Written by Alisa Mullins
It was late at night, and the homeowner heard a cat howling in agony. He went outside to investigate and realized that the trap that had been set by a "nuisance"-wildlife trapper for a groundhog had snared a different victim. When Paulette Dean, the executive director of southern Virginia's Danville Area Humane Society, got the call about a cat in a trap, she naturally assumed that the animal was in a humane box trap normally used to catch feral cats, but when the animal arrived at the shelter, the staffer on duty was horrified to discover that the cat was clamped in a barbaric body-gripping Conibear trap.
The cat's internal organs were damaged, and there was internal bleeding. So the animal was released from pain. "There was no choice," Dean says.
Conibear traps crush animals' necks and bodies, applying 90 pounds of pressure per square inch. Animals caught in these traps slowly suffocate or die of internal injuries, and those caught in water-set body-gripping traps, such as muskrats and beavers, slowly drown.
Dean says that the shelter also receives dogs who have been caught in steel-jaw traps. These traps, which clamp down on animals' legs, cause excruciating pain as they cut into the flesh, often down to the bone. Some animals, especially mothers with babies to feed, may try to chew off their limbs in an attempt to escape. Dean wants to see both types of cruel traps banned in Danville.
"We believe that no trap except a live-capture or humane trap should be used within the city limits," she told the local newspaper. "The steel traps, beaver traps and bear traps may be legal, but they are not humane and place humans and companion animals at risk. We are also concerned about the suffering the traps cause wild animals."
What You Can Do
Cruel steel traps are just one of the many dangers faced by stray, feral, and free-roaming cats. Keep your cat safe indoors, and urge everyone you know to do the same. Catch strays in humane box traps and take them to an animal shelter, where they will be safe until they can be adopted or claimed by their guardians. If you are having conflicts with wildlife, visit our wildlife page for humane solutions.
Written by Michelle Kretzer
Little Olivia was found in a warehouse district and brought to PETA by a distraught worker. She needed round-the-clock veterinary care to treat an infection that almost left her blind, anemia so severe that she was a candidate for a blood transfusion, and advanced malnutrition. Soon, Olivia slowly started to regain her strength. She had clearly been someone's companion since she was spayed and declawed, but she wound up wandering about by herself and no one knew why. PETA ran ads, but no one responded to them or to the "found animal" reports that we filed or to our fliers. Her background remains a mystery.
Despite everything that she had endured, Olivia still loved humans, especially the devoted PETA fieldworker who spent the night on the floor with her the first few nights of her sojourn with us. We wanted to make sure that her gentle spirit and seemingly endless desire for affection would never be taken for granted again. Even though we placed Olivia's picture and an appeal to adopt her on the front page of PETA's website, alerted our members and supporters through Facebook, and put fliers around town, we didn't find a suitable adopter. Luckily, a PETA staffer who had taken her in to foster decided that the precious cat should stay. She loves her feline brother, Clyde, who is also a PETA rescue.
Although some people can pay top dollar for a Yorkshire terrier, that doesn't always mean that the little dog will have a great home. And poor Benny certainly didn't. PETA found him dodging traffic on a dangerous street and took him to our headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia. He had a collar but no tags or microchip, and again, although we filed reports and posted fliers and ads, no one bothered to claim him.
Even though Yorkies are popular, Benny had been through enough, and not just anyone who wanted a cute tiny dog would make a suitable adopter. It took a lot of looking for a home, but thanks to a local vet clinic, PETA found a retired couple who had just had to euthanize one of their two Yorkies because of old age and failing health. When we visited with the family at their home, they fit Benny to a T, and Benny is now helping the other dog stop grieving.
It isn't easy to find decent, lasting homes for animals—not just homes where they will be sheltered, fed, walked, and sometimes petted but homes where animals are respected members of the family. Every animal deserves companionship, excellent vet care, playtime, fun outings to the park or beach (for dogs), and a peaceful, painless release when their lives have come to an end. PETA won't compromise our standards and send an animal into a substandard home just to make our adoption rates look good.
So, can you help? We are now searching for the perfect home for Bea. She was found wandering the streets, and although she is in good health and thus likely hasn't been on her own for long, no one seems to want to claim her.
Bea is a calm, sweet beagle-Chihuahua mix who weighs about 25 pounds. She is young and housetrained. She gets along well with children and other dogs and would be happiest with someone who is often home. She is irresistible.
If you think that your family is the perfect adoptive family for Bea and you would like to help with our next success story, please e-mail us at Adopt@peta.org.
Poor little Olivia was a 5-pound skeleton with fur when a man found her wandering outside the warehouse where he works, just a few miles from PETA's headquarters at the Sam Simon Center in Norfolk, Virginia. She was suffering from an apparent sinus infection, which had caused her cheeks to balloon to the point that her eyes were just slits and she could barely see. On top of that, she was so weakened and anemic from prolonged, severe malnutrition that she was only a day or two away from needing a blood transfusion.
