Catzilla Sez ... "Speak Out!" Jly 00 - Dec 00 Essays ~ Pawprints and Purrs, Inc.

"Those who cannot think for themselves are emotionally unequipped to spend time alone." ~ Anonymous

December 2000 America the Beautiful
... Or should that be America the Ignorant?

Recently things have gotten pretty heated in several animal groups of which I'm a participant: mailing lists, message boards, and newsgroups. I do my damnedest to stay out of these same old tiresome online battles, but ya know, there comes a time when enough is enough. You either avoid those people like the plague - see their names pop up, ignore them and hurry on to another post, or as I have done with so many groups and boards, just find better things with which to spend my time.

How many times do you hear in an ordinary online discussion opinions stated rather than fact? Along comes someone who plainly states facts as a rebuttal, then in leaps the hothead feet first with nothing but a long tirade about his or her rights - 9 times out of 10 defending the person or him/herself who had an opinion that conflicts with the best interests of the animal.

Doncha just love statements like this:

"I have the right to express my opinion. I've lost family members who died for our rights and I would lay down my life for those same rights."

Ok, Mr./Mrs./Ms. Freedom Fighter, I understood that you are an American. Are you speaking of the family members who were lost 225 years ago, or are you speaking of those lost in the last 50 or so years? Ahhhh. I see, 225 years ago and within the last 50 years. So what rights are you meaning? Pardon me, "freedom of speech"? Since when has America EVER gone to war to fight for freedom of speech???

"This country is founded on freedom of speech" or "America is founded on the right to express one's opinion." Hmmmm, I have yet to find a history book that states either version of that remark. It's certainly not what I was taught in American History throughout my school years. I know things change, but past history does not.

Out of sheer curiosity, I sent out an email poll a couple months back to the members of one of my animal email groups. I asked ONLY the Americans in the group to respond and to send their answers to me personally, not through the mailing list. But first let me point out that the group consists of people who must subscribe to the list before joining and are supposedly made up of people aged 18 or older. The question was:

For what was the American Revolution fought? Please state your highest educational background (high school diploma, some college, college, or degree).

Out of 127 responses, I received five totally different answers - some brief and to the point, others long rambling novellas (especially for the last one listed ... well, THAT certainly doesn't come as a surprise). This is the breakdown:

Freedom of speech ... 83
Religious freedom ... 27
Revolt because of taxes ... 13 (I'm assuming this is reference to the Boston Tea Party, but then ... what do I know?)
To break away from Great Britain's monarchy ... 3
Right to bear arms ... 1

Mind-boggling, isn't it? Not one correct answer out of 127 adults who all have high school diplomas, most have had some college, and a good number have college degrees. Adults who don't even know our country's founding history. (The answer, in case you don't know either is: The American Revolution was fought for a written constitution in the concept of federalization.)

What is happening in our schools? Better yet, what is happening in our children's homes? What is going to happen to America's children with parents who have froth for brains? Who has the legacy of the animals and the planet?

This is frightening. Our animals and our planet stand the same chance as a snowball in hell.

September 2000 Take the Money and Run

The pet industry in the United States is a billion-dollar business. So what are they doing to show their appreciation for all the loot we concerned pet owners fork out each year? The answer is, not much.

I went to four major pet supply sites that have decided to add pet information to their services, and I looked for some evidence that they are concerned about - or even know about - current animal welfare issues.

Here's how they stacked up:

Spay/Neuter

None of the four had a spay/neuter message on their front page. Here's what they did have:

Petsmart.com

They gave the subject one lame paragraph in their Cat FAQs section, and I found two more fairly cut-and-dried articles by using their search engine.
Petopia.com/Petco.com*

*A note on Petco.com/Petopia.com: these two sites are evidently owned by the same company, although they have two different domains and websites. A search on one site often led to an article on the other site; ditto the links.
I had to use their search engine to find their spay/neuter information, but they did give the subject thorough, forceful coverage.
Pets.com

I couldn't find any spay/neuter information on pets.com. They might have some, mind you, but if it's that hard to find it's pretty much useless anyway.

Declawing

None of the four mentioned that declawing is illegal in most countries; only one company took a stand on it.

Petsmart.com

Petsmart.com’s Cat FAQ has this to say about declawing:

There is some controversy over feline declawing. It should be an individual, personal decision based on your situation, and the needs of your feline friend.
They don’t go on to say what the controversy is, they just describe the procedure and offer a link to their line of scratching posts. And I loved that "needs of your feline friend" part. What cat "needs" to have an amputation?
Petopia.com/Petco.com

Petopia.com’s advice on declawing was the most forceful. They stated in bold print that declawing is amputation, and elaborated on that:

In the following weeks, your cat will need to relearn how to balance, move, and walk. He will never be able to climb as he once did. ... You should also be aware that behavioral issues may arise after surgery. Many cats will begin to avoid using their litter box because during recovery it hurts to scratch or dig in the litter...
And, their ask-the-vet section was brief and to the point on the topic:

A cat without claws is helpless and unhappy. So if you invite a cat to live with you, be prepared to cope with her need to scratch.
Pets.com

Although they presented declawing as a last-resort approach, when it is "the only option short of giving up [the cat] for adoption," their information on declawing was sketchy and they didn't offer any information about alternatives.

