia, and also about imagination and play. I watch a kitten with its tail…and it is as if the tail is a separate entity…not under their control…it seems at times to belong to someone else…to be a creature unknown to them. That is where proprioception begins to wander through my brain.
As I understand it, there are 3 main types of senses. Exteroceptive senses; the ones that keep us conscious of the outside world and its interaction with us (skin, eyes, ears etc), interoceptive senses; with which we perceive pain in and movement of internal organs, and the proprioceptive senses. Proprioception is a sensory system that provides feedback solely on the status of our bodies. Proprioception is from the Latin proprius, meaning "one’s own" and perception. It is defined as your sense of the relative position of neighbouring parts of your own body. It is the sense that lets us know whether our bodies are moving appropriately with the effort we are making, as well as where the various parts of our body are located in relation to each other and to space. Proprioception and kinesthesia are sometimes used interchangeably, but are really quite different. Kinesthesia has more to do with motion and can exist where proprioception is lost. For example, an inner ear infection could disturb our sense of balance which would erode our proprioceptive sense, but not our kinesthetic sense. You would be able to walk, but only by using sight to maintain your balance; you would be unable to walk with your eyes closed.
Kinesthesia is a key component in muscle memory and hand-eye coordination, and training can improve it. Your ability to swing a golf club or a bat, to catch a ball or dance the macarena or a pas de deux, needs a finely tuned sense of the position of your body and all its joints and limbs in relation to themselves, each other and in space. All this needs to become automatic (through training/repetition) to let us concentrate on the other aspects of performance; seeing/knowing where other people or objects are, maintaining focus and motivation, expressing the emotion and gaiety of dance. Without the relevant integration of proprioceptive signals, as an artist, I wouldn’t be able to put paint to paper without watching my hand as it moves the brush; it would be impossible to drive a car because you would not be able to steer or use the foot pedals while looking at the road ahead. You would not even be able to walk without watching where you put your feet.
This gets me thinking about my mother, who had undiagnosed and untreated diabetes for several years, allowing diabetic neuropathy to get a good strong foothold before she began treatment, and so she now has very little feeling in her feet (apart from the pain of the neuropathy), and uses sight to know where her feet are and to enable her to walk. She has trouble walking in the dark. She has also had 4 strokes, leaving her with impaired balance, and uses, again, sight, to help her maintain her equilibrium, also more difficult for her in low light. Her fingers have little sensation left and without looking at what she is doing, she often drops things because she cannot tell where her fingers are. The sense of where our bodies are and how we are moving them and attached to them is a body awareness of very precious, no, priceless value. Neurologist Oliver Sacks is one of the many who have written about loss of this awareness in his patients and in himself too…in the book “A Leg to Stand On”, which raises “profound questions of the physical basis of identity.”
This also gets me thinking about our little cat, Belle, who suffered head, neck and chest trauma at 6 weeks of age and now has neurological deficits, and physical ones, as a result. She has never grown properly, at almost 2 she is the size of a 14 week old…her legs are small and thin and not as well muscled as they should be although her body is quite stocky (partly our fault for letting her get a tad heavy). Belle’s face and head are a mix of the kitten and the adult…her head is quite small…her eyes in relation…large. She has kidney issues and has never matured sexually. She has also been left with tremors which worsen as she relaxes. Watching her recover from her injuries as a kitten was fascinating…she had to learn how to do things that came quite naturally to her littermates…running…playing…jumping. She learned to do most of these things quite well…but you could see her think about them before doing them, and learn from each mistake…unlike the others who just did those things almost without thought or effort. Her muscle tremors make her move differently from other cats, and she must cope with her body twitching even more as she relaxes…I wish I knew more about how she feels about all this. And how she views herself. I know she is not as playful or as physical as other cats…and I believe the trauma affected her not only neurologically in terms of her growth and physical effects, but in her sense of imagination and play. She never became a truly active and playful kitten. She does however grab the biggest toy she can find and carry it around the house yelling and calling and occasionally will play with Cheerios on the floor…still with coordination deficits that tire her quickly. What she thinks of all this I do not know…but she is a growly girl, impatient with others, protective of her space and food and does not like being handled much, although curled in my lap is where you will often find her.
Our older cat,Tucker, has what I and our vet think is Feline Hyperesthesia or Rippling Skin Disorder. His back will start to move and twitch and ripple of its own accord…he will lick hard at it, snap and bite at it and is often chased by it around the house. He is getting crankier with it each day. As I watch him react to it, I wonder what it feels like and I wonder about how he seems to think he can run away from his own body and its movement and discomfort. Luckily, he has not done damage to himself yet, as some cats with the disorder do…we are trying treatment before it gets to that stage.
Proprioception is awareness of one’s body in space, really. Where it is and what it is doing or not doing. The feeling of wholeness and connection in the physical. Sitting here, I do not have to look to know where my toes are, or what is happening within and without my body….and I know how lucky I am. I do wonder what ‘Phantom Limb” must be like…for those amputees who can still feel their missing limbs…and I wonder what it must be like to have all your body…but lose touch with it. There are many different causes of that loss; MS, viral infections, tumours, vitamin deficiencies…I wonder about people with proprioceptive losses and then about animals and their body map and how to tell when their schema is not working properly.
Placing reflexes are used to test human neurological responses and the same goes for animals. There are two frequently used placing reflexes; tests which allow your vet to assess the proprioceptive abilities of cats (and dogs) in particular. The first test is to lift an animal and bring the anterior/dorsal (front/top) surface of a paw up to a table edge. Normally a cat will position its paw onto the surface properly. The second (sometimes called the proprioceptive positioning reflex) is when the dorsal, or top surface, of the paw is placed onto a surface; a healthy animal will flick it back up to be in the normal position. If it cannot do this it implies that there is either a motor deficit or damage to the sensory pathways for proprioception, or damage to the centres of the brain which would normally integrate this response. “These centres would include the cerebellum, and possibly portions of the cerebrum. The evidence for the involvement of the cerebellum comes, in part, from the fact that cerebellar ataxia can lead to a loss of this particular reflex. The reflex is sometimes referred to as a "response", allowing for possible conscious cerebral influence of the action.” (with apologies to Wiki)
So, what do cats think and feel? Why do they chase their tails? How do they see it and understand it? I understand the fascination with another cat’s tail…but how can you lie there and all of a sudden see your own tail as a separate thing…a toy you can chase in circles or just attack and pounce on when it twitches?
I have looked on the interweb and found some interesting answers to the question of why cats chase their tails…
It is OCD
it is worms in their butts
it can cause epilepsy
it is a form of epilepsy
it is very bad
These are some of the reasons offered for tail chasing in cats.
First…let me say…I am not a vet…I am just voicing an opinion as a cat person of more than 40 years experience.
I don’t believe any of the above are the answer as to why my little 11 week old chases his tail…but they may have validity if you have a cat that chases its tail too much.
If it were an OCD related behaviour in Fingal, surely it would be a more constant, possibly frenetic behaviour, like OCD in people. As I suffer from OCD myself…checking, counting, repetition etc…it doesn’t seem to me an OCD-like behaviour. Worms my cats do not have…and they tend to lick their anal region (butts) as opposed to chasing their tails. I am pretty sure you cannot cause epilepsy that way, but I believe it could be part of a complex partial seizure in a cat. Unless it is damaging to the cat’s tail or to its psyche or it becomes a constant behaviour…it probably is not very bad.
What I believe you have to do is be aware of your cat and its behaviour…and demeanour…is the chasing constant? or just occasional? Is there biting or damage to the tail or skin? If there is, get your cat checked out by a vet. There is something called Feline Hyperesthesia Syndrome or Rippling Skin Disorder that can cause a cat to attack itself…tail, skin etc. and pull out fur and damage itself…this is serious and needs a vet. There are other medical reasons for tail chasing…skin issues, tail injuries etc. The important thing is to know your cat’s behaviour…you can often tell if it is a happy chase or the kind caused by something bothering the skin or tail. You have to know that kittens will chase their tails occasionally from the time they are old enough to see and reach their tails and that adult cats will also chase their tails occasionally…if it becomes an obsessive or harmful behaviour or if your cat is showing signs of discomfort or if it is something he/she has never done before…you would need to be concerned. But a cat’s playful, happy enjoyment and fascination with its tail, and chasing it or playing with it is usually harmless fun and a treasured event in our house, because kittens do seem to grow out of it…as they get older it appears to become less fun for them and we only see a tail chase infrequently.
Cats may see things, including their own bodies, differently from us…but when it comes to imagination…I am not sure they are much different from me or you. Scientists, theorists, psychologists…in fact most of the ists…seem to think that imagination and the ability to pretend is limited to humans and possibly some primates. Ask any cat owner…and the anecdotal evidence of imagination and pretense in cats is overwhelming. I’m not talking just about the pretend hunting they do to hone their skills…but the knocking down of things on the shelf above the bed when deciding it is awake time and breakfast time and pretending they have nothing to do with the falling items or even trying to blame it on another cat. There is the “I meant to do that” pretend, when a “gymnastic” event goes horribly wrong or they somehow embarrass themselves. Pretending not to know their best friend and littermate even though they were just having a lickfest. Not realizing, or pretending not to notice when hiding from you, that the only thing actually hidden is their shoulders and head. Pretending (or hoping) they are a size 2 when truly a 16, because the box they are attempting to sleep in is smaller than their butts. Our poor mum who has never lost her baby weight, indulges in this fantasy quite often.
Cats would seem to have imaginations and they do love to play…as kittens and as adults. Play is an important interaction with your cat…because interactive playing lets your cat practice his hunting skills: seeing and defining the target, practicing the stealth needed to approach, the pounce, and the satisfaction gained from the kill. Whether it is your toes under the covers, a string on a stick or a toy mouse…the hunt is a vital component in play for and with your cat. Playing can help your cat maintain a healthy weight by exercising under-used muscle and brain, and it can be a very positive way for your cat to release lots of negative energy and even aggression.
