Watch Freedom and Bigsby's first-ever romp in the sunshine (tear-jerk warning in full effect):
Shannon Keith, a Los Angeles attorney and founder of the nonprofit animal advocacy group, Animal Rescue, Media & Education (ARME), received a call in December tipping her off to news that some beagles were being retired from a research lab. These dogs, bred exclusively for animal testing, had lived in the lab nearly their entire lives had never felt the rays of the sun or grass under their feet.
Shannon Keith, Beagle Freedom Project founder, with Freedom and Bigsy.
Keith gathered a few of her friends and came to the aid of the two young dogs, who they named Freedom (1 1/2) and Bigsby (2 1/2), and the Beagle Freedom Project was born. The organization is dedicated to rescuing and finding homes for beagles used in laboratory research. It hopes to encourage more research labs to release their animals and give these potentially adoptable pets a chance at life, rather than needlessly destroying them.
Beagles are the most popular breed for testing pharmaceuticals, household products and cosmetics because of their friendly, docile, trusting, forgiving and people-pleasing personalities. The research industry says they adapt well to living in a cage and are inexpensive to feed. Research beagles are usually obtained directly from commercial breeders who specifically breed dogs to sell (for a pretty penny) to scientific institutions.
When the dogs are no longer wanted for research purposes, many labs simply kill those that have survived (depending on the nature of the experiments). But some attempt to give them a chance at a normal life by finding homes for those dogs that are deemed adoptable and healthy.
In the case of Freedom and Bigsby, the holidays were approaching and labs typically kill their animals just before the end of December since no one wants to stay and care for them. "Not only is this a horrific practice, but is also wasteful in so many ways," says Keith. "Often the experiments that these dogs were subjected to have not concluded, and the new batch coming in will need to start from scratch."
Working directly with labs, the Beagle Freedom Project is able to remove the retired beagles so they can be placed in loving homes. All rescues are done legally with the cooperation of the facility.
Freedom was recently adopted and lives in Glendale, California. Bigsby is being fostered in Studio City, but is still looking for his forever home. The same lab where they came from recently informed Keith that more beagles will soon be retired.
If you are interested in fostering or adopting a lab beagle, be aware that they come with some unique challenges. They will not be accustomed to life in a home and will not have experience with children, cats or other dogs. They will not be house-trained and accidents will happen (although they will learn quickly). Many have gone directly from a commercial breeder to the lab, and have never felt grass under their feet or even seen the sun. They will have been fed a special diet formulated for lab animals and may have difficulty adjusting to new foods. They will be unfamiliar with treats, toys, bedding and may never have walked on a leash. They will have lived in cages with steel wire floors and may have inflamed or infected paws. They may be initially fearful of people and may have other phobias from a lifetime of complete confinement. They are likely to have been surgically "de-barked" by the breeder and have an ID number tattooed in their ear. Although these beagles are considered healthy, very little information is disclosed about their origin, medical history or what kind of testing they were used for.
With time, patience, play, companionship — and most of all, love — these dogs will embrace their new-found freedom and learn how to become dogs. Just watch the video. Their transformation is nothing short of amazing.
The Beagle Freedom Project needs volunteers, sponsors, fosters, adopters and donations. For more information and to get involved click here.
Please, PLEASE buy products that are labeled "cruelty free" and "not tested on animals." Just like so many tuna fish cans are now stamped with the "dolphin-safe" seal of approval, it's time we advocate for the beagle equivalent on household cleaners, cosmetics and common pharmaceuticals.
Hamadi, one of my favorite haircare brands, proclaims that its products are "Tested on actresses, never on animals." I like the sound of that.
Posted By: Amelia Glynn (Email, Facebook) | January 20 2011 at 03:50 PM
Here is a list from PETA of companies that don't test on animals. So sad that anyone is still doing this.
Peta list:
http://www.peta.org/living/beauty-and-personal-care/companies/default.aspx
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Minnesota Puppy Mills
Minnesota Puppy Mills Again Making National News
For more information about this press release, contact Mike Fry at 651-772-8983 Ext. 99
January 13 – Animal Ark, a Minnesota-Based animal welfare organization announces the creation of a new Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/mnpuppymills for the purpose of raising awareness of the need to regulate large-scale breeders of puppies and kittens in the land of 10,000 lakes. One of the first posts on the page was to a newly released short-form documentary about Kathy Bauck, a notorious puppy mill operator from Minnesota. Bauck has been convicted of multiple counts of animal cruelty and torture.