Shelter Adoption vs. Buying a Breed

None of the four sites mentioned breed rescue so far as I could tell, or kitten and puppy mill information. All of them mentioned breeds.

Petsmart.com

They do cover the topic of shelter adoption (which I found by using their search engine), but the most prominent links on their cat FAQ page is the ASPCA's Complete Guide to Cats - Breed Guide, and when you click on that link you get a Breed of the Week along with general breed information. Their much-touted support for shelter adoption is all talk, no walk.
Petopia.com/Petco.com

Petopia.com. has a nice little helpful section on whether you should choose a purebred or a "mix." They give one lousy paragraph to the "mix," in which they mention (kind of in passing) that there are a staggering number of felines in shelters. The bulk of their advice is about choosing a breed.
Pets.com

Pets.com does have a prominent link called "Save a life, adopt your next pet from the animal shelter," and it's on their index page - not buried so that you'd need a search engine to find it. BUT ... they have an even more prominent link for "Maine Coons: the ‘gentle giant’ of cats." I assume the breed in that section changes weekly. However, Petco.com does have a link to shelter adoption and an adopt-me graphic on their index page.

Halloween Safety

Only one of the four sites had information right on the index page, but it was incomplete.

Petsmart.com

On their index page: "13 Halloween tips for you and your pet" is linked to a pretty thorough list of tips. However, I would have liked a more forceful title, perhaps "Why your black cat is in danger on Halloween plus 12 more Halloween tips." And the black-cat warning is the last tip in the article, after a series of less vital information.
Petopia.com/Petco.com

They did have a warning about chocolate on their index page, but nothing at all (there or anywhere else) about black cat safety.
Pets.com

I didn't see any mention of Halloween safety on their index page.

Cat Toys

None of the four companies chose to mention that furry cat toys imported from China most likely contain real cat fur, or that catnip toys imported from any country are sprayed with pesticides. In light of that, I decided to see if I could find information on the origin of the toys they are selling.

Petsmart.com

I could not find information on the origin of their cat toys.
Petopia.com/Petco.com

I could not find information on the origin of their cat toys.
Pets.com

Toys were stated to be manufactured by pets.com, but there was no information on where they were manufactured.

August, 2000 Animal Welfare and Advocacy on the Net
Or, Is There Any Animal Welfare and Advocacy on the Net?

Craig and I moved from the Northeast back to the South six months ago. In this length of time, I've received a half a dozen or more requests to "help" someone advocate an animal related issue - make a petition, begin a letter writing campaign, start a mailing list, create a web page. As I read the email, I'm thinking to myself that "This is truly wonderful for the sake of animals. Someone is interested enough to give those needy and abused animals a voice."

I gladly share with those people what I know in using the resources that are available to anyone with computer access and how to effectively make a legal petition, the dos and don'ts of correspondence to elected officials and other powers-that-be, how to run and maintain a mailing list without spamming, and provide the URLs to a few of the hundreds of free providers on the WEB.

Then begins the back and forth shuffle of email between me and the person who wants the help. Unfortunately, after a handful of emails are passed between us, I realize that the person is expecting me to do all the work.

For example: During the first week of July, someone living in Washington state bebopped into my site, looked around a bit, then shot off an email heartily praising me for "all the terrific work you are doing for animals." The next paragraph of her email went into great detail about what her problem with her area is and how she "really must help the pets in my town because many people here just don't understand the importance of spaying and neutering." The bottom line was that she needed assistance in setting up a petition to implement a low cost spay/neuter program for her city, which she would then present to her mayor and city councilmen.

So the emails began with me explaining in detail how to start and run an effective campaign to collect signatures for her petition. Following my third or fourth email, her attention span seemed to wane, for she started closing each of hers with "I really want to help but I just don't know what to do."

Well, DUH, what's the problem after all these emails spieling it out for you, woman?

In her final email to me she THEN let me fully understand why she emailed me in the first place. She wanted my help all right. She wanted me to write and promote the petition to implement the program, run it from my web site, collect the signatures, and FedEx the signatures to those legislative bodies once the petition was run. She wanted to make sure that I understood that I was to sign her name to ALL email that I wrote to the mailing list that I was to generate and maintain. She wanted to see each and every revision on the petition's web page that I was to make on my own site before I uploaded it to my own server. Oh golly gee...