Interactive play strengthens the bond between you and your cat, and play can help a shy or timid cat gain confidence in itself and in you. A vigorous play session is a good way to ease your cat’s transition into a new home. You can use play to help introduce cats to each other and soften the newness and strangeness between them.
For cats in shelters and rescues…playtime can be vital in maintaining mental health and well-being and helps to socialize them and strengthen the animal/human bond.
So from musing about body schema to musing about crinkle balls and toes under blankets…I have realized that cats, although I cannot talk to them, still have the ability to make me think, and learn. They also make me wish I had my own tail to chase.
Filed under: cats | Tags: animal welfare, animals, babies, cat, cats, crazy cat lady, foster cats, foster kittens, fostering, fosters, kittens, Lennox & Addington OSPCA, love, OSPCA, OSPCA fostering, pet ownership, pets, shelter animals, shelters, spay/neuter, stray cats
The Following is an article I wrote for the OSPCA Magazine ‘Animals’ Voice” – part of which appeared in the most recent edition.
This is the full article…
Fostering: A Win, Win, Win Situation
By Nancy E. Clark
Dedicated to Fingal, Finlay, Fiona, Darla, Eden, Lilith, Libby, Cain, Abel, Bib, Bailey, Quince, Baldric, Garnet, Domino, Bramble, Zorra, Echo, Julia, Mighty Mouse, Thor, Keiko, Youko, Jet, Smokey, Addy, Teddy, Sally, Juliet, Spook, Robin, and all the fosters who have allowed me to share a small part of their lives.
I began fostering cats for the Lennox & Addington OSPCA in 2008, because I love animals, cats in particular, and I wanted to help them and my local shelter; I had time and love to give, but not a lot of money. I am also lucky enough to have a husband who is patient and kind and helpful; and a room or two I can close off to isolate the newcomers for the duration of their stay, or just until it is a good time to introduce them to the general population. We have a large family of cats of our own…spayed, neutered and up to date on all their shots. All but 3 (rescues) are shelter cats, adopted over many years and ranging in age from 1 to 12. I taught my children to be wary of strangers, but my cats have had to learn to be open and accepting of strangers and patient with kittens. After I began fostering, I realized that not only is it an important (and mostly unrecognized) part of saving animals…but the wonder of birth, the delight & pride in a blossoming personality, the amusement afforded by cats of all shapes and sizes and the downright hilarity of their antics at times…makes the job so satisfying I may never stop.
Usually it is pregnant mums who arrive at our house in Selby…a few hours, days or weeks before they deliver or just after the babies are born. Sometimes it is right smack dab in the middle of delivery, as in the case of Eden, who went into labour in the carrier on the way home and had her first kitten an hour and a half later. Quite the introduction!
The expectant/new mums are given a room which is as comfortable and clean as I can make it…with various ‘nesting’ boxes and bins so they can choose a comfortable place to have/keep their babies. The closet is the most popular spot, with a towel-lined plastic bin inside and a curtain over the opening. There is clean water and food nearby and a fresh litter box. When given the time (prior to birth), I spend time with the mums…earning their trust and building a bond that will allow me to keep track of their health and that of their litter…and to help mum be calm and happy and eat well for the babies and to begin building on her adoptability for the future.
Occasionally it is a feral/semi feral or timid cat or kitten we have to work with and socialize…lots of patience, baby food and play required, but it’s one of the best feelings in the world when they come out of hiding and let you stroke them and eventually encourage their personalities to blossom. It’s the same feeling I had when my step-daughter trustingly took my hand the first time.
Fostering is defined as “to promote the growth of, to help develop, to afford, receive or share nourishment; the foster person stands in the relation of parent, etc., as regards sustenance and nurture, but not by tie of blood.” (or species in this respect)
Nourishment is not enough, however…but nurture comes close. Webster’s Dictionary includes this: To Nurture, Nourish, Cherish. Nourish denotes to supply with food, or cause to grow; as, to nourish a plant. To nurture is to train up with a fostering care, like that of a mother; as, to nurture into strength; to nurture in sound principles. To cherish is to hold and treat as dear; as, to cherish hopes or affections. [1913 Webster]
I really like that definition…nurture, nourish, cherish. That’s the foundation of why and how I foster. To provide a warm, safe home, proper nutrition, clean litter boxes, exercise, playtime and training. To schedule (and show up for) shots and de-worming and surgeries, to provide supportive care to the ill, to ask for vet care if needed, to apply or give medicines, to be the parent the animal deserves. To work with the staff at the shelter to keep everyone as healthy as possible. But it is so much more than that, it is also the cherishing…to hold dear, love, snuggle, be endlessly patient with, to fight for them like a mother, but accept the inevitable if it comes, to grieve for them when they leave, to give them all you can to give them a fighting chance at a long, happy, contented life…because it may break your heart many times over, but fostering gives you transports of joy, much love, and satisfaction on a massive scale…healing the heartbreak and drying your tears.
It is the cherishing that is both the easiest and the hardest part of the job…and probably the most misunderstood part…the animals are both yours and not yours…and that can cause the odd moment of friction between the staff and me.
Fostering cats and kittens is a marvellous and wonderful experience, full of laughter and smiles. Having babies in the house is a constant wonder…touching, hysterically funny at times and always new…because even if they are not people…kittens and cats are individuals…each completely unique. Watching them grow from tiny eating/sleeping machines into lively, happy and distinctive personalities is a privilege and a pleasure. Normally, all you have to do is the basics of nourish, nurture and cherish. You bring them up; play with them, teach them manners (at least some), live with a chronically messy house because kittens will chase and play and leave your towels on the floor, your every nook and cranny explored and their toys on the stairs. Kittens, until taught what not to do, will get into all that they can find in hopes it is play-able…so kitten proofing starts at floor level and gets steadily higher as they grow. All too soon, they have their first shots etc. and then their surgeries, they go up for adoption and you send them off to their new people with lots of tears and a huge smile.
That, by the way, is my favourite part of fostering, waving goodbye as my “children” head off into their new life…that and cuddling babies of course.
But occasionally things go very wrong. Julia, for example, had 4 babies, all extremely sick from day 2 on. We had to euthanize Mighty Mouse and Thor within days…Keiko survived to 6 weeks and then began to suffer breathing problems and we lost her too. Youko survived against all the odds and is doing well at 9 months…adopted out and happy. Then there are all the other problems that can crop up…parasites, viruses like Calici, Herpes and Corona: the problem often lies with the mum, having no idea of her exposures or carrier status, and whether my own cats can spread/catch viruses they may or may not have been exposed to years ago; as careful as you are with hand washing, disinfection and isolation…things happen. I find it hard to give up even when I know in my heart there is no hope. Henny Venus, the Shelter’s Manager and the staff have been wonderful in this respect, helping me learn to recognize the point at which to say…enough. To always recognize that these creatures are my responsibility, yes, and that I love them, yes, but they are OSPCA cats, and I must respect their experience and decision making. I think that is the hardest part of fostering…remembering always that these animals are mine in every sense of the word, except in actual fact. When you love them, it feels that they are only yours. And you have to love them to let them flower and flourish. Henny has always been kind to me in this respect, simply pointing out to me the things I know in my heart to be true, and allowing me to feel involved.
Fostering can be fun and easy and rewarding. It can be painful and hard but still rewarding. It is the luck of the draw. We have had both kinds…with the good ones vastly outnumbering the tough ones. Good or bad, happy or sad, it is a job worth doing…for them and for me.
Working with Henny and Heather and Rebecca, Haili, Jackie and Meghan and Bernice (before she retired) and the volunteers has been, overall, a wonderful experience. They are skilled and kind and supportive. They are also extremely patient with me, as I tend to be a pain in the butt kind of foster parent…perhaps over protective and sometimes unsure of my own knowledge, ability and experience. I have learned so much from them and enjoy working with them always.
There are so many good things about fostering. It brings me volumes of love and affection, it allows me to help animals get their chance at a good life, it has taught me lessons in care, in training, in teamwork, in gratitude, in life, love and letting go. I have learned discipline and sacrifice and not to mind cat hair everywhere and that kittens can be very, very bad…cute but bad. I have learned to respect and admire the people at the OSPCA and the often unrecognized difficult job they do for all the animals our society abandons, abuses, surrenders and neglects.
There are questions about fostering that may make you reluctant to start. Is it time consuming? Sometimes. Does it require some financial input? Yes, it can…with toys and litter and food…although many shelters provide food, and they all look after the medical stuff. Is it wrong to take in or raise an animal, bond with it, love it, and then see it adopted out into a stranger’s home? Isn’t that abandonment?
Well, yes it is…BUT…unless you plan on keeping every single foster animal…which would be impossible…being fostered can give the cat or kitten a much better chance at a wonderful forever home: a stray, a timid animal, an injured one or the new lives, the kittens, get to learn that people are gentle & kind, that cuddling and playing are encouraged, that food will never be in short supply, that there are soft, warm places to nap when you are tired. The socialization they receive makes them happier and that makes them much more adoptable. The whole idea behind sheltering and fostering is to find these animals homes…good homes for the rest of their lives. Adopting them out does provide some stress and distress for these animals…but ultimately it is the best ending for them, and they will soon learn to love & trust their new family…if we have done our job and taught them that people are good companions. We can help to make the match between animal and home the right one….so there should be fewer problems and fewer returns.
Fostering takes animals out of the shelter and the stresses inherent in that environment and gives them a happy home to grow up in or live and learn in, while they wait for the right person or family to come along and fall in love with them. Foster parents can learn so much about an animal’s personality and behaviour that they can help potential adopters decide if the adoptive animal is going to be a good match…because even using wonderful programs like SAFER or the OSPCA’s Feline-ality, it cannot tell you as much about them, because animals do not behave like themselves in shelters as much as they do in a home environment.