The 17-minute film includes graphic undercover video captured by the Companion Animal Protection Society, the producers of the documentary. It also features interviews with animal welfare advocates and one prosecutor whose efforts resulted in convictions for several counts against Bauck of cruelty and torture.
The most serious charges against Bauck included her performing her own Cesarean Sections on her dogs without anesthesia. In one compelling piece of video, a veterinarian from Bauck’s hometown recounts a conversation he had with Allan Bauck, Kathy’s husband. The veterinarian says, relating to the C-Sections “I asked, ‘in other words you just tie them down and take the puppies out?!’ Bauck responded, ‘Well, if I have to, ya.’”
Another post to the new Facebook page included photos of health certificates of puppies being sold in New York pet stores as recently as September of 2010. The documents list Kathy Bauck as the breeder for the puppies. (Copies attached)
In 2009 Bauck lost her USDA license following her most recent conviction for cruelty and torture, meaning that it is illegal for her to sell puppies commercially to pet stores.
Another post at http://facebook.com/mnpuppymills is a link to a report by the USDA’s own Inspector General. The report is the result of an audit of the USDA’s inspection process. The report uncovered gaping holes in the agency’s inspection and enforcement practices.
Bauck is one of an estimated 400 large-scale commercial puppy mills in Minnesota. Surprisingly, the State of Minnesota provides for no regulation of these facilities. However, a bipartisan group of legislators are hoping to change that this year. Representatives Steve Smith (R) and John Benson (D) co-chaired a legislative workgroup that met with stakeholders over the summer for the purpose of preparing legislation to be introduced in 2011. http://facebook.com/mnpuppymills will provide updates and alerts relating to these efforts.
For more information about this press release, contact Mike Fry at 651-772-8983 Ext. 99
January 13 – Animal Ark, a Minnesota-Based animal welfare organization announces the creation of a new Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/mnpuppymills for the purpose of raising awareness of the need to regulate large-scale breeders of puppies and kittens in the land of 10,000 lakes. One of the first posts on the page was to a newly released short-form documentary about Kathy Bauck, a notorious puppy mill operator from Minnesota. Bauck has been convicted of multiple counts of animal cruelty and torture.
The 17-minute film includes graphic undercover video captured by the Companion Animal Protection Society, the producers of the documentary. It also features interviews with animal welfare advocates and one prosecutor whose efforts resulted in convictions for several counts against Bauck of cruelty and torture.
The most serious charges against Bauck included her performing her own Cesarean Sections on her dogs without anesthesia. In one compelling piece of video, a veterinarian from Bauck’s hometown recounts a conversation he had with Allan Bauck, Kathy’s husband. The veterinarian says, relating to the C-Sections “I asked, ‘in other words you just tie them down and take the puppies out?!’ Bauck responded, ‘Well, if I have to, ya.’”
Another post to the new Facebook page included photos of health certificates of puppies being sold in New York pet stores as recently as September of 2010. The documents list Kathy Bauck as the breeder for the puppies. (Copies attached)
In 2009 Bauck lost her USDA license following her most recent conviction for cruelty and torture, meaning that it is illegal for her to sell puppies commercially to pet stores.
Another post at http://facebook.com/mnpuppymills is a link to a report by the USDA’s own Inspector General. The report is the result of an audit of the USDA’s inspection process. The report uncovered gaping holes in the agency’s inspection and enforcement practices.
Bauck is one of an estimated 400 large-scale commercial puppy mills in Minnesota. Surprisingly, the State of Minnesota provides for no regulation of these facilities. However, a bipartisan group of legislators are hoping to change that this year. Representatives Steve Smith (R) and John Benson (D) co-chaired a legislative workgroup that met with stakeholders over the summer for the purpose of preparing legislation to be introduced in 2011. http://facebook.com/mnpuppymills will provide updates and alerts relating to these efforts.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Pets banned on Indian reservation
Reservation Pet Rescue Needed in Minnesota: MyFoxTWINCITIES.com
Reservation Pet Rescue Needed in Minnesota
Updated: Wednesday, 05 Jan 2011, 6:47 PM CST
Published : Tuesday, 04 Jan 2011, 9:23 PM CST
by Maury Glover / FOX 9 News
SISSETON WAHPETON, Minn. - You've probably never heard of the Sisseton Wahpeton Housing Authority, but a recent change on a reservation near the Minnesota South Dakota border has hundreds of pets -- including some right here in the Twin Cities -- in need of some loving homes.
