Rant…. With all due respect to agencies, we need to let the public know what goes on in the world rescue.
We are a non-profit cat rescue organization made up of volunteers. I stress that word…volunteers. No one gets paid, no one gets benefits, no one gets reimbursed. We receive no State of County funding. We operate on a shoestring budget & pay for the cats out of our pockets. Some of us work 2 jobs for the cats.
I get up every morning & load my van with 12 one gallon jugs of fresh water, 50 lbs of dry food & 4 cases of wet. I make my rounds to feed 12 colonies of cats. All have been fixed & vaccinated. All have shelters & are safe & cared for.
We receive 7-10 calls per day. We try to keep up but it is overwhelming & physically exhausting.
We received a call about a cat that had been injured. Leo the Lion Hearted we named him. We later learned he had been set on fire. At the time we picked him, his skin was hard like leather. Once it started falling off & we were able to get him to a vet it was determined he had been set on fire with lighter fluid. He is under a vet’s cat & we are posting his progress weekly.
We called AC to report this. We were put into vm. Imagine my surprise when I listened to the message: “We do not come out to help cats. Please call Community Cats Coalition!”
While we want to work with all agencies to help more cats, I am puzzled as to why AC will not come out to help a cat? When they are government funded (tax payers dollars) & have far more staff & resources then we do!
Imagine how many more cats would be helped if this were the case. I tried to look it up under the county code, job descriptions, etc but couldn’t find it anywhere. I had the pleasure while attending an Alley Cat Allies seminar to meet Major Lamb of the Spartansburg, S. Carolina AC. When he took over the AC department, he immediately implemented TNR. He was successful in stabilizing his entire county of cats! So I know it can be done.
We must stop this outdated mode of operating AC’s across the country. Rounding up & killing cats only to make room for the next group of cats that someone called to complain about, only to kill them to make more room for the next group of cats is a vicious & deadly cycle! And it DOES NOT WORK! If it did work we would not be in the situation that we find ourselves in now!
When we finally received a call back about Leo, we were told that unless the caretaker saw the 2 boys set Leo on fire there was really nothing they could do about it! Even though she HAD seen them with a can of lighter fluid in their hands! I am just beyond exasperation!!! I am seething. I am raging! So those 2 boys will get away with this? They know their actions are without consequences? How is this justice? How is this right? How is this allowed?
The other issue with the other county is this- while I understand AC must come out when they receive a complaint about a cat- we have several managed colonies of cats. It only takes one person to make a complaint & an entire colony is in jeopardy! An ear tipped cat is a cat that has been through a TNR program & is fixed & vaccinated. If it gets in a trap, it should be let out. (This is another issue I am working on. Anne Arundel County of Md passed into law an entire “community cats” passage. And ear tipped cats are protected & released from traps in this county)
We will be called if AC traps one of our community cats, but we have to pay impound & boarding fees to get the cats out! This can run up to $60 or $80 per cat which we do not have funding for. We have already paid to get the cat fixed & now we have to pay to get it back out of AC & save it’s life yet again!!!! How is this right? So we rescues kill ourselves trying to save cats lives & we are met with this?
We will be soon starting a mass media campaign & movement & hope you will join us! More to come….
great people at C.C.C. Please help them if you can!
Tried calling them for help with feral cats. They didn’t care. It must be nice to get money sent without doing anything.
Well that’s an extremely vague comment
Didn’t care , or couldn’t get there on demand?
You are just one of the 100’s of calls a year they get, and sadly then can not jump on top of every request immediately.
To imply they do nothing makes you look foolish.
The animal rescues do the best they can with the limited resources they have.
We adopted a kitten from the Delmarva Cat Connection 2 1/2 yrs ago she had been abused she is one of the best pets we have ever had. I would consider them for pets in the future. We see a number of feral cats in our area and always feed them and try to care for their needs. I am not in favor of the various cat shelters in the Salisbury area and have checked them out when we were looking for a pet. One I approached the people & they never responded even though we know them personally they claim to be a feral home place when we checked the place out we were not given access and noticed dead cats in the surrounding area. I believe all these shelters should be checked by the Humane Society, and asked what becomes of all the cats is there a record even. It is for that i will give them safe harbor.