Oprah‘s doing a show on puppy mills today that I can’t even stand to watch, and I’m not even a dog person.
There are reports around that many of the people who are victims of this subprime mortgage scam are having to give up pets because the rental places they’re moving to don’t allow pets. As we well know, having three cats, & from having numerous friends with pets who had to move, it can be difficult to find a place to live with them.
Volunteers here in Park Slope catch, neuter, and release feral cats. Others like BAFN foster, save, and check in on pets that have been left behind
So why is this the case? With all the people who are currently unemployed, why don’t we have a New Deal type program to take care of our nation’s animals and to change the laws that would keep landlords from barring pets? I can understand restrictions on how many pets, or how many pounds worth of pet (our three cats, for instance, don’t do nearly as much damage as one large dog could), or whatever. But we’re a nation that loves our animals, and yet you have horrors like animal abuse and puppy mills and the stupid decisions that separated people from their pets during the Katrina evacuations.
It seems there’s plenty of work to do, and improving conditions for our four-legged Americans might be a good place to start.
Thanks so much for this post, Helen. There are so many unwanted and abandoned pets in this country. My partner Sandra and I volunteer at Max Fund (maxfund.org), Denver’s only no-kill animal shelter. We see them every weekend when we do some volunteer time.
Are there laws that allow landlords to ban pets or is it just a practice that no one has every challenged? If these laws do exist, I’m all for changing them!
A part of our hearts…. all our animal friends.
In Chicago there is the Treehouse Foundation and PAWS as well as the Humane Society. All do not harm our animal friends.
I have been trying to tame a ferral cat for some time. “Oscar, the Actor, Big Buddy”* was making progress. He finally came in and let me pet him. But I made a mistake. I accidentally put my hand between his eyes and the door. He bit me and hard, all the way to the bone. The bite got infected. I had to stay in the hospital for five days and almost had to have surgery on my wrist (where he bit me) to expunge the infection.
As an expert told me, feral kitties look like house companions. But they are not. They can be very dangerous. This is another reason for us to help our furry companions that have been abandoned so they do not go wild.
Cat bites are very dangerous as kitties have an inordinate amount of bacteria in their saliva. So I really do recommend a compassionate shelter for our furry companions that need experts to assist them in acclimating to being with us.
As to a “Furry New Deal”. That is a great idea. Does anyone know if non profit shelters have access to grants? All the shelters I donate to exclusively use private donations.
Catrina