If you like or love animals…cats, dogs…whatever…if you have some space, time and love…if you like the idea of helping unwanted ones find homes…if you would like to foster an animal…please contact your local OSPCA branch or affiliate…your local shelter, rescue or humane society. You will fill out some forms and answer some questions, and they may come and take a look at your accommodations. Fostering can give you an idea of the kind of pet you want, if you do not currently have one, and it is temporary…not a life-long commitment (at first). Fostering is a wonderful way to help many animals instead of just one or two. You will change your life and that of the animals in your care for the better, and I am sure you will never regret your decision to open up your home—and your heart.
Filed under: horses | Tags: animal cruelty, animal welfare, animals, environment, heritage animals, horses, mustang, roundups, wild horses
Nevada Continues War Against Wild Horses.
Filed under: horses | Tags: animal abuse, animal welfare, horse slaughter, horses, mustang, wild horses
They have given us so much. Pulled our plows, carried our worldly goods, carried us, broadened our horizons, gone to war with us, given us milk and food, entertained us with their speed and skill, rounded up our cattle, pulled our boats and wagons, turned the mills; the mail was their province, their speed, stamina endurance and strength ours. They have enchanted us with their beauty and intelligence and spirit, rewarded us with their loyalty. They enthral us with their wild spirit and ability to survive.
We have used them and abused them. Bred them for size and shape, speed and strength, agility and pace. We have shaped them to fit our needs and wants. We have raced them, ridden them, terrified our enemies with them, traded them, eaten them, taken their milk and foals, cossetted them, starved them, rounded them up and turned them into dog food, worshipped and revered them. They are symbols of beauty and freedom and yet we treat them so damn badly. We overbreed them, we stand them in stalls forever pregnant to produce the hormones that keep our aging at bay, we race them after breeding them for speed at the loss of bone and then put them down when their bones break. We round them up from land and air, terrified and hurt, we fence them from water, we use them for target practice, we protect them by law and then treat them like pests…and no one gives a damn because it doesn’t affect our pocket books. Little girls love them…books and stories and movies are made about them. Their names are part of our culture…Misty…Black Beauty…Flicka…The Black… Our history would be very different without them. We were carried into the frontier by them, and what do we give them in return….crops and whips, starvation and abuse, roundups where foals die and mares abort and dehydration kills, and then send them to god knows where…the end is often a harrowing and horrific transport to an inhumane and awful death at a Mexican or Canadian slaughter house.
What we owe to horses is a debt so big we can never pay it…yet pay they do. We owe them respect, love, affection, food, water, exercise, green grass, flowing water, land to roam on. We owe them decent stabling, exercise, company and not to be over worked or discarded. We owe them a life of fulfillment and peace. They can still work with us, entertain us, enchant us and carry us over jumps and round racetracks…but with care and respect and humanity. We can let the wild ones be free…let them have the land intended for them, allow them access to water, stop seeing them as pests and grazing stealers. Allow the wild ones, the ones that trace their bloodlines in part back to the Conquistadors, the protection and freedom that the bill of 1971 says they should have in the United States and the protection they do not have but should have here in Canada. Politicians in Canada and the States should be ashamed of themselves when they look at the sate of the wild horse, the state of horses in general. In Canada we cannot even agree that they are wild…only feral and not worth protecting…so any Tom Dick or Harry can round them up or shoot them or abuse them…so much so, there are almost none left…about 800 in all. In the States the horses and burros are at least protected by law…but the protectors are now the abusers. In Canada, our oh so kind and gentle and smug land, we slaughter horses for the world…Japan, Belgium, France…and we do it in a way that no animal should ever have to suffer…see the video available from inside a slaughter house. We have rules governing their transport to slaughter…so much headroom on double decker trucks, and yet no one enforces the rules; horses end up injured, maimed and dead before they ever reach the place where they die a horrific, inhumane and terribly cruel death.
What did the horse ever do to deserve any of this? Granted, you cannot curl up on a sofa with one or take them for a drive and a game of fetch…but they are a companion animal more than they are livestock. If you want to argue that point…that livestock are for eating, I mean…but that is for another day. Horses have families in the wild, social structure, communication; they live in groups with specific hierarchies and rules and familial associations…they nurture their young and grieve their losses. Horses befriend us and work with us and provide us with companionship as well as offering up their size, strength and speed. We would not be where we are today without the horse and yet we continue to abuse them on all fronts…by overbreeding and discarding them, by seeing them as competition for grazing on land that was supposed to be for them and not for cattle, by allowing competitions like horse tripping and abuse like soring…there are so many horrible things we do to an animal that deserves none of it…it amazes me sometimes that the news isn’t filled with stories of horses fighting back…horse militias gathering weapons…marauding gangs of horse youths…marches…placard carrying protestors….petitions……..wait a minute…horses cannot do that for themselves….we have to do it for them. So get involved (you will find some links here at this blog)…write your MP, your Representative…sign all the petitions out there…join an Advocacy group…call the White House…get going and get moving before it is too late for the wild ones…before any more horses are eaten in your local restaurant…before another truckload passes you on the highway…………
.
Filed under: horses | Tags: animal cruelty, animal welfare, animals, BLM, heritage animals, horse slaughter, horses, mustang, mustangs, slaughter, wild horses
She actually says she wants to ‘partner’ with the BLM. She is also part of the so called Summit on hoses and is trying to build slaughterhouses in Wyoming.“Slaughterhouse” Sue Wallis Fawns over Pro-Slaughter BLM King Pin.
Filed under: horses, Uncategorized | Tags: animal welfare, animals, biological diversity, cloning, cloning horses, decision making, dolly the sheep, ethics of cloning, gene pools, horse slaughter, horses, moral progress, mustang, mustangs, prometea, reproductive cloning, roundups, safety of cloning, slaughter, wild horses
“If scientific discovery has not been an unalloyed blessing, if it has conferred on mankind the power not only to create but also to annihilate, it has at the same time provided humanity with a supreme challenge and a supreme testing” John Fitzgerald Kennedy
“Science by itself has no moral dimension. But it does seek to establish truth. And upon this truth morality can be built” Dr. William H. Masters
“Scientific progress makes moral progress a necessity; for if man’s power is increased, the checks that restrain him from abusing it must be strengthened.” Madame de Stael
I would like to begin this page by saying I am not a scientist in any way shape or form and if I get my facts wrong, am totally open to correction.
I just read a disturbing report about Sue Wallis, an American politician from Wyoming who is trying to set up a slaughterhouse for horses in her state, and an organization called the UOH, of which she is Executive Director. UOH, The United Organization of the Horse. Please do not be fooled by the rather innocuous, seemingly pro-horse title of this organization. It sounds like a group working for the good of horses…but what it actually is, is a trade/lobbying group who takes contributions from horse slaughter interests, from the U.S Export Meat Federation, livestock and cattlemen organizations and from the Biotechnology Industry Organization, which is the lobbying arm of cloning and genetic engineering companies like Monsanto and ViaGen (who are actively cloning horses). They say they are concerned about the large numbers of ‘unwanted horses’ in the U.S….if so why would they be talking about cloning horses for slaughter, while killing off the natural ones? Real or cloned, slaughtering horses for food is a moral and ethical issue that has not got the support of the majority of North Americans. And cloning is another issue that raises its own moral and ethical questions.
Cloning occurs naturally in plants and some insects and has been used in horticulture for centuries. But I have found myself wanting to learn more about cloning, the kind of cloning that raises those moral and ethical questions for a lot of people, something that was in the news a lot, but has not been covered too much lately. As I understand it, cloning is a word that encompasses several different processes for “duplicating biological material” . There are apparently three main types; recombinant DNA cloning, therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning. When I read about cloning, when there is talk about cloning horses for slaughter, or for breeding, they are usually talking about reproductive cloning.
As I understand it, recombinant DNA cloning has been around for years and is often used to make multiple copies of the same gene for scientists to study and use in gene therapy, genetic engineering, and sequencing genomes.
Therapeutic cloning is when they grow human embryos for use in research and to harvest stem cells. They are not creating cloned human beings, but remove the stem cells from the embryos to study and to use in treating diseases like cancer. Stem cells are removed from the egg after it has divided for 5 days…killing the embryo, which raises ethical and moral concerns for many people and has a lot of opposition.
Reproductive cloning is the one I am really interested in. It is the type of cloning which first gave us a cloned tadpole in 1952 and it gave us Dolly, the Finn Dorset sheep, the first mammal to be cloned. The product of reproductive cloning is an animal that has the same nuclear DNA as another animal, but it is not identical, because some of its genes come from elsewhere in the egg and are not ‘reprogrammed’ the same way. Genes from the nucleus of a donor cell are transferred to an egg whose nucleus has been removed. The egg is then treated to encourage cell division. Once it reaches the right stage, it is implanted into the womb of a surrogate to continue growing naturally until it is born. These clones will not be identical duplicates…only their chromosomal/nuclear DNA is the same. Some of the clones genetic materials come from the mitochondria in the egg. Mitochondria contain their own little bits of DNA and “acquired mutations in mitochondrial DNA are believed to play an important role in the aging process” and some scientists believe that “ errors or incompleteness in the reprogramming process cause the high rates of death, deformity, and disability often seen among animal clones.” Also unknown in this process is the effect of the surrogate that carries the baby and is so closely connected to it.