PETA rushed her to a veterinarian, and with round-the-clock care, she beat the odds and pulled through. She's now recuperating at PETA's Sam Simon Center, where she is already feeling well enough to display a natural aptitude for the Cat Charmer.
If you are interested in opening your home to a feline companion, Olivia comes highly recommended: PETA staffers bill her as a 3- to 4-year-old sweetie pie who gets along well with other friendly cats. No one claimed Olivia through the lost-and-found report that we filed, even though she obviously once had a home (she has been spayed and declawed), and she will be vaccinated and microchipped before she is adopted out.
Does Olivia sound like she could be your new best friend? Send an e-mail to Adopt@peta.org to find out more or to fill out an adoption application.
Written by Jeff Mackey
By the time PETA learned that a tiny kitten had become trapped inside a statue of President Abraham Lincoln at a museum in Florida, concerned folks, including the local humane society and fire department, had attempted a variety of methods to rescue him, unfortunately without success.
The frightened kitten was trapped a few feet down with only a tiny hole through which his helpers could pass food and water. The only way to rescue him would be to break open the statue, but the museum owner balked.
PETA's caseworker spoke to members of the museum owner's family and warned them that he could face abandonment charges. Voilà! The next morning, the owner let the fire department cut a hole in the statue in a rescue worthy of the Great Emancipator himself. The kitten—now named Little Abe—is being fostered until he is healthy enough to be adopted into a permanent home.
Little Abe's rescue serves as a reminder of the importance of perseverance. As Lincoln once wrote, "Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing." If an animal is in danger, never take "no" (or even dozens of them) for an answer. Keep trying until help arrives.
In Michigan, birth control may be controversial when it comes to humans, but when it comes to dogs and cats, it's a no-brainer. As a bill that would restrict birth control heads to the governor's desk, PETA is proposing to erect this billboard in the state capital:
It is estimated that 6 to 8 million unwanted animals enter our nation's animal shelters every year, and only about half leave them alive because of a lack of good homes. Countless others never make it to shelters and die on the streets or at the end of a chain.
The key to ending this suffering is spaying and neutering animals to prevent them from producing litter after litter of unwanted animals.
You can help by supporting PETA's fleet of mobile spay-and-neuter clinics, which have spayed and neutered more than 80,000 animals at low to no cost in the 11 years since the first clinic rolled out of our parking lot, preventing the suffering of hundreds of thousands of unwanted puppies and kittens.
And if you have the time, money, and resources to care for an animal companion, please adopt from a shelter—never buy an animal from a pet store or breeder.
During PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk's recent trip to work with our friends at PETA India and Animal Rahat, the Indian working-animal rescue group that PETA supports, she took part in an impromptu rescue herself (as she is—and more of us should be—regularly inclined to do). As she explains:
We were stuck in traffic. If there had been lanes, it would have been about four lanes on either side of the concrete wall on which people live—their laundry hanging on a string, their babies sitting up there, the works. The road is filled with beggar children, many from crime syndicates, just like in Slumdog Millionaire. Beside the wall, there were two children painting a baby's face with lipstick. One dangled a skinny kitten in the crook of her arm, inches from the cars. We rummaged in our toy bag, selected a stuffed tiger, leapt out of the car, and offered the swap. The children were delighted with their new toy, and we were delighted to have saved a small cat from a bad end. Safe in the car, with a lap to curl into, the kitten fell instantly asleep and, oblivious to all honking and motor noise, slept as if he'd never slept before. We named him Craig after the PETA patron who had helped make this trip possible.
We were stuck in traffic. If there had been lanes, it would have been about four lanes on either side of the concrete wall on which people live—their laundry hanging on a string, their babies sitting up there, the works. The road is filled with beggar children, many from crime syndicates, just like in Slumdog Millionaire.
Beside the wall, there were two children painting a baby's face with lipstick. One dangled a skinny kitten in the crook of her arm, inches from the cars. We rummaged in our toy bag, selected a stuffed tiger, leapt out of the car, and offered the swap. The children were delighted with their new toy, and we were delighted to have saved a small cat from a bad end.
Safe in the car, with a lap to curl into, the kitten fell instantly asleep and, oblivious to all honking and motor noise, slept as if he'd never slept before. We named him Craig after the PETA patron who had helped make this trip possible.
You'll be glad to know that Craig has been adopted and is now a cherished companion.
Every day, Animal Rahat is working to make India a kinder place for animals—especially the bullocks, donkeys, and other working animals who are commonly abused and neglected. Please help Animal Rahat by making a donation to support its lifesaving efforts.
A Florida man came home to a shocking discovery. The bank had foreclosed on his home, taken possession of it, and left his cat, Milo, trapped inside. The man called his lender repeatedly, asking to be let inside the house to retrieve Milo, but the bank refused. The cat had some food and water, but it wouldn't be enough to sustain him for long. Fearing for the cat's life, the man's mother called PETA for help.
What’s wrong with this picture? This kitty isn’t wearing her must-have accessory—an ID tag.
