Roger Varley has been in the news business almost 40 years with The Canadian Press/Broadcast News, Uxbnridge Times-Journal, Richmond Hill Liberal and Uxbridge Cosmos. Co-winner with two others of CCNA national feature writing award. In Scout movement over 30 years, almost 25 as a leader. Took Uxbridge youths to World Jamboree in Holland. Involved in community theatre for 20 years as actor, director, playwright, stage manager etc. Born in England, came to Canada at 16, lived most of life north and east of Toronto with a five-year period in B.C.
Disposabale pets
If you find a stray cat in the next few days, don't bother taking it to the Uxbridge-Scugog Animal Shelter: they don't have any more room.
The shelter is currently at capacity for stray cats and kittens, and if you make a visit there and the staff lets you into the holding rooms, it will break your heart. Assuming, that is, that you care about animals.
Beautiful cats – some with kittens – occupy every cage in the place. Just about all of them cry for attention. Those that don't just curl up dolefully in a corner of the cage. The kittens, too young to have known or miss the warmth of a good home, get to gambol around the floor during play time.
And yet it is the fun-loving, carefree kittens who are the tragedy. Many have to be euthanized, much as the staff at the shelter hate having to resort to that option. As manager Vickie McWhirter explained, kittens are extremely susceptible to picking up disease in the shelter – more so than more mature cats – and often the only recourse is to put them down.
Ms. McWhirter said the shelter will hold on to cats and dogs as long as possible, rather than putting them down. And, luckily, there are many people willing to go to the shelter to adopt and save these animals. My own beloved Annie came from the shelter.
But what distresses me no end is the statistics that the shelter brings to Uxbridge Council every three months or so – and it has nothing to do with euthanasia. It's one statistic that indicates to me that cats have become disposable pets, just as so many things in our lives these days have become “disposable”.
From January to September this year, the shelter received a total of 266 cats and kittens. Of those, only 19 were reclaimed by their owners. For the same period last year, the shelter took in 269 and only 11 people showed up to reclaim their pets.
If my Annie went missing, I would be at the animal shelter every day and I would be scouring the neighbourhood looking for her. When my sweetheart moved from one residence to another a few years ago, her cat jumped out of the car and took off. We searched for the cat for two weeks – night and day – before finally finding her.
So what gives with those 258 people who didn't go to the shelter to find and reclaim their cats during the first nine months of this year? Can they be so callous as to just shrug their shoulders and forget about the pet that counted on them for food, shelter and companionship? Personally, I don't think one is too far off the mark if one judges people by the way they treat animals, especially their pets.
On the good side, the shelter manages to have most of their cats and dogs adopted. In that same nine-month period, 159 people adopted cats and the shelter is hoping new adoptive pet owners will come forward to end their current overcrowding.
But a word of warning. Don't adopt a cat just because it will give you a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling. Keep in mind that cats shed constantly and you will find cat hair everywhere. Cleaning out kitty litter is not a lot of fun. Furniture can be shredded by sharp claws and you might start finding snags in your clothing. Real cat lovers are willing to put up with all that. If you are not, don't get a cat. You'll only end up disposing of it.
And one last thing. The shelter now has its 2011 calendar on sale, available at the shelter, the township offices and vet clinics. It seems to me that if you are an animal lover, spending $10 on a calendar is a pretty easy way to show you care.
Tell me, am I wrong?