Another part of the problem with cloning is the low success rate; Dolly was the only success out of 276 tries. Prometea, the first cloned horse (born in 2003) came from 841 male and female embryos out of which only 8 male and 14 females developed to the blastocyst stage ( 5 days of cell division). Only 17 embryos were able to be implanted, and only 4 pregnancies came from those and Prometea was the only one out of all those to survive. Reproductive cloning, it is hoped, can dependably and constantly reproduce animals who are special or have special qualities. In the case of horses, ViaGen (among others) is actively cloning Quarter horses and others to preserve bloodlines and to extend the breeding life of stallions and mares by creating newer duplicates. Reproductive cloning can probably be used to help endangered species, such as the gaur which was, in 2001, the first clone of an endangered wild animal to be born (it died from infection shortly after birth). In the same year, Italian scientists reported cloning a mouflon, an endangered wild sheep. I cannot find enough information on what would happen if clones breed. They can if bred with a non clone.
Reproductive cloning is still expensive and not terribly successful, although success rates are better now than they were when Dolly and Promotea were born. More than 1000 nuclear transfers could be required to produce between 1-3 viable clones. Cloned animals sometimes have weakened immune systems and suffer more infections and tumours, and other problems such as LOS or large organ syndrome, which can cause unnaturally large babies or babies with organs too large for their bodies. Many clones just haven’t lived long enough for us to know how they age, because being healthy as babies does not adumbrate life-long health or even simple survival. Problems may come from ‘programming errors’ in the genetic material from a donor cell. When an embryo is created by natural means (the old fashioned way) from the union of sperm and egg, it gets copies of most genes from both its parents. Something called “imprinting” chemically marks the DNA from the mother and father so that only one copy of a gene is ‘turned on’. Defects in the genetic ‘imprint’ of DNA from a single donor cell may lead to some of the abnormalities of cloned animals, because we program which ones turn on, not nature, and we may not get it right.
So, cloning is being done, but the success rates are still prohibitive. As is the cost. You can find ads for companies that will clone your horse for you in equine magazines and there are those who have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to clone their pets. (Why anyone would do that is beyond me, discovering love with a new friend is so much better, even if you grieve forever for your lost pet.) Farmers have cloned hundreds of cows and the offspring of these cloned animals have already entered the food supply.
The following came from an article in Newsweek Magazine….(the bits in parentheses are mine)….
“Should consumers be afraid? There is some evidence that cloned animals show a higher propensity for developmental problems, such as mental retardation. That would be tragic in a human, but the milk from a retarded cow is not necessarily any different from the milk from a smarter than average cow. Indeed, the European scientists found no compositional or nutritional differences in the milk or meat derived from clones, and “no evidence of any abnormal effects” in the progeny of cloned animals. (most studies only studied 5 or 6 animals…not exactly exhaustive)
New research about genetics may be indirectly fueling fears about cloning. Scientists have learned in recent years that what goes on in the cell’s molecular machinery is far more complicated than they used to think. Epigeneticists have begun to enumerate ways in which traits can be passed from one generation to the next that have nothing to do with DNA. This raises the theoretical possibility that cloning may have unintended effects even though a cloned animal is an exact DNA replica of the original. “Although successful clones may appear normal, the possibility remains that some may harbor subtle genetic defects that could impair their health or make them unsafe for consumption,” said the Union of Concerned Scientists in a statement. Most anticloning groups use similar reasoning in calling for more time and more studies before cloned meat and milk are allowed to be sold as food. “If you don’t get all the details, you don’t know your subject,” says Sonja Van Tichelen, director of the Eurogroup for Animals.
The problem with epigenetic effects is that nobody knows what they might be, or even if, in the case of cloned livestock, they would have any effect worth noting. The safety authorities in the United States and Europe have apparently reasoned that a theoretical possibility is not reason enough to ban the practice.”
(Are these the same people who said cattle and pigs could eat dead cattle and pigs and that that would be safe? Remember Creutzfeld-Jacob disease and the Mad Cow Mess? Mad Cow is Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy…a prion disease that may sometimes come from a genetically mutated prion. )
Why then are there those talking about cloning any animal for any reason? Even for preserving bloodlines? The companies involved in the technology do, of course, they stand to make money, but there are many concerns about cloning. Many racetracks and, I believe, the Jockey Club, have banned clones from racing, and cloned meat has not been proven safe to eat…nor has it been proven unsafe…there is simply not enough data. There are also concerns about the welfare of the animals involved and the further commodification (if that is a word) of animals when so many people worldwide are trying to change the way animals are treated now.
“The European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE) provided an opinion on ethical aspects of animal cloning for food supply in January 2008. This complements EFSA’s work because EFSA does not have a mandate to consider ethical, moral or other societal issues beyond its scientific remit.
The EGE opinion concludes that “considering the current level of suffering and health problems of surrogate dams and animal clones, the EGE has doubts as to whether cloning animals for food supply is ethically justified. Whether this applies also to offspring is open to further scientific research. At present, the EGE does not see convincing arguments to justify the production of food from clones and their offspring.” The EGE also identifies requirements for future action should food from animal clones be introduced into Europe in the future.” from the EFSA site (European Food Safety Authority)
I believe we should be concerned that if cloning humans is not morally and ethically acceptable, why is it okay to do this, to cause suffering, to destroy countless embryos, to species other than ourselves, who have no say in the matter at all. There are so many instances of mankind doing what we think is the right thing, biologically speaking, only to find out down the road, that we have royally screwed things up, for the species involved and for ourselves. Cloning for the sake of cloning may be the wrong decision. Perhaps using a technology just because we can is not the best way forward. A step or two back, and a lot more thought, might be a very good idea. Greed is not the best impetus or guide to what we as humans should allow in business or in life.
I am not completely anti-cloning. However, nothing I have heard or read over the years has convinced me yet that it is a good thing, a necessary thing. It seems to be a technology growing and developing because we can, not because of its inherent value. And I am very concerned that we do not know enough about what we are doing when we mess around with genes, and nature, and play God. I do believe in biological diversity and its importance in nature. I believe in wide and deep gene pools being the means of evolution, change and survival for our species and all the others we share this planet with. Wild horses are already at risk because of what the BLM is doing with their culling and roundups…they do not pay attention to family and bloodlines and the shrinking gene pool they leave behind. Cheetahs are suffering because there are not enough to breed with a gene selection broad enough to produce the healthiest, most viable babies. Tigers, one of the most critically endangered species on the planet are also at risk in terms of their health and their genes.
Biological diversity is a wondrous and beautiful thing. Who would ever want things to be or to look the same? The union of sperm and egg is miraculous and what it produces, unique. Yes we can selectively breed for special qualities, but when we let babies be produced the old fashioned way, we get a surprise, an individual, a unique creature, human or animal, and I truly believe it is the way we should remain committed to…not to the production of rows of chromosomally identical clones. Just because we can…should we? I leave you with some thoughts that I find helpful when pondering the future and the welfare of animals, ourselves and our planet…
“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world-that is the myth of the atomic age-as in being able to remake ourselves” Mahatma Gandhi
“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.” Alice Walker
and finally, from Thomas Jefferson, “I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.”
Filed under: cats | Tags: animal welfare, animals, carnivores, cat health, cat nutrition, cats, feeding your cat, feline nutrition, grain free diet, obligate carnivores, pet ownership, pets, slaughter, vegans, vegans and pet ownership, vegetarian, vegetarian diet, vegetarian diet for cats, vets
Let me begin by saying I am a vegetarian and have been one since my teens. I am also a cat companion and have been kept by cats for over 40 years. I have never even considered imposing my beliefs or my diet on my cats, and I believe those who do are hurting the ones they love. Domestic cats are obligate carnivores like all felines; they lack the ability to digest and process plant material as food and to be truly healthy and happy they need animal protein. They need certain nutrients found only in meat, they are not able to get the right amino acid complexes from grains (humans and dogs can mix and match) and they do not do well with a high carbohydrate load. It can lead to obesity and blood sugar issues. I do not impose my anti meat beliefs on family and friends either. I do not insist on vegetarian meals when I visit…I make do with the vegetarian parts of any meal, as no one I know eats only meat at supper. I talk to my husband, my family and friends about animal slaughter and how inhumane and cruel it can be, I cook them delicious meals and try to show them how healthy I am, and happy…but they have their own beliefs and consciences and are carnivores by choice. Cats, unlike people, are carnivores by physiology..and no matter how often they sniff and lick the tofu …they would rather have chicken, tuna, beef…any meat at all…and that is okay with me. I know I cannot make the world vegetarian no matter how much I would like to, so there will be meat for my cats as long as there is meat for the meat eaters. If I wanted a vegetarian pet..I would have adopted a rabbit or a guinea pig or a horse. I knew cats ate meat when I adopted my first one, and I knew that even though I do not agree with the killing of animals for food, there are too many people who do want to for me to change it totally…so I am fine with my cats eating it too. There are a lot of cat foods that list corn, soy and other grains as primary ingredients, but most vets and cat people will tell you that grain free is better for your cat and better for long life and health. Now, I have had cats who actually like vegetables, fruit and other non meat foods…Belle likes rice and peas in the sauce from butter chicken, Ziggy loved cantaloupe, Tucker thinks potato chips are the greatest and Joy goes nuts for doughnuts. And all of them like grass and corn husks…as an emetic. Eating meat keeps my cats healthy and happy and as members of another species they do not have the choice of diet I do. They simply are not physically able to. If you want to follow a vegetarian diet of any stripe or be a vegan…absolutely great!!! But do not impose your beliefs on your companion animals…it is unfair and unhealthy. Get a pet more suited to your lifestyle. Or swallow hard, close your eyes, and feed your cat the meat it must have.
Filed under: cats | Tags: babies, broken heart, cat, cats, challenges, death, decision making, euthanasia, euthanization, foster kittens, fostering, fosters, heartbreaking, judgement, kitten, kittens, life, OSPCA, pet ownership, pets, shelter animals, shelters, snowshoe cat, struggles, vets
She was probably doomed from the start, but she did not seem to care and tried so hard to have a life and grow and become a cat…but we lost her and it broke my heart. Into tiny little pieces…that will, I am sure, eventually fit back together, but there will be a lot of scar tissue.