There's nothing quite as cute as a brand new puppy. While Lilly, Nilly and Willie are trying to find their footing in their new surroundings, Lucy here is expecting some puppies of her own any day now
"We are all guessing when she will have them and how many there will be," said a caretaker.
All four were rescued from the Lake Traverse Indian Reservation near Sisseton, South Dakota after the public housing authority there banned all dogs.
The agency said there have been too many attacks and fights caused by the animals, and that all tenants must get rid of their pets by April 1.
"They are staked out on chains in little igloo houses, They don't live a very good life."
So far animal rescue groups like Paws for a Cause have removed almost 200 dogs from the reservation with 20 ending up here in the twin cities, and volunteers are heading down to pick up more this weekend.
"I just think there are so many dogs that need our help and the idea they would get shot or euthanized breaks my heart so anything i can do to help. I'm willing to do."
After breeding and training afghan hounds for most of her life, Cynthia Dunahay is making room for another dog in her home. And she hopes other animal lovers who hear what's going on will do the same.
"They need homes,” she said. “Good homes…and they appreciate it so much."
That ban by the housing authority includes cats too.
Of the 20 dogs brought to the cities a few weeks ago, all but five have been adopted. Paws for a Cause expects another 20 this weekend. If you'd like to adopt one, click www.paws4cause.net
Friday, November 12, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Cat physics
Scientists learn physics behind how cats drink water without getting wet
By Marc Kaufman
The Washington Post
Thursday, November 11, 2010; 2:43 PM
As all cat lovers know well, felis domestica is a marvel of balance, subtlety and other hidden elegances.
This Story
Scientists learn physics behind how cats drink water without getting wet
Taking the purrfect drink is all physics to a cat
Prepare to learn of another remarkable attribute: Four researchers have painstakingly filmed, analyzed and determined how it is that a cat can drink water while (unlike a dog) keeping its chin and whiskers pleasingly dry.
The answer involves an exquisite demonstration of physics - where the cat, in effect, balances the forces of gravity against the forces of inertia, and so quenches its thirst.
"What we found is that the cat uses fluid dynamics and physics in a way to absolutely optimize tongue lapping and water collection," said Jeffrey Aristoff, now at Princeton University but who was one of the four researchers who began their studies out of curiosity at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"Nobody had ever studied it before, so nobody knew how the water went from the bowl into the cat's mouth," he said.
As with most basic scientific research, the usefulness of this knowledge is uncertain. But it is not, the researchers say, hard to imagine some downstream applications, perhaps in robotics.
The route from water bowl to mouth is pretty magical, as described in an article released Thursday by the journal Science.
While dogs curl their tongues to collect the water and then pull up what they can, cats barely touch the liquid with the tips of their tongues. A slight backward curl of the tip encourages liquid to adhere to the smooth top of the tongue, but that's not how the water rises.
Rather, the water on the tongue, combined with the low pressure created by the slight-curled tongue moving back up, creates a momentary stream into the mouth. The cat then snaps its mouth shut and the water is captured before the countervailing force of gravity pulls it down. An average house cat, the team found, can make four of these ministreams per second.
Intrigued by what they were learning, the four researchers went to several zoos to observe and film larger cats, and even went to YouTube to find videos of bobcats and lions drinking in the wild.
They found the same basic drinking mechanism in all the cats, though the larger ones (with larger tongues) slowed down their lapping to best take advantage of the physics at play - that is, the balance between upward movement of the water set off by the cat's tongue (the inertia) and the gravity pulling the water down. A lion, Aristoff said, laps two or three times per second.
"In the beginning of the project, we weren't fully confident that fluid mechanics played a role in cats' drinking," said Sunghwan Jung, now an engineer at Virginia Tech whose research focuses on soft bodies, like fish, and the fluids surrounding them. "But as the project went on, we were surprised and amused by the beauty of the fluid mechanics involved in this system."
