The Cat Protection Society in Victoria has had a disastrous weekend, with a major media outlet getting its hands on an internal document calling for the sacking of a director who dared to question why their performance in protecting cats is in the toilet.
Just how bad is it? In 2009, of the 12,491 cats received, just 1,143 left the organisation alive… or just 9%. The rest (91%) were killed.
In the face of communities who are driving up live save rates toward 90% (a couple of examples here and here), how can this group have gone so wrong? Luckily for the rest of us, there are distinct steps taken by the animal welfare groups in Victoria that have set them on this path of failure, that we could all do to examine and avoid replicating in our own communities.
In 2005, the head of the Cat Protection Society Carol Webb quite famously brought killing into the public eye;
… Dr Webb takes each animal – or “person”, as she likes to say – into the privacy of her office. This is so the rest of the mewling mob don’t freak out. In between each consultation, Dr Webb settles herself, so that she’s neither seething with anger nor shuddering with sobs.
After assessing the kitten’s health and temperament, along with how much space is available at the society’s shelter (300 places maximum), Webb decides whether the little chap will live or die. Even if every unwanted cat is brimming with vitality and winning personality, about two-thirds of the day’s intake are put to sleep with an overdose of anaesthetic, zipped into a body bag and put into the freezer awaiting cremation.
In 2010 Dr Webb is still singing the ‘killing is kindness’ tune.
But as Yes Biscuit said so eloquently recently:
“Come on. We’re not talking about 41 cats over the age of 13 with missing eyes and chronic health problems. These are kittens! You get the local TV news out there and you put the kittens in a basket with brightly colored yarn and a gigantic FREE sign. You let the public know there’s a sale on kittens this weekend with prices so low, you’re practically giving them away – in fact, you are giving them away! They’ve all been examined by a vet and had their first shots. You hold up li’l Tigger to the camera and let him wriggle his nose at the lens. You let kittens crawl on your shoulders and lick your neck and bite your hair while encouraging the public to come on down because the price is right!”
If you’re killing 91% of the cats you’re bringing in, you’re killing the young, the old, the adoptable, the feral, the semi-feral. You’ve admitted defeat and are killing instead of doing the things that could save the lives of these cats. If you are killing them, then you aren’t giving people a chance to save them. If you are killing them, you aren’t giving them the chance to live out their lives as desexed animals, in loving families or managed colonies. And if you are killing them in the eye of the media, you are driving a wedge between you and your community, the very same people you need to help you in your mission.
In 2007 the Cat Protection Society was a leading campaigner in developing the ‘Who’s for Cats’ program. Painting cats as shadowy pests and an environmental nuisance, within the first year, shelters were receiving record impounds. By 2008, there was a 40% increase in impoundments, a 50% increase in cat complaints and not to mention a spike in cat abuse. In 2009, shelters were struggling with intakes and looking for support in capital campaigns to build bigger shelters, while a campaign evaluation showed that the biggest increase impoundments was due to empowered cat trappers trapping neighbourhood moggies;
* This finding has emphasised the importance of communicating to the ‘Daves’ in the community, i.e. the people who are not semi owners of cats themselves, but who are experiencing nuisance associated with unowned cats, and are therefore likely to respond to campaign messages about the need to have these cats impounded.
* It must also be acknowledged that many semi owners have a bond with the cat they are feeding, and may therefore be unlikely to ever have it impounded.
By befriending people who dislike (even hate) cats, rather than working to encourage compassion towards these animals, the state’s cat intakes and killing have spiked to a new, record highs each and every year since the campaign launch. If your goal is to reduce cat killing, this strategy is counter productive, not only seeing more animals flowing into your shelter, but reducing people’s desire to help you protect them.
In an effort to get laws to use against the cat owners of Victoria, the Cat Protection Society created a campaign detailing just how crap their community is. The Cat Crisis Coalition was formed:
Shelter workers are sick of it. Sick of seeing animals they love treated in this way and sick of being asked to do the community’s dirty work.
While successful shelters work to reach out the community, the shelters of Victoria, have been for decades berating and criticising:
(the Cat Protection Society) is where you see the daily tragedies of an out-of-control cat population, careless owners and the cruel treatment of cats masquerading as pranks.
Workers are Victoria’s Animal Welfare Shelters are sick and tired of being the community’s executioners.
The shelters are united in their view that the current situation is appalling, unethical and unacceptable and believe the only solution is the compulsory desexing of all pet cats. Quite simply not enough people are desexing their pets.
Cat Crisis media release
So a combined effort of running down cats and running down cat owners, was only going to have one result… the community avoiding judgmental, burnt out shelters in favour of getting their kitten from a friendly pet store or neighbour, while shelter animals die.
Cat groups lobbied for cat registration in Victoria, which failed to decrease in the numbers of unwanted cats, but it is claimed that it has “helped with reuniting lost pet cats with their owners” (though the Cat Protection Society live-release rate figures begs to differ). What it has done for certain, is require that Councils include cats in their pound systems and start targeting unowned animals for removal.
As the Cat Protection Society and other cat groups lobby for more draconian legislation; curfews and compulsory desexing, more and more Councils are lending traps, encouraging the community to regard free-roaming cats as pests and seeing a spike in the intakes of unowned cats which aren’t suitable as pets.
Compared to last year, more councils have laws targeting cats.
Each council coming on board with new cat laws, should see a percentile reduction in the number of cats impounded… if they worked. Unfortunately, the truth is these laws actually see cat impounds spike and stay elevated.
Bendigo: six years on, still at record impoundments
The City of Casey – three years with every law in the book leads to a 92% kill rate
Geelong – nine months on and a 30% in killing
Kingston and Whitehorse – begin cat trapping programs
Not only are free-roaming, unowned and semi-owned cats disadvantaged, with councils promoting their new cat laws and free cat trap hire, more owned cats than ever are becoming victims of foul play.
The release and care of free-roaming cats is illegal in Victoria. Not having this law would immediately see a reduction in the need to kill cats. If there is lobbying that could be done that would actually benefit cats, it would be to have this law overturned and cat carers in the community offered support and assistance.
Moggies.com.au was championed as a key to increasing adoptions, only to languish with a half dozen cats listed in Victoria. While more successful groups use an extensive number of external rehoming centres to get animals out of shelters and into homes, little is being done to promote cats from the CPS.
There are literally dozens of ways to improve cat adoptions, many of which can be found here and here.
PetRescue is free. Facebook is free. Posting available pets on their own website daily is free. A small advert in the local paper could be sourced for free. The only way an organisation would fail to use these techniques is if they see themselves as garbage collectors, taking in the animals that no one wants and doing the public’s dirty work. This attitude leads to a certain outcome for pets = death.
“It comes down to leadership. If your leader is in the mindset that the shelter is a helpless victim of society, no progress is ever going to be made. Shelter directors who see the shelter as ‘the end point’ of pet ownership are not people we need to be doing the job.
We need shelter directors who see the shelter as THE ANSWER to homeless pets – sorting them out, finding them homes, moving them forward. Time and past time to break out of the old mindset.”
Yes Biscuit (comments)
We need to expect more from our animal welfare leaders. More and more, groups who fail to implement the programs that will save lives are going to be called out by animals lovers. The community want more for than a certain death sentence for homeless companion animals. While answers to cat overpopulation are staring us in the face, how sad that those who should be on the cutting edge are now standing defending the killing and resisting the change that would save lives.
Lets hope the Cat Protection Society use this media attention and supporter feedback as an opportunity to change direction. Letting the director, who showed such bravery in standing up for the cats of the Cat Protection Society, not only keep her job, but embracing her as someone who could lead them to a better future.