Keiko was one of four kittens born to Julia, a foster mum from the OSPCA. Tiny and beautiful they were. There was Mighty Mouse, the runt, a little grey and white fighter; Thor, a big black boy who seemed to have odd feet and skeletal issues and then the two sisters, Youko and Keiko, both white with lilac points. When we got them home they seemed fine and Mum seemed fine too, but it quickly became apparent that Julia, although gorgeous and sweet and loving, had no clue about being a mum…there are some cats that should never be mums…too young, too whatever. She would nurse her babies briefly and then walk away, leaving the kittens to get cold and lonely…and if we left her alone in the room with them, she would carry them around and deposit them in strange corners and leave them alone on the floor. As soon as we realized this, within hours, we began by putting a heating pad under their bin and adding hot water bottles to keep them warm, keeping the door to their carrier closed so Julia could not scatter them, and every hour or so, put her in with them to nurse and clean them. She was great with them for a while each time and then yell and claw to get out. The kittens also developed diarrhea almost immediately and it became clear we had four very sick kittens…but they were kept warm and clean and dry and nursed well when given their mum or a bottle, and seemed even with their issues to be doing okay…no dehydration…and with food peacefully asleep. I spent hours and hours with them, watching, stroking mum so she would nurse, cleaning them and their towels, changing hot water bottles, moving mum in and out, experimenting to see if she would stay without being locked in with them, trying to see if she would leave them together in one spot, praying and worrying, supplementing with formula…then one day…checking in on the nursing babies, all seemed fine, when I realized Mighty Mouse could not be seen amongst the pile…I found him under his mother, smothered by Mum lying on him…he was flat and still and flaccid and not breathing and I panicked and rubbed and stroked him and breathed on him and called the shelter and finally he coughed and his chest started moving again…all of which may have been a bad decision in hindsight because although he seemed to recover he succumbed to the struggle of life a few days later and we had him put to sleep. He simply got too tired, and I probably should have let him die and be peaceful when it happened…but instinct made me try without thinking. Thor, the big, black, hungry boy became much sicker a few days later in the space of a couple of hours, and at 5 am on a Sunday, we heard him begin to cry in distress and had to make the heartbreaking decision to have him put to sleep too. So we were left with Keiko and Youko…the two white sisters…still sick but as far as we could tell…happy with each other and not suffering. Julia was still a lousy mum so we kept them warm…and as clean as we could, continued supplementing their diet and they slowly began to grow and get better. They changed from white to cream…Youko with lilac ears and tail, Keiko with dark points on face, ears, paws and tail…simply beautiful kittens…with sweet tempers and good appetites. The diarrhea stopped, but as the days went by…you could see that the diarrhea, the virus, whatever had made them sick, had caused Keiko to have growth and development issues…Youko soon out paced her in size and strength. Keiko’s problems became more apparent, possibly from mal-absorption of nutrients through the diarrhea, possibly congenital, she grew a little and regained her hair from the urine scald she suffered even with constant cleaning, but she stayed small and her legs did not work as well as they should..her front legs bowed a bit and occasionally knuckled over…her back legs did not seem to have as much flexibility and feeling as they should…but she kept trying…playing with her sister, eating well, beginning to try out toys…purring and cuddling… and then came the breathing issues. She began having trouble breathing after eating and although her teeth were coming in (in that tiny mouth) and she began eating a bit of solid food…she began to be unhappy and we took her to the vet to see if there were any hope of recovery, growth and development. The consensus of the vets was that she was going to have too much suffering to let her continue…perhaps if she had not had trouble with her breathing she might have had a chance…but with the new breathing issues it was unfair to let her struggle for each breath…and the shelter totally agreed and put her to sleep…which did not go well and will haunt me ‘til the day i die…Keiko…with all her problems, did not go quietly and I will never get over the fact that for a short while I was responsible for intense fear and suffering in a kitten so small and innocent. I know from experience that euthanasia does not always go smoothly…but this one, although necessary, will haunt me, will haunt my dreams forever. No one’s fault, just one of those things, but still…..
I will always remember Keiko’s ability to motor across the floor with a speed that amazed me…she would come running as soon as she heard me at the door to her room. I will remember her tiny dark paws that held the bottle so tightly, her eyes so bright, her wee cream face and dark nose looking up at me, her tiny body pressed close to my heart as I fed her, her patience as I cleaned her, her first use of the litter box, her first enjoyment of kitten food, her favourite toy (a tiny white coil), her absolutely fierce will to be normal and play with her sister…I will remember every minute I had with a kitten so challenged and so happy (until she could not breathe) and so beautiful…with awe and respect and admiration and gladness and sadness…Keiko will be with me forever…although she only lived with me for a few weeks.
And I will question myself and my decisions, and learn from the experience, compassion and knowledge of the wonderful people at the OSPCA, of the wonderful vets, and grow in knowledge about how to deal with sickness and death in creatures so small and innocent and beautiful…I would like one day to be more sure of decisions made and roads taken. Having had a run of success with foster kittens…Julia’s litter has taught me so much about the other side of fostering…the heartbreaking side. I can only hope the decisions I made hourly, did not cause any suffering that could have been avoided…I watched so closely for any signs of discomfort, any signs that they were unhappy, and I wanted so much to give them a chance at life…that I profoundly hope that the life they had was not an unhappy one. If anything I did caused them pain or sadness I will never forgive myself…Mighty Mouse, Thor and particularly Keiko, will have me looking inward and pondering and questioning and asking always…Am I doing the right thing??…Am I doing the right thing for them or for me???…How do you ever know for sure that giving anyone or anything a chance of life, a chance of recovery is the right thing to do????
Keiko …’Kei’ means ‘celebrate’, ‘respect’, and ‘open’ and is combined with ‘ko’ which means child…has taught me to respect life, be open to possibilities and open to learning, and I will always celebrate her life…she touched my heart and soul so deeply and profoundly that I will never be the same person I was before I met her. Keiko, so tiny, so beautiful, will live forever. And I hope, forgive me if ever I hurt her…even if only with good intentions.
Filed under: cats | Tags: babies, broken heart, cat, cats, challenges, death, decision making, euthanasia, euthanization, foster kittens, fostering, fosters, heartbreaking, kittens, OSPCA, pet ownership, pets, shelter animals, shelters, struggles, vets
Mighty Mouse died. On a Tuesday. Euthanized because he struggled too long and exhausted his energy. One minute a tiny grey and white fighter, a suckling champ…the next second too exhausted to do anything except sleep. He was the runt, he was sick, along with his brothers and sisters, his mum was inattentive and she lay on him, flattened him and he stopped breathing. Instinctively I fought for him, called Lisa at the shelter in a panic about him, rubbed and stroked and breathed on him and got him breathing again….perhaps the wrong decision in hindsight…but I did not see the future reality…only the hope and immediate need. A few days later he tired of trying to grow and develop. Thor went the same way this morning…he was doing alright on Saturday afternoon and through the evening, … fighting for his nipple, getting extra formula, purring, curled up with his littermates on mums belly and a hot water bottle when she left…bright eyed and strong and black, although certainly not well.…sick but working on it and happy. Lord how kittens can turn around in a heartbeat. By 130 am on Sunday I was less happy about him, something was not quite right..but not critical, and he was still nursing, so I grabbed a couple of hours sleep, checked on him at 4am and immediately realized it was all wrong and he had become very sick indeed. All of a sudden he was in pain and congested and would or could not suckle…in the space of a couple of minutes we made the the decision to have him put to sleep, to end his fight and suffering. 5am on a Sunday morning…thank god for the Emergency vet clinic and their wonderful staff. The shelter was not open to call, so we took Thor to Kingston, snuggled to my breast, tired and quiet, and there we had him put to sleep, gently and kindly by the doctor with me stroking him as he died. Just like Mighty Mouse he had gone from fighter to giving up the struggle in minutes, so fast it was hard to believe.
Maybe when they first got sick I should have asked to have them all put to sleep…but as they seemed happy except for the diarrhea; trying hard, suckling and getting extra bottle feeds…I wanted to give Julia’s 4 kittens a fighting chance. But fostering cats and kittens, either on your own or for the OSPCA or local shelter is heartbreaking and totally unpredictable. It is also heart warming and joyful. Babies in particular suffer sea changes in health in the space of minutes and hours…like visiting a friend in hospital, talking to them, seeing them rallying from illness or injury, hopeful: and and then hours later you get a call that they have passed away. Like my mum in June, seemingly doing well and recovering in the CSU from cardiogenic shock and everyone is guardedly hopeful, she is conscious, eating, talking and then, Wham, her heart stops and all hell breaks loose.
There are two kittens left with Julia…two tiny creamy babies just 3 weeks old…and I know that even if we get a non-thriving kitten to 4 weeks…it can all blow up in your face at any time…but how can I look at these two, small and eating hard, learning to stumble further around their nesting spot each day, getting their sea legs, and not let them have a chance. They seem happy and content…no pain that I can detect…they are warm and fed and dry and I find I cannot give up on them. Maybe that is wrong…maybe it would be kinder and less heartbreaking and more cost effective to just put them to sleep now…but I cannot do it…and perhaps this means I am not a good foster parent and may never be a good person to work at a shelter…but I am not yet good or fast at making this kind of decision…although I am sure I will learn to do so. It is always, I think, a struggle to do the right thing, to hold on for them, and not for you, to give them a chance, but not prolong any suffering…to learn to look at a baby and say it would be better for you not to have to fight to survive. I can only hope I am doing the right thing…by doing what seems right, what feels right…but how do you know..how do you sleep…how do you not have doubts and questions…regrets and fears??? Why is doing what you think is the right thing so damn hard????