I emailed her back and told her that Craig and I have many battles in our own area we're trying to fight regarding animals, we own and maintain a colony of feral cats on our property, we have nine cats to care for who share our home and we foster cats awaiting adoption, we have jobs, we both have responsibilities at and away from our home, we pay for my web space that I maintain, we have other Internet responsibilites, and there was no way I could possibly make the time for this type of project. But, if she needed additional information to get her campaign up and running, please let me know.

That last email to her was well over three weeks ago. I've heard NOT a peep from her since. Surprise, surprise, surprise.

Excuse me, am I missing something somewhere along the way here? If someone wants to help animals, doesn't that person DO something about the situation?

Oh, never mind, I get it. How you promote animal advocacy is to send an email to an already over-burdened webmaster who happens to also have a life outside the Internet - including rescue and caretaking, explain the plight of the animals in YOUR area and have that same webmaster do the work while YOU reap the laurels. Silly, silly me.

It's not me who is getting the raw end of the deal. Sadly, it's the poor, poor animals in your area who are suffering and dying. And because you want others to do the work, you can't get off your lazy, shiftless ass to give them a better life ... or a LIFE period.

July, 2000 Yours? No ... Mine

Time is a precious commodity. Time lost is never recovered. Of course, this never, ever entered my mind until I got older and tried to squeeze more and more projects into a day. The older I get, the faster my days whip out of my life.

As a child born and reared in the Deep South, I recall whining to my mother that I had nothing to do during the long, hot summer months when it was too hot to play ball or wander down to the creek or to go outside period. Oh but if only I knew then what I know now! Each day there's so much to do and so little time to get it all done. I think if days were 36 hours long, I'd still be begging for more hours.

Running a web site takes time, especially if one is diligent about updating. A cat health and animal advocacy site takes time in researching for additional facts, statistics, and advancements in the veterinary and legislative fields to assist others who seek help, then getting the material typed out, placed into HTML format and uploaded to my server. The email generated from a large web site ... oh but the email! For well over two years, I received at least 100 pieces of email daily. In the past year, that has nearly doubled. Owning several web rings also takes time.

Additionally, co-owning a message board about cats takes much, much time as well. There are questions to answer, information to provide, and many times, research to be done before I can respond should I have any doubts of my response beforehand.

This is time that must be alloted before a day's work is done, whether I get it done early morning or after my work day is done. However, I think John Q. and Jane R. Visitor seem to think web sites are run by numerous people - one who will get the information up on the server for them to read, another who answers email, another who approves links and web rings, and another three who does the research - one for the web site, one for the message board, and one for the email.

Most web site owners are just like me. We have realism staring us in the face every day. I work a real job, I have a real family, I have real pets, I work in real rescue and foster real pets, I have real animal welfare and advocacy meetings, I maintain a real feral cat colony, I have other real responsibilites away from home, then if I've had a "normal day," I have a chance to sit down before my monitor to work on my site, respond to butt-loads of email, and tinker with links and webrings.

Because I plow through an average of 150-185 pieces of email a day, I first search out emails from those who need answers or suggestions to pet-related problems or situations. I can't respond within a couple of days to the average person who contacts me. This results in even more email - usually lambasting me to hell for not responding to their first email. Nine times out of ten the irrate emails were originally requests to copy something from my site. Each and every page on my site has a copyright notice linking to a page which explains my copyright. As of the Berne Convention of 1989, a copyright notice is not required to make any material copyright; the fact that I do have a copyright notice on each page of my site makes this a moot point.

"Oh, she sez no to copying her stuff; I'll just email her and then she'll have to say yes due to my written request." NOT. It doesn't work that way, Folks. No is NO. Plain and simple.

Worse yet are the ones who sneak into my site and then strip off my META tags, my source codes, my text, my graphics, hell, my entire site. Or they've read the copyright notice and STILL download my graphics and text thinking I don't have a tracker of ISPs on my site (that's the advantage of owning your own domain), or that I never get on the WEB myself to accidentally have a mirror of my site slap me upside the head, or that my site isn't popular enough that another person won't alert me to the plundering, copy-cat thief.

Why would you want a duplicate of someone else's text? Why would you want to copy someone else's graphics? Why would you want to format your site identically to someone else's? Why would you want a mirror of a site belonging to someone else? Every human is unique - so be an individual. Don't copy stuff that is NOT yours. It's dishonest, it's unethical, it's stealing, and believe me, it's noticed by others.

You've also stolen TIME. I don't have enough time in the day to call my own because of wasting more time shooting off emails begging the thief to remove my own material, my own concept, and my own ideas from the thief site or contacting my attorney with the massive correspondence from the belligerent thief.