Written by Alisa Mullins
Which TV show is tops with cats? No, it isn't Real Housecats of Beverly Hills, CSI: Meowmi, or even Purrsey Shore. As PETA staffer Lindsay Rajt's kitties illustrate, cats would rather watch real songbirds perform aerial acrobatics than watch Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler put human songbirds through their paces on American Idol any day of the week:
Are your lap cats in danger of becoming couch potatoes? Consider investing in a DVD like Lindsay's cats' favorite, Cat Sitter, and turn your flat screen into a cat screen for some interactive feline fun.
Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post
A cat was found in the back of someone's garage, emaciated, anemic, and suffering in the final stages of feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), which attacks cats' immune systems much like HIV does in humans. Several people in the neighborhood had been feeding her and noticed that she was eating less and losing weight, but no one had bothered to take her to a veterinarian.
PETA's Cruelty Investigations Department gave the cat a merciful release from her suffering, but countless other stray and feral cats—and even cats who have homes but are allowed to roam outdoors—suffer agonizing deaths after contracting FIV, feline leukemia virus (FeLV), feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), and other contagious and fatal diseases.
These diseases are incurable and almost always deadly, and they are easily transmitted from one cat to another, often through saliva or feces. (Catfights are the prime mechanism for the transmission of these illnesses.) Infected cats may not show symptoms for years and may even test negative for the diseases initially, only to test positive later. If you let your cat roam outdoors, he or she is at risk of contracting these diseases and contaminating other cats (including the other felines in your home) before you even know he or she is sick.
Please protect your cat from these terrible diseases as well as the many other dangers cats face outdoors, such as traffic, cruel people, poisons, attacks by animals, parasite infestations, and weather extremes. Keep your cats indoors and allow him or her out only on a leash and harness (with you at the other end of it, of course) or into a securely fenced yard while under your constant watchful eye.
This cat was hit by a car
Shamanic Shift|cc by 2.0
And if you see a cat hanging around your neighborhood, don't assume that someone else is taking care of him or her. Instead of leaving the cat to take his or her chances on the streets, take the animal to a shelter, where he or she will have a chance at finding a loving home with people who care enough to keep the cat safe indoors.
Written by Jeff Mackey
Check this out: U.S. Representative Robert E. Andrews of New Jersey has introduced a bill in Congress (H.R. 220) that would designate the first Saturday in October as “National Animal Rescue Day” to encourage adoption, spaying and neutering, and creating a “humane environment” for companion animals.
This is such a wonderful idea and how appropriate that a member of Congress from the Garden State would be instrumental in trying to get us a bit closer to a Garden of Eden for animals in need!
Please do your part to make National Animal Rescue Day a reality—encourage your federal representative to support H.R. 220 today, and urge your friends and family to push their members of Congress to do the same!
Here's some exciting news from PETA's home region of Hampton Roads, Virginia: Following more than two years of urging from PETA, the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth (NMCP) has completely replaced its cruel and crude use of ferrets for teaching lifesaving intubation skills to physicians and others with more modern and effective simulators.
Joining PETA in calling for an end to this cruel ferret laboratory were several military and civilian medical experts with firsthand knowledge about the superiority of simulators, including a pediatrician who is a former commander of NMCP. Previously, ferrets had hard plastic tubes forced down their delicate windpipes as often as 10 times per session—a procedure that can cause bleeding, swelling, pain, scarring, collapsed lungs, and even death.
NMCP joins the Naval Medical Center San Diego, Tripler Army Medical Center, William Beaumont Army Medical Center, and Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences—as well as more than 90 percent of pediatric residency programs nationwide—that have already ended the use of cats and ferrets for intubation training in favor of superior human simulators.
USFWS Mountain Prairie | cc by 2.0
Please help persuade St. Louis Children's Hospital and Washington University in St. Louis to replace painful intubation training exercises on cats and ferrets with humane and superior non-animal methods.
A big "Thank you!" is due to the Gratiot County Board of Commissioners for taking an important step toward ending the betrayal of homeless animals in Michigan.
You may recall that this past winter, the University of Michigan ended a cruel cat laboratory after PETA revealed that the school was purchasing homeless cats from R&R Research, a notorious Class B dealer. PETA also discovered that R&R obtained many of the cats from the Gratiot County, Michigan, animal shelter. Local citizens joined PETA in calling for reform, and the commissioners have now passed a resolution to strictly limit the number of animals that it releases to R&R Research.
He is of one of the cats who ended up at the University of Michigan and was killed
Gratiot County couldn't completely ban the release of animals to R&R because of a contract that runs through February 2014, but the commissioners voted to release only one animal to R&R in each of the next two years. While it's disappointing that two animals will still fall into R&R's hands, the commissioners are making the best of a bad situation—especially when you consider that, last year, the county animal shelter handed more than 30 animals over to that torture pimp. In addition, the county voted to end the barbaric use of gassing as a method for euthanasia at the shelter.