Up until Julia and her 4 babies, now 2, we have had a wonderful run of success in fostering…6 mums and babies…all have found homes…but Julia, Mighty Mouse and Thor have me totally questioning my abilities and my judgment…this is perhaps the question all animal people, all pet people have to face…when do you give up..how much is too much??? Is the decision you are making the right one for you or for them????
Filed under: cats | Tags: animals, carbon footprint, cats, change, charity, compassion, eco audit, environment, family, farmers, farming, food, HST, insulating, local food, McGuinty, night sky, planet, rant, renovating, stars, tolerance
I have been talking a lot to friends and family lately…my Mum has not been well at all and I have been trying to keep in touch and let everyone know how she is doing. With my Uncle Bert the conversation has been relatively new to us and thanks to his compassion insight and knowledge…very thought provoking. We have talked about Mum and Dad and friends and family and the stars in the night sky.
Funny isn’t it how something that looks so small, so insubstantial and not so very far away…just hanging there in the sky, is, in reality so enormous, and so far, far away and it inspires and awes me, that the light we see from the stars is so old…back into and past our human history and so much further back into time. The light takes so long to reach us and is so beautiful and bright….
I really do think one of the reasons for humankind’s lack of stewardship of our planet, our technological advancement at the cost of something deeper and more meaningful, the problems we face as a species, are brought on, partly at least, by the continued urbanization of and lack of connection with nature. We live more and more, in places where you cannot see the stars, where you cannot truly see and feel the seasons, where foods are available year round from far, far away instead of being seasonal and local, where children do not know where their food comes from, what growing vegetables look like, who have never met a cow. We isolate ourselves further and further from our own world, the planet that nurtures us and which we rape and pillage daily. If we grow up knowing only that food comes from a store, how do we care about what it costs to produce it, how do we care about the loss of the family farm to huge conglomerates, how do we care about the death of honey bees, or the cruelty to the animals we eat or the underpaid workers who harvest our coffee and other crops. If gas just comes from a pump…how do we care about a faraway oil spill, the toxic waste in Alberta or Ecuador…the cost to our oceans and marine life…to our air and climate?
We see the bounty (and so much waste) in our stores and are bombarded by advertising for fast food and we do not know what it is like to be hungry, homeless and constantly at risk…we send food aid to countries without realizing that much of what we send is nutritionally deficient, particularly for children…just ask MSF. We saddle poorer countries with so much debt they can never get out from under. We can and do do so many good things…but there is so much more a species so intelligent and creative could accomplish…needs to accomplish. We need to reconnect with our planet or we will never care enough to bring about the changes that need to be made to save ourselves from ourselves. In my own small way I am trying to improve my world and lessen my impact on it.
I live in a small village north of Napanee, between Kingston and Belleville in Ontario, Canada. There are family farms nearby and we try to support them by buying local foods and products..attending markets and going to the fair each year to see the things they grow and the animals they raise. These are important people, the farmers who raise and grow our food…and they do not get the help and support they need from government or from business…local grocery stores need to carry more local food…why should I buy vegetables from California when there are neighbours growing the same things just down the road…or at least in the same province?
We live in an old house from the 1850′s and are currently renovating much of it to lower our carbon footprint and reduce our use of non renewable resources. It all started with the now defunct Eco-Audit/Green Audit program, one of the best programs a government has come up with, as it allowed some financial help for those in older homes to insulate and improve and lower their costs as well. The program has now been cancelled by our environmentally deficient government, an incredibly stupid decision because not only did it help home owners, it helped the economy through the products and services bought and used by the people in the program. There were contractors hired, work provided, products like insulation, windows, caulking, toilets…all given some rebate help and bought by those using the program.
We had our house and well audited and then insulated our walls,which had no insulation at all, our attic, which had a little insulation, but not enough, added vents for air circulation etc., added all new low-e windows and doors, rebuilt all 4 porches, patched, painted, rebuilt all the old trim and mouldings, did some electrical and plumbing and are now rebuilding the bathroom which fell apart during the rest of the project. It has been a full year of renovations and is almost over….we hope to have reduced our carbon footprint considerably and also our bills…although thanks to the idiocy of the McGuinty government in bringing in the HST, our bills may now go up instead of down and our payback on the whole project will be messed up. It has been a lot of work..both for the contractor and for me, as I have done most of the interior work myself…carpentry is indeed mostly math.
The house sits mid village, but is far enough away from Napanee, that we do get to see a decent view of the night sky…and it isn’t too far away to get an even better view…just north along the Salmon river or somewhere to the north. We are not really in the country and yet it is pretty rural…farms nearby, wild places not too far away…lots of birds and wildlife…coyotes come through most nights about 3 am…there are migration flyways for geese just at the end of the village…last year we had swans go through…and there are eastern bluebirds, larks and bobolinks in the hay fields down the street….oh, and lots of cats….people dump their unwanted cats and kittens here all the time…we have taken in and fostered 5 pregnant mums this past year…more than 30 cats and kittens…both on our own and through the local shelters. We have found homes for all of them so far. There are two new mums upstairs in my studio and in Alicia’s room at the moment from the shelter…with 9 brand new babies. Now there is another rant i could get into…people not spaying and neutering their pets…but I will get into that another time.
I truly believe at this moment in our planet’s history and in the place we are right now as human beings…each of us has to do something to make the world a better place. It doesn’t have to be big. Teach your children about where their food comes from…show them vegetables growing…let them see a cow or pig if you can and that meat comes from living things too….show them how to recycle and why it is important…teach them to be kind to each other, their neighbours and friends, teach them compassion and respect for animals, for each other and for our planet. Show them the night sky and let them learn about our universe. Turn off a light. Turn down the thermostat. Join a group. Sign a petition.Teach your children tolerance, charity and compassion. Let them learn about other countries, religions, races and species. Anything that will impact our lives together on this small blue planet. Look at the stars…let them fill you with awe…let them inspire you to make a change, however small. From small things, big things come. From tiny acorns, mighty oaks grow.
Filed under: cats, horses | Tags: animal cruelty, animal welfare, animals, cat fur, cats, change, dog fur, dogs, moral progress, OSPCA, seal hunt, WSPA
We treat animals so badly, not just horses. Puppy and kitten mills, starved and abused animals, farm animals treated cruelly. What about the seal hunt…cruel, inhumane and totally unnecessary; there is no market left for the products…but it is tradition…a tradition which stops Canada from banning the use and sale of dog and cat fur in this country because we do not want to offend anyone(mostly Asian markets, as the E.U has banned our seal products) and dry up what market is left for our seal hunt. Check out those stuffed cats for sale in gift shops, the toys for cats and dogs with real fur…whose fur is it???? Most cat fur from Asia comes labelled as rabbit…do not be fooled…it is most often cat fur..and believe me when I tell you they are not killed in any way humanely…they die a painful death too horrible to contemplate. And Canada will not join in banning these products or even enact laws to label products properly.
Why do pet stores sell puppies and kittens (let them stick to fish) when there are millions of cats/kittens and dogs/puppies in shelters waiting for good homes…millions are killed by shelters every year because no one steps up? For the same reason there are children of older vintage who are not adopted…we want cute babies… not youngsters… cute kittens… not cats. The state of animal welfare in our civilized world is appalling…our laws do not do enough, the penalties are not harsh enough, they are not enforced. Dog fighting and the use of bait animals to train the dogs…cock fighting, bull fighting…we allow animals who have no choice in the matter to battle and bleed and die for our amusement. Perhaps we should go back to the days of Rome and gladiators…except they had no choice either. Choice is what we allow each other but not the animals entrusted to us. Institutional cruelty exists in Canada because our animal welfare laws of 1892…outlaw unnecessary suffering…and so would seem to allow necessary suffering…Check out “No Country For Animals”..Kevin Newman’s documentary for CanWest/Global.
I am tired of living in a country so smug because we make the list of places everyone wants to live…while we accept institutional cruelty, slaughter horses in a way that would make you sick, and live by animal welfare laws that have not been updated since the century before last…we pride ourselves on being a kind, gentle, peacekeeping country…all the while the creatures who live with us have no recourse and few protections. They are living, breathing, sentient and feeling creatures…pain is as horrible to them as it is to us…we spend millions on food and toys and trinkets for the animals we choose…and neglect the rest.
I love my country and I am a proud Canadian…but I am not proud of our continued abuse of animals and our inability to protect those who cannot speak for themselves. Countries in Europe are doing so much more than we are…surely it is time to make some changes…and truly become a kind, gentle and humane place to live. To quote a man I revere (as do many),
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”…Mahatma Ghandi
He also said,
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed”
and,
“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
That is precisely what I will try to do with the rest of my life. You can too…join the OSPCA,ASPCA, WSPA, the CHDC, any group working to change the lives of animals…adopt from shelters if you want a kitten or cat or puppy or dog or rabbit or any of the other animals that need homes…do not buy suspect fur products from Asia…not even those little fur mice for your kitty…contact your Representative, your MP, MPP, Mayor, Councillor…tell them you want to change and update our animal welfare laws and ban the sale of dog and cat fur and the slaughter of horses…if enough of us do these things it can happen…it must happen. If you know what happens to animals here or anywhere else in the world…change must come so we can sleep without nightmares and know we are the change…we are progressing morally and in every way we can.
Filed under: horses | Tags: animal welfare, billC-544, environment, horse slaughter, horses, mustangs, round ups, slaughter, wild horses
Horses have given us so much. They have pulled our plows and our heavy loads, carried us and all our worldly goods, broadened our horizons, gone to war with us, given us milk and food, entertained us with their speed and skill, rounded up our cattle, pulled our canal-boats and wagons, turned the mills, delivered the mail, the milk; their speed, stamina, endurance and strength was ours. They have enchanted us with their beauty and intelligence, rewarded us with their loyalty and companionship…they enthrall us with their wildness, their spirit and ability to survive in harsh conditions.
