A day to foster better days for animals

Today is World Animal Day. It began in 1931 as a way to highlight the plight of endangered animals around the world. (Does that include cows and pigs and chickens on their way to slaughter?)

October 4 is the feast day of Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals. (Maybe the animals – seemingly more beleaguered than ever -- haven’t been praying hard enough.)

OK, enough editorializing. The program for World Animal Day has to do with threatened or endangered animals. The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates that over 9,200 animal species worldwide fall into that category. In New Jersey, nearly 80 species are so described, and 100 more are considered of “special concern.”

Even for common animals, like birds, bees and bats, the outlook’s alarming. All three are in serious decline for one reason or another – many of them having to do with human activity. Pollution, habitat loss and habitat fragmentation impact entire ecosystems and the animals living there.

“Animals don’t need to evolve: we do.” That’s the theme for this year’s World Animal Day. The hope is that observing this day will help raise awareness of what we can do better toward animals and the environment – their environment too!

“Another part of the evolution is continuing to preserve open space and wildlife habitat here in New Jersey, the nation’s most densely populated state. People need homes, but so do animals!” -- Michele S. Byers, Executive Director of the NJ Conservation Foundation. (njconservation.org)
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What would YOU do?

As you back out of a parking space behind the ice cream shop, you see a very thin, sick-looking cat sitting a few cars away, illuminated by a street light. She’s not anyone’s pet, at least now, and therefore needs help from someone else.

You get out the bag of cat treats you carry in your car and walk slowly toward the cat, who backs up onto the curb area, watching you. As you make the s-s-s-s-s-s-s sound that gets cats’ attention, and hold out a few yummies, she comes toward you in a stop and go kind of way, seeming interested and yet wary.

Two or three times, she comes very close to you, then seeming to regret her advance, nips your wrist and jumps back. (At the time, you think she swiped you with her claw; later it turns out she was declawed in front. So it must have been her teeth that drew blood in a few places.)

She follows you along the curb to a tree, where she eats numbers of the snacks, seeming not to have eaten for days and days. You start back to your car, where your husband, who’s driving, waits. (He had also urged you not to approach the cat, not to feed her and certainly not to try picking her up.)

The cat – looking to be a yellowish and gray tabby -- follows you to the car and seems ready to get in. So you pick her up and she settles down in your arms. Your husband drives away and the two of you try to figure out where-to now.

* Faced with the situation described above, what would YOU do, and how and why? In a post to come, I’ll pick up this story about what we – my husband and I and the cat -- did.
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“…unto one of the least of these my brethren”

He’s b-a-a-a-a-a-a-k. J. B. Kasper, the outdoorsman behind the Times of Trenton’s weekly “Outdoors” column, this week wrote about how “Drought creates easy pickings for smallies.”

Translation: Despite the weather, you can still catch fish if you follow his instructions.

And his advice, excerpted here from the column, with wording and punctuation exactly as they appeared, includes the following:

· “Hook your minnows through the lips when using shiners, and through the head from the bottom to the top when using killies and fatheads.”

· “Once you detect a hit, wait a second or two and set the hook. This will usually hook the fish in the lip and makes for less gut hooked fish.”

· “Hooking a minnow in the manner we(!) have described and casting it into this flat water will cause the minnow to swim around on the surface of the water.”

· . . . “you can often catch more than one fish on a minnow. Even though the minnow might be dead it can still be used effectively. When the minnow is dead, re-hook it deep in the head.”

If you didn’t know differently, you might think minnows were created to serve as bait fish. If you didn’t feel differently, you might think minnows are just things, not living creatures with feelings, particularly when a fish hook is forced through their lips or head.

And how about those minnows who “swim around on the surface of the water”? Could that possibly be pained and panicked swimming?
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A month for animals

October is “World Animal Month.” It’s intended to “celebrate animal life in all its forms, and the intricate, symbiotic bonds between humanity and the animal kingdom.”

Uh-huh.

It sounds good. But what does it mean for the farm animals slaughtered for our consumption? the animals murdered for their skins and fur? the animals imprisoned in labs and subject to inhumane treatment in the name of science? the animals all over the world whose habitats are being destroyed? the wild and free horses in the American West, forcibly removed to make still more room for profitable cattle grazing? the so-called service animals, who weren't born to and never consented to lead humans around? the captive circus and zoo animals forced to live for the entertainment of humans? the shelter and sanctuary animals right here in New Jersey, whose future is uncertain at best?

“World Animal Month” and “World Animal Day” on Monday Oct. 4 are upbeat-sounding, but easy to be cynical about, given the plight of animals near and far.

Sure, there are “animal-advocate-heroes” out there. Locally, there’s the Mercer County Wildlife Center, and there are feral cat helpers and shelter volunteers, and on and on. But (from this corner at least) animals are still living on the edge, overall; they’re marginal and if-convenient considerations in the human view of things.

Back to World Animal Day. Reportedly, it’s been celebrated in more than 80 countries around the world, and that surely helps raise awareness. Its website (www.WorldAnimalDay.org.uk) includes ideas for things to do in the “Get Involved” section.

Rather than giving up in disgust or discouragement -- which would be all too easy to do -- let’s hope for the best for animals. Then let’s “get involved” and move in that direction.
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"OK, now open real wide . . ."

They're lucky tigers, even though they may not agree. Then again, their toothaches have probably gone away and they're feeling much better overall.

For many of the tigers who live at PAWS ARK 2000 sanctuary in San Andreas, CA, the last weekend of August was a marathon dental weekend. (Most of us quail at an hour-long dentist date. Imagine being a tiger -- drugged, trucked to the surgery site, operated on, returned 'home' and then waking up with a feeling that something strange just happened.)

By the end of the weekend, 19 root canals and one oral surgery had been performed on five tigers by a group of doctors ("Vererinary Dentists Without Borders") who provide their services free to "disadvantaged animals" in non profits like PAWS.

Both a video and a slide show of the tigers being treated are on the PAWS newsletter site (newsletter@pawsweb.org. For (amazing!) background information, the site of the Peter Emily International Veterinary Dental Foundation (PeterEmilyFoundation.org), which supplied the doctors and technicians who pitched in at PAWS, may also be of interest.

Humans helping non-human animals who, in all these cases, had already been rescued from horrible lives: way to go -- and thanks!
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No muddy paws for this animal abuser

Besides all the non-human animals on earth, sometimes pejoratively described as "beasts," there are occasional "strange beasties" among humans. These creatures cry out for sensitivity injections at the very least or, preferably, serious punishment. It would be nice if once in a while such people as the woman described in the news story here could walk in someone else's shoes -- or in this case, walk, run and be dragged and physically injured in someone else's paws.

Here's what happened late last month to Marlin, a puppy.

(http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/state/middletown-dog-recovering-after-being-dragged-behind-car-for-having-muddy-paws)#

About an advoCAT (and TNR)

Cats, especially ferals, need all the friends they can get. The link here leads to a story in NewJerseyNewsroom.com about a major friend of cats who has been respectfully nicknamed "AdvoCAT."

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/style/feral-cat-concerns-trap-neuter-return-tnr-is-this-advocates-answer
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