Mecosta County—the only other county in the state whose shelter was releasing animals for use in experiments—confirmed that starting July 1, its shelter will no longer do so. So when Gratiot County's contract with R&R expires, it will mark the complete end of pound seizure in the state of Michigan.
Please ask your congressional representatives to prohibit Class B dealers from selling lost, abandoned, and stolen animals to laboratories.
Written by Michelle Kretzer
St. Louis drivers who stop to fill up their tanks will get an eyeful of Washington University in St. Louis' cruelty to cats. PETA has placed hard-hitting ads on top of the pumps at seven gas stations near the campus to show the university's students, faculty, and alumni that the school uses cats like most of us use cars—as equipment.
Instead of using modern human-patient simulators in the intubation training exercises it holds in conjunction with St. Louis Children's Hospital, trainees are asked to repeatedly force hard plastic tubes down cats' and ferrets' throats, causing their delicate windpipes to bleed, swell, and scar. Cats can even die as a result of the injuries sustained during this traumatic procedure.
© iStockphoto.com/Grigoriy Lukyanov
Drivers may pull into the gas stations lamenting "pain at the pump," but they'll leave disgusted by the pain that Washington University in St. Louis is inflicting on cats. And PETA added more fuel to the fire with similar ads in newspapers and online.
If the school wants to truly honor its namesake, George Washington, who had nine companion animals at the White House, it should call off the cruel cat laboratory and switch to the modern simulators already in use at nearly every other similar facility in the country.
Update: After being placed on administrative leave, Officer J.N. Snoddy was convicted of one count of misdemeanor cruelty to animals and fined.
The original post ran on December 15, 2011:
When Harrisonburg, Virginia, police officer J.N. Snoddy was dispatched to render emergency aid to a cat who had been hit by a car and was partially paralyzed, he apparently decided that, instead of promptly and speedily driving the injured animal to the nearest emergency veterinary hospital (just 30 minutes away), he would instead beat the animal to death with his police-issued baton.
Good Samaritan and eyewitness Wayne Meadows, who originally called to get help for the injured cat, was so horrified by the officer's alleged conduct that he vowed to publicize what had happened and make sure that no animal would ever be beaten and killed like that again.
Meadows called news outlets and contacted PETA to share what he witnessed. Thanks to his actions, which prompted a letter from PETA to officials and enormous public outcry, the Virginia State Police have launched a criminal investigation into Snoddy's alleged conduct.
This case shows the power of one individual to bring about justice for animals. With an investigation now underway, PETA is hopeful that the Harrisonburg Police Department (HPD) will take us up on our offer to provide free training to all field staff in the humane and legal handling of animal emergencies. HPD is also being pressured to establish standard operating procedures for officers who evidently can't always be trusted to use good judgment in animal-related cases.
If you ever witness cruelty to animals, and authorities don’t do their job, don't hesitate to contact PETA for help.
To look at 5-month-old siblings Bronson and Felix now, it's hard to picture them as the sickly newborn kittens a PETA investigator discovered at Caboodle Ranch, Inc., a no-kill hellhole that was raided this week after masquerading as a "cat rescue sanctuary."
On Monday, based on evidence that PETA gathered during a five-month undercover investigation, officials in Madison County, Florida, began seizing hundreds of cats from Caboodle's moldy trailers and ammonia-ridden sheds and arrested founder and operator Craig Grant on cruelty-to-animals and other charges, including two felonies. The seized cats are finally receiving the veterinary care that they had been denied at Caboodle, but the filthy conditions and rampant disease there had already cost many cats their lives, including Bronson's and Felix's littermate.
Cali nurses her three kittens in addition to the sick white kitten PETA's investigator tried to help.
PETA's investigator had discovered a tiny white kitten all alone, with eyes so encrusted with dried discharge that they wouldn't open. The investigator took the kitten to Grant and pointed out the animal's obvious illness. Instead of providing the kitten with veterinary care, Grant rubbed a Clorox wipe across the kitten's eyes and rubbed and picked at them roughly with his hands. He told the investigator to put the kitten with a cat named Cali, who had given birth at Caboodle to kittens our investigator named Bronson, Felix, and Luna. Within a month, the little white kitten had died at Caboodle, apparently of an untreated upper respiratory infection.