We have used them and abused them…bred them for size and shape, speed and strength, agility and pace. We have shaped them to fit our needs and wants…we have raced them, ridden them into new territories, terrified our enemies with them, traded them, eaten them, taken their milk and foals, cosseted them, starved them, rounded them up and turned them into dog food, worshipped and revered them. They are symbols of beauty and freedom and yet we treat them so badly, so cruelly. We over breed them, we stand them in stalls forever pregnant to produce the hormones that keep aging at bay, we race them after breeding them for speed at the loss of bone and then put them down when their bones break. We round them up from land and air, terrified and hurt: we fence them from water, we use them for target practice, we protect them by law (just not here) and then treat them like pests. And no one gives a damn because it doesn’t affect our pocket books. Little girls love them…books and stories and movies feature them…our history would be very different without them. They carried us into the frontier…and what do we give them in return….crops and whips, starvation and abuse, roundups where foals die and mares abort and dehydration kills, and then send them to god knows where…the end is often a harrowing and horrific transport to an inhumane and awful death at a slaughter-house…. here in Canada, our oh so lovely and kind nation. We slaughter horses for other people of the world..Japan, Belgium, France and the States.
What we owe to horses is a debt so big we can never pay it…yet pay they do. We owe them love, affection, food, water, exercise, green grass, flowing water, land to roam on. We owe them decent stabling, company and respect…we owe them a life of fulfillment and peace…they could still work with us, entertain us, enchant us and carry us over jumps and round racetracks…but with care and respect and humanity. We can let the wild ones be free…let them have the land intended for them, allow them access to water, stop seeing them as pests and forage stealers…allow the wild ones, the ones that trace their bloodline in part back to the Conquistadors, the protection and freedom that they should have…what in the States, the bill of 1971 says they should have.
Politicians in Canada and the United States should be ashamed of themselves when they look at the state of the wild horse, the state of horses in general. In Canada we cannot even agree that they are wild..only feral and not worth protecting…so any Tom, Dick or Harry can round them up or shoot them or abuse them, so much so, there are almost none left. In the United States, the horses and burros are at least protected by law…but the protectors are now the abusers. In Canada, our oh so kind and gentle and smug land, we slaughter horses for the world, Japan, Belgium, France…and we do it in a way that no animal should ever have to suffer (see the video available from inside a Canadian slaughter-house) We have rules governing their transport to slaughter…so much headroom on double-decker trucks, and yet no one enforces the rules…horses end up injured, maimed and dead before they ever reach the place where they are going to die a horrific, inhumane and terribly cruel death. The CFIA says they have rules and regulations about this…but who enforces them? This is what I got in return for a letter I wrote to them about this issue:
“Thank you for your interest in the issue of humane transport.
The regulations do not prohibit the transport of horses by double-decker trucks. The regulations specify that:
142. No person shall transport or cause to be transported animals in a railway car, motor vehicle, aircraft or vessel unless
(a) each animal is able to stand in its natural position without coming into contact with a deck or roof; and
(b) provision is made for the drainage or absorption of urine from all decks or levels.
Smaller horses can be segregated and shipped in double-decker trucks if they are able to stand in their natural position. If larger horses are shipped in violation of the regulations, the operator may be issued an Administrative Monetary Penalty by an inspector or face formal prosecution.
Thank you for using the CFIA web site.”
So…horses are inhumanely treated in so many ways…the wild horses of Canada and the United States are disappearing in the wild…there are now more mustangs in holding pens than on their range in the American west…they are sold, slaughtered and terrified. And supposedly protected by law. Canadian mustangs have no protection under federal law…and little under provincial…horses are slaughtered in Canada in at least 4 facilities…in a way that would make you sick…and you can see it on YouTube among other places…and the RCMP investigated and says there is no basis for charges…I wonder how they would feel if their beautiful Musical Ride horses ended up like that. Horses do not in any way deserve such callous treatment by our society.
There are people working to change things…check out some of the links here or google some…and get in touch with your MP and MPP right now…tell them how you feel…ask your MP to support the Private members bill C544…put forward by Alex Atamenenko..to ban horse slaughter in Canada. Please get involved.
The state of animal welfare in our civilized world is appalling…our laws do not do enough, the penalties are not harsh enough, they are not enforced. Institutional crueltyexists in Canada because our animal welfare laws of 1892…outlaw unnecessary suffering…and so would seem to allow necessary suffering…Check out “No Country For Animals”..Kevin Newman’s documentary for CanWest/Global.
I am distraught that I live in a country so smug because we make the list of places everyone wants to live…while we accept institutional cruelty, slaughter horses in a way that would make you sick, and live by animal welfare laws that have not been updated since the century before last…we pride ourselves on being a kind, gentle, peacekeeping country…all the while the creatures who live with us have no recourse and few protections. They are living, breathing, sentient and feeling creatures…pain is as horrible to them as it is to us…we spend millions on food and toys and trinkets for the animals we choose to spoil…and neglect the rest.
I love my country and I am a proud Canadian…but I am not proud of our continued abuse of animals and our inability to protect those who cannot speak for themselves. Countries in Europe are doing so much more than we are…surely it is time to make some changes…and truly become a kind, gentle and humane place to live. To quote a man I revere (as do many),
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”…Mahatma Ghandi
He also said,
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed”
and,
“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
That is precisely what I will try to do with the rest of my life.
Filed under: horses | Tags: animal welfare, canadian wild horses, cayuse, chilcotin, environment, horses, mustangs, Nemaiah Valley, Qiyus, sable island
… Tsilhqot’in for cayuse. Cayuse is the word for horse, or mustang, derived from the name of a now vanished tribe of natives who inhabited the present day north-west United States.
Wild horses in Canada are a species under threat. The total number of wild horses in our huge country is about 800…i did not forget a zero…that is eight hundred ! In the United States the estimate is 20 to 25,000 in the wild, possibly as many as 32,000….in Canada we are looking at a total population of 800…400 in B.C….200 in Alberta…200 on Sable Island. There is no possible way these small numbers constitute a threat to anyone or to the ranchers who complain about grazing competition with their cattle.
Wild horses in Canada exist mostly in 4 places…on Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia (Acadian horses from French blood were shipped to the island after the Acadian deportations of 1760)…In the Siffleur Wilderness Area in Alberta and in B.C. in the Chilcotin and Brittany triangle. In our Canadian herds, as in the American mustang, there is evidence of Spanish bloodlines…dating back to the Conquistadors in the 1500’s. Genetic dilution has occurred as horses from other sources joined herds over the years…but many mustangs here and in the states carry the genes of Spanish ancestors. There were at one time millions of horses here…the Assiniboine people had herds of mustang in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, there were horses acquired from the Shoshoni in Alberta and many thousands in B.C., nurtured and used by the Xeni Gwet’in . By the time explorer Simon Fraser ventured through the Chilcotin two centuries ago, the horse was already there.
In the United States, an Act of Congress became law in December of 1971, signed by then President Richard Nixon, to protect the wild horses and burros of the west…it is not working out at all well for the horses just now…but at least there is something on the books to argue about. Here in Canada, there is no federal law to protect or conserve our wild horses. They must contend with provincial laws…the Grazing act in B.C.…the Stray Animals Act in Alberta (in 1993 Alberta introduced the Horse Capture Plan which limits capture to 25 to 30 horses per year…it was up to about 2000 a decade) and the Sable Island Regulations section of the Canadian Shipping Act.
One of the biggest threats to Canadian wild horses is that they are not considered wild…they are considered feral…and not worthy of protection. They are considered an alien species by Environment Canada…alien and invasive.
A dispute over the horses of the Chilcotin has highlighted how we see and understand the concepts wild, indigenous and alien. Community members and the Xeni Gwet’in (ha-nay gwet-een) First Nations are fighting the government to classify the horses as indigenous wildlife, and they want a preserve created for their protection. The government says the horses are feral and not due any protection under the law, and ranchers view them as competition for their cattle. Logging destroys the horses’ habitat and leaves them vulnerable to predators. (Wild horses in western Canada are found primarily in forested areas, typically pine woodlands with pockets of grass and shrubland and sedge meadows). A typical herd is 5-10 individuals. Horse populations may increase when times are good, but high mortality rates due to starvation and predation by cougars/wolves during severe winters tend to prevent over population.
The horses’ classification as feral, and not wild, is based on Environment Canada’s definition of invasive alien species, which states: "Alien species become invasive when they establish and spread in the new environment, and threaten the native species, the environment, the economy, or some aspect of society."
Friends Of the Nemaiah Valley, say the horse population "is kept in check by predators and harsh winters, and they live in harmony with the existing ecosystem." But the government says horses on Crown land affect the area’s ecosystem by contributing to habitat destruction, through overgrazing and increasing competition for forage in the area.
The federal Species At Risk Act defines a wild animal as one "that is wild by nature and is either native to Canada or has extended its range without human intervention and has been present in Canada for 50 years." By these terms, the issue doesn’t lie with how long the horses have been in the area, but rather that theycame to North America by humans as domesticated animals.
"They are not considered wildlife under the provincial Wildlife Act, there is evidence to support that these horses are descendants of the original Spanish stock. The majority of them were born in the wild and live and behave as wild animals."
FONV supports a program to get DNA from the horses to trace their origins back to their Spanish ancestors. The Xeni Gwet’in First Nation is seeking injunctions against proposed logging and is part of a court case seeking land rights to the area. Everyone agrees that no one wants to see the entire population of horses disappear.
However…check out this story from 2008…
“Chilcotin aboriginals paid to shoot wild horses
December 6, 2008. The B.C. government paid aboriginal people in the Chilcotin to shoot wild horses for wolf bait and to round-up other wild horses for live sale, ultimately to slaughterhouses, The Vancouver Sun has learned.