When we called the bank, the president was still averse to letting the former homeowner into the house, so we convinced the president to go over himself and put out food and water for the cat. Then, when Milo's guardian made yet another trip to the house to check on the cat, he spotted Milo—outside. The cat had likely seen an opportunity to escape during the bank president's visit, but Milo was frightened and wouldn't go to his guardian.
PETA walked the man through how to set up a trap using strong-smelling bait, and it didn't take long to catch the hungry cat. Milo was finally reunited with his relieved guardian.
Despite our best efforts, cats can become lost. PETA offers tips for guardians on how to get lost cats safely back home:
When a Houston woman found a skinny kitten covered with fleas, she began calling "no-kill" shelters looking for somewhere to take the animal, not knowing that these types of shelters are usually full and offer no help. Frustrated and worried, she called PETA.
We encouraged the caller to bring the kitten indoors right away and set up a temporary home for the animal in the bathroom, where the tabby would be safe and could be given much-needed food and water. The woman agreed. We found a reputable open-admission shelter in the area that would be able to accept the kitten when it opened the next day. The next morning, after just one phone call, the kitten had a welcoming, comfortable place to stay and a chance for a home. Once again, "no-kill" shelters had done nothing to help, while an open-admission shelter had. Open-admission shelters can't place every animal, but they don't turn their backs and leave kittens like this to suffer on the streets or end up giving birth and compounding the homelessness crisis.
So-called "no-kill" shelters sound heroic, but they are often anything but. In reality, they are limited-admission shelters, which turn away the most vulnerable animals and often allow only the youngest, cutest animals admission. And many such places force animals to live for years in a cage, even when the animals are sick or losing their minds from such confinement.
No one wants to have to perform euthanasia, but some of the most caring people in the world have to be brave enough to provide animals with a painless exit from an uncaring world—because no matter what the "no-kill" hucksters and hoarders say, there are too many dogs and cats and too few homes, and leaving them on the streets, selling them to laboratories, or just shunting them along to other states, is not a solution to the animal-homelessness crisis.
Blame needs to be placed where it belongs—at the hands of breeders, and people who refuse to spay and neuter their animals. In the meantime, open-admission shelters will continue to take in all of society's castoffs, not just the young, healthy, and cute ones—and not just when it's convenient.
If you know anyone who is thinking of buying instead of adopting or who still needs to make that sterilization appointment for a dog or cat, please help us reduce euthanasia by giving them the facts, not by supporting some "no-kill" fantasy facility.
Following troubling incidents in which students desecrated the bodies of dead cats in a school classroom, California's Newport-Mesa Unified School District has confirmed to PETA that it's replacing cruel and crude cat dissections in district schools with modern virtual-dissection software. This progressive change follows a PETA plea and offer to provide the district with non-animal teaching methods. Now, kids in the district will learn about life sciences more effectively and humanely—and without being taught the dangerous lesson that animals are nothing more than tools to be used and abused.
Cruelty in the Curriculum
The district's decision to eliminate cat dissection came after an outcry erupted over Facebook photos showing Newport Harbor High School students who played, posed, and smiled with the mutilated bodies of cats used in a biology class. The photos were brought to the attention of PETA and the faculty by brave students in the school's Compassion in Action club. PETA immediately contacted the school district with information about better, kinder methods of teaching anatomy and offered to provide the district with the software.
Cats who are cut apart in school dissections come from biological supply houses, which obtain the bodies of lost, stray, and abandoned animals from animal shelters—meaning that some cats used in biology classes may be the lost animal companions of families.
It's no surprise that trying to teach kids science with mutilated animals can foster callousness toward animals and breed this kind of inexcusable behavior.
Make the Switch
Is your school system still stuck in the Dark Ages, with animals paying the price? Learn more about how you can cut out dissection.
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You'll never guess what one little thing shortens a woman's life span as much as if she had smoked 25,000 cigarettes.
You know about the zombie apocalypse: people attempting to eat each other. But did you know that people eating animals is also leading to something sinister: the water apocalypse?
The U.S. military has revealed its powerful new canine service member—a robotic dog! Hopefully, this will save real military dogs from some of the more dangerous duties.
DVIDSHUB | cc by 2.0
And a British canine military hero is being honored with the highest award that an animal in the British military can receive for lifesaving devotion to duty. Theo is said to have detected more Taliban roadside bombs and weapons caches than any dog in Afghanistan to date.
Another hero dog gave his own life to pull his guardian out of the path of an oncoming train. If only people were as loyal to animals as they are to us.
But at least this man is: Check out the impressive cat tower that one guardian built to apologize to his cat for having to give him painful ear drops to treat an infection.
New Action Alerts
Cats should be cherished, not tormented in laboratory experiments. Ask the National Institutes of Health to stop giving taxpayer money to the University of Wisconsin–Madison to conduct crude experiments in which cats have steel coils implanted in their eyes, holes drilled into their skulls, and electrodes implanted in their brains.
New Features
You can read more about the University of Wisconsin–Madison's cruel cat laboratories here.
Hip-hop artist and producer k-os always speaks up about things that matter, and he's showing everyone how to find their own voice for animals in his new PETA spot.
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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