Desperate to save the other three kittens, the investigator asked Grant for them, and he gave them to her. Our investigator took them straight to a veterinary hospital. There, the kittens were started on medication for upper respiratory infections and began their recovery from dehydration. But just two days later, little Luna was struggling to breathe, and the investigator rushed her to an emergency animal hospital. As a result of the neglect Luna had suffered at Caboodle, she was now battling anemia, hypoglycemia, and hypothermia. Despite shots of dextrose to raise her blood sugar and heating pads to stave off the hypothermia, little Luna could not overcome the hand that Caboodle and Grant had dealt her and, at a veterinarian's recommendation, was euthanized.
It was a rough road for Bronson and Felix and for the investigator who fostered them on their long path to recovery. But after months of intensive veterinary care, both miracle cats are now happy and healthy and are ready for adoption by a family who has the time and energy to give them the love and care that they need and deserve. Are you on the East Coast and ready to give Bronson and Felix a home? Apply to Adopt@peta.org.
Bronson and Felix finally get to experience the kind of life that every cat deserves.
These cats' sad stories are doomed to be repeated time and time again if a bill in the Florida legislature becomes law. Under the misleadingly named "Animal Rescue Act," reputable open-admission animal shelters would be forced to hand animals over to self-proclaimed "rescues" like Caboodle. Don't let this dangerous bill pass.
Written by PETA
It is finally the beginning of the end for the horrific cat hell known as "Caboodle Ranch, Inc." (Caboodle)—a disgusting, crowded, disease-ridden no-kill "rescue sanctuary" in Madison County, Fla.—that has long been the subject of complaints to PETA's office.
Today, thanks to evidence gathered by a five-month-long PETA undercover investigation, the cats are being seized and taken to safety.
Video footage and photos taken by PETA's investigator show cats suffering from upper-respiratory infections so severe that they gasped for air and struggled to breathe, drooled, and had bloody mucus clogging their noses. Cats also had ruptured corneas, went blind, and, in some cases, died. One such cat, Lilly, died after fighting for months, losing her battle with what initially seemed to be a simple cold.
Caboodle's founder and operator, Craig Grant, faces criminal charges of cruelty to animals, based on the information gathered by PETA. We are grateful to Madison County Animal Control, the Madison County Sheriff's Office, and the Third Judicial District of Florida State Attorney's Office for taking this case seriously and pursuing it with the seriousness that it deserves.
This investigation comes at a critical time for homeless and unwanted animals in Florida. A dangerous bill is currently making its way through Florida's legislature. Animal shelters would be forced to hand over animals to self-proclaimed, unregulated animal "rescues" like Caboodle if the misleading "Animal Rescue Act" (S.B. 818 and H.B. 597) becomes law. PETA is calling on the bill's sponsors to withdraw the legislation without delay. Won't you please help us?
Written by Dan Paden
As viewers of the popular reality shows about hoarders can likely confirm, peering inside the homes of people who suffer from the psychological compulsion to collect things has a certain morbid attraction, until you realize the toll it takes on the families of the afflicted—and it's far worse when the "things" they're collecting are living, feeling beings.
Animal hoarding is a serious and growing problem, with hoarders taking on far more animals than they can properly care for. The number of reported cases is on the rise, leading the Animal Legal Defense Fund to call hoarding "the number one animal cruelty crisis facing companion animals in communities throughout the country."
Chillingly, the so-called "no kill" movement propagated by the likes of Nathan Winograd offers cover for these disturbed individuals, many of whom claim to be "rescuing" the animals and attempt to justify the suffering that they cause as a matter of principle. A Los Angeles Times blog post reported that a quarter of the roughly 6,000 new hoarding cases reported each year in the U.S. consist of supposed "shelters" and "rescues."
Animals kept in crates at a “no kill” shelter.
Even when rescues and animal shelters aren't hoarding animals themselves—like the self-proclaimed animal "hospice and rehabilitation center" called "Angel's Gate" and the now-defunct "Sacred Vision Animal Sanctuary"—they all too often give away animals to anyone who will take them, including hoarders, to manipulate their euthanasia statistics, regardless of what tragedy that translates into for the animals.
Here are just a few recent examples:
The failure of "no kill" animal shelters and rescues to address the problems facing homeless animals—and often making matters worse—is why PETA remains focused on the solution to the animal overpopulation crisis: creating a no-birth nation. PETA's fleet of mobile low-cost veterinary clinics (responsible for sterilizing 10,564 animals in 2011 and almost 80,000 so far since 2001!) and our advocacy of strong spay-and-neuter legislation are key to keeping animals out of the hands of hoarders and other people who don't have their best interests at heart and guaranteeing that every animal born has a loving, permanent home awaiting him or her.
Volunteer to help your local animal shelter screen potential adopters and placement partners. Animal shelters can contact PETA for placement-partner applications and agreements. Please also be sure to spay or neuter your animal companions and encourage others to do the same—it's the best way to end the need for animal rescues altogether!
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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