The Ministry of Environment purchased the shot horses as wolf bait for a predator study related to the recovery of threatened caribou herds in the Interior, while the Ministry of Forests and Range bankrolled the live capture of horses as part of a program to reduce competition with range cattle.
News of the provincial actions is generating debate even within the aboriginal community over the management of wild horses in the Chilcotin and the need to ensure their humane treatment.
The forests ministry, through an agreement with TNG, paid the Stone band $200 a horse to catch 25 horses last winter to reduce competition with ranchers’ cattle. Up to half of the horses were sold at auction and ultimately sent to slaughterhouses, he said, and the rest were kept in the Chilcotin as saddle horses.
Environment Ministry spokesman Dan Gilmore confirmed the ministry paid members of the Xeni Gwet’in First Nation of the Nemaiah Valley $500 apiece for four horses last winter.
"When it came time to consider how best to lure and capture wolves for the purposes of the mountain caribou recovery program, it was recommended that we use horseflesh," he said in a statement.
The horses were shot last winter to aid in the live capture of wolves near Quesnel as part of ministry research into threatened caribou populations. Gilmore said larger carcasses are preferred because they keep the wolves longer at one location, and that moose carcasses are not always available.
Mike Pedersen, Chilcotin forest district manager, said the horse culls are a response to ranchers’ concerns about loss of forage. "It’s a worthwhile project," he said, noting that horses also compete with moose and mule deer. "These guys [ranchers] just have to buy more hay. And in these times for those individuals, it’s extremely difficult."
Aerial surveys in the area showed that the wild horse population has increased to 442 in 2008 from 123 in 1998.”
Wow…442 horses…on how much land??? The Brittany Triangle is 155,000 hectares and the Chilcotin is around 5 million acres…it is believed that about 100 horses live in the Brittany Triangle and the other 300 over the rest of the area. In the United States we are talking about 25,000 horses on 32 million acres…with much more supposedly available under the Wild and Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971.
For those of us hectare/acre/squarefootage-ly challenged: a hectare is
- 2.471 Acres
- 100 Ares,
- 10,000 square meters,
- 4,840 square yards,
- 107,637 square feet
The issue is not so much too many horses on too little land..it is competition with cattle ranchers over grazing/forage. When it comes to the pocketbook…the bottom line…who do you think will win???
I have spent a lot of time online recently, trying to learn about mustangs, here and in the States…and the overwhelming truth that appears over and over, is that there are not very many wild horses left in North America and they are under constant threat, the threat of extinction, through competition with cattle ranchers grazing their animals on public land, through energy and resource development, through drought and climate change, habitat destruction, senseless killing (Parker Ridge near Sundre, Al.) and wolf bait, and most of all through their lack of financial usefulness…it is apparently only through slaughter that you can value these incredible, beautiful, tragic animals. It is this lack on their part, of not touching our pocketbooks, that has, I think, ended them with a lack of political will on the part of government, to declare them wild and worthy of protection. There is much more money and tax to be made with logging, mining, oil production, pipelines and ranchers. Wildness is it seems a political issue…not one of nature. True, the mustang was once domesticated…500 years ago. How many generations must be foaled and nurtured in the wild before you are, in the eyes of politicians, at least, considered truly wild?? The distinction escapes me.
There are lots of links here…check them out…google yourself silly…contact your MP and tell them how you feel…the wild horses need us…and need us now, before it is too late.
Filed under: cats | Tags: animal welfare, cats, chipin, kittens, rescue, spay/neuter, stray cats, too many cats
Now there are two young kittens who appeared out of “nowhere”, again, and they are living in our yard and the woodshed of our neighbour. It is winter, and they need to be trapped and brought in and spayed and neutered before they begin to reproduce..which of course is possible at 6 months..they need de-worming as they both have pot-bellies and they need testing and their shots. Our shelter is overflowing, so my husband and I want to do this for the two babies, before winter gets any worse. Luckily January has been relatively mild. The problem is that we really do not have the funds to look after them, so I thought I would try to raise enough money to save them and find them homes. There are two, one orange and white and one a grey tabby. I will get some pictures on here soon. I know I am not a registered charity, but I hope you will find it in your heart to help a bit. Someone has to look after the cats others seem to think are disposable. And our local shelter is underfunded, overworked and overflowing with cats, mainly because folks don’t spay or neuter their pets. Thank you for reading this… Please check out the link to help billy and joy on the side bar.
Filed under: cats, hoarding?, Uncategorized | Tags: animal welfare, cats. too many cats, crazy cat lady, hoarders, love, spay/neuter, stray cats
I have too many cats. Yes, that is the consensus; Nancy is the crazy cat lady and she has too many cats. That, by the way, is not my opinion, but that of my family and friends.
I think I’ve got a good number of cats. Let’s see; Belle is the baby at 4 months, then there is Smokey at 6 months, Scamp & Spook, both almost a year, Mouse is two, Jett is 3, Molly, we don’t know, Jack’s almost 4, Tucker and Buster are around 9 or 10…also Thomas, our cat sitting visitor(?) and the two foster babies, Billy and Joy, who are about 4 or 5 months old. I guess I am going to have to get another cat or find homes for the fosters pretty quickly…I just added it up and I have 13…not a good number if you are superstitious.
The cats certainly don’t think there are too many of them..they all coexist quite happily…they are well fed, have clean water, clean litter boxes, medical care when they need it, get their shots every year and are all spayed and neutered…and there are lots of toys to play with, beds to sleep on, they all cuddle and purr and sleep and play and mostly get along, although Mouse still has issues with Jack.
There is nothing nicer in the winter than having a couple or two tabbies or black and white kitties warming your toes and snuggling against you. Some folks need silence to fall asleep and some need the tv…I just need a small furry body purring gently beside me.
There are those with too many cats, where the people are overwhelmed and the cats are unhappy and sick and the living conditions for all concerned are unacceptable…hoarders do exist, and they don’t just hoard junk, but animals too. Luckily, hoarding is now recognized as a psychiatric disorder and humane societies and the law are beginning to handle them differently than before, with more patience and respect, and often referrals to other services, recognizing that the animals are only part of the problem and that these folks need help in many ways.
As I look to my right and see Smokey and Belle curled up together in a small grey pile of fur, I know how lucky I am to know so many lovely souls and have their love and companionship. I also notice that Thomas, asleep in the big chair, is, at 18 1/2 pounds, 15 pounds heavier than Belle who barely hits 3 pounds after a meal. That’s 15 pounds or another cat. In my life though, probably two.
Filed under: horses | Tags: animal cruelty, animal welfare, BLM, heritage animals, horses, mustang, president obama, roundups, wild horses
It is a busy time in our world. Recession, terrorism, global warming, natural disasters like the earthquake in Haiti, man-made disasters like Darfur and the mess Chevron has made of the rainforest. I think about these things all the time, and I do what I can to make things better….reduce, reuse, recycle, insulate to lessen our use of fossil fuels, combine trips to use less gas in our car, give to charity as best I can…
Like many people, though, I do spend a lot of time worried about the things and people closer to home, our finances, David’s job, our ageing parents, our children, our cats, how to pay the bills, how to fix the car, things like that.
Recently, though, another issue has reared its ugly head in my brain and heart. Horses. Wild horses. Mustang. I do not know if you have heard or read of the Wild horse round ups going on in the States. The Bureau of Land Management has decided for some reason that there are horses where there shouldn’t be horses, and too many horses where should be horses and not enough land for them anywhere. They are rounding up and corralling horses and burros, moving them, slaughtering them and doing them no good at all. Many horses have died, some from being run off their feet and not getting treatment, mares have aborted, some euthanized for medical reasons, some die of exhaustion and other problems. The contractors used for some of the round ups are under criminal investigation for cruelty already, and many of the horses already rounded up have been withheld from public view. This whole thing stinks. And it stinks even more when you read reports that say the reason behind all this is money and energy development.
The Mustang, the wild horses of the United States, are federally protected because of the demands of the American people back in the fifties, sixties and seventies. A woman known as Wild Horse Annie (real name, Velma Bronn Johnston), an animal rights activist, campaigned for protection for the mustang, rounded up and slaughtered in the fifties. She worked tirelessly to get protection for these wild and fascinating creatures, and in 1959 Nevada took action and in 1971, the federal government passed a law protecting the horses and awarding them land to live on and roam free. Now, so many years later, Velma must have twisted her winding-sheet into knots as she spins in her grave, seeing what is happening to her beloved horses.
The wild horses are under threat, treated inhumanely and cruelly and it has to stop. The BLM adoption program has strict rules about shelter for adopted animals, but they are not following their own guidelines. The corralled and warehoused horses are not being looked after properly and it is winter, even in Nevada and elsewhere.
There is a lot of information out there for any of you interested…I have listed some links…check out the blog here on WordPress ”tuesdayshorse”.
If anyone has the time or inclination, please contact the White House, President and Mrs. Obama and anyone else you can think of.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: chocolate, love, luge, olympics, spend, valentines
Here we are, just into 2010, the Vancouver Olympics have just begun, with a beautiful and awe-inspiring opening ceremony and also the death of a young Georgian athlete. His family are devastated and his fellow lugers and all the Olympians are at a loss to explain it and deal with the grief they feel and we all feel. All my best wishes and sympathy go to Nordars family, friends and to all who are hurting from this terrible accident.
Today is Valentines day, a day of roses and chocolate, of dinners and sweethearts, a day on which I choose not to spend a fortune, but simply to tell those closest to me that I love them, honour them and respect them, a day when I will try to heal the rifts which sometimes happen, to apologize for being unkind and to strengthen our bond. The chocolate does appeal though…….I love chocolate….