Aristoff explained the dynamics at work: You're in the shower and turn on the hot water. The steam starts to rise and that upward flow lowers the pressure levels at your knees. The result is that the inside of the shower curtain will billow in towards you, unless you have some weight attached to the curtain to stop it. That interplay of motion and pressure parallels the dynamic that quenches the cat's thirst.
Something as complex as a cat drinking water doesn't get unraveled and turned into a paper at the nation's top science journal overnight. It was almost four years ago that Roman Stocker, associate professor at MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, became interested in how his cat, Cutta Cutta (or "stars, stars" in the Australian aboriginal language), drank. His enthusiasm spread to Aristoff, Jung and Pedro Rios, a physicist who works on the mechanism of soft solids.
"Science allows us to look at natural processes with a different eye and to understand how things work, even if that's figuring out how my cat laps his breakfast," Stocker said. "It's a job, but also a passion, and this project for me was a high point in teamwork and creativity. We did it without any funding, without any graduate students, without much of the usual apparatus that science is done with nowadays."
While the work on cat drinking was done for professional pleasure and to answer a question, the researchers said that there could be useful implications gleaned from their "fundamental" research.
Engineers, for example, are moving into the field of "soft robots" and are working on the basic mechanisms of how non-metallic parts behave. Aristoff said there's great interest in creating robots that can walk on water, and this research could help.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/11/AR2010111104952.html?referrer=emailarticle
By Marc Kaufman
The Washington Post
Thursday, November 11, 2010; 2:43 PM
As all cat lovers know well, felis domestica is a marvel of balance, subtlety and other hidden elegances.
This Story
Scientists learn physics behind how cats drink water without getting wet
Taking the purrfect drink is all physics to a cat
Prepare to learn of another remarkable attribute: Four researchers have painstakingly filmed, analyzed and determined how it is that a cat can drink water while (unlike a dog) keeping its chin and whiskers pleasingly dry.
The answer involves an exquisite demonstration of physics - where the cat, in effect, balances the forces of gravity against the forces of inertia, and so quenches its thirst.
"What we found is that the cat uses fluid dynamics and physics in a way to absolutely optimize tongue lapping and water collection," said Jeffrey Aristoff, now at Princeton University but who was one of the four researchers who began their studies out of curiosity at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"Nobody had ever studied it before, so nobody knew how the water went from the bowl into the cat's mouth," he said.
As with most basic scientific research, the usefulness of this knowledge is uncertain. But it is not, the researchers say, hard to imagine some downstream applications, perhaps in robotics.
The route from water bowl to mouth is pretty magical, as described in an article released Thursday by the journal Science.
While dogs curl their tongues to collect the water and then pull up what they can, cats barely touch the liquid with the tips of their tongues. A slight backward curl of the tip encourages liquid to adhere to the smooth top of the tongue, but that's not how the water rises.
Rather, the water on the tongue, combined with the low pressure created by the slight-curled tongue moving back up, creates a momentary stream into the mouth. The cat then snaps its mouth shut and the water is captured before the countervailing force of gravity pulls it down. An average house cat, the team found, can make four of these ministreams per second.
Intrigued by what they were learning, the four researchers went to several zoos to observe and film larger cats, and even went to YouTube to find videos of bobcats and lions drinking in the wild.
They found the same basic drinking mechanism in all the cats, though the larger ones (with larger tongues) slowed down their lapping to best take advantage of the physics at play - that is, the balance between upward movement of the water set off by the cat's tongue (the inertia) and the gravity pulling the water down. A lion, Aristoff said, laps two or three times per second.
"In the beginning of the project, we weren't fully confident that fluid mechanics played a role in cats' drinking," said Sunghwan Jung, now an engineer at Virginia Tech whose research focuses on soft bodies, like fish, and the fluids surrounding them. "But as the project went on, we were surprised and amused by the beauty of the fluid mechanics involved in this system."
Aristoff explained the dynamics at work: You're in the shower and turn on the hot water. The steam starts to rise and that upward flow lowers the pressure levels at your knees. The result is that the inside of the shower curtain will billow in towards you, unless you have some weight attached to the curtain to stop it. That interplay of motion and pressure parallels the dynamic that quenches the cat's thirst.
Something as complex as a cat drinking water doesn't get unraveled and turned into a paper at the nation's top science journal overnight. It was almost four years ago that Roman Stocker, associate professor at MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, became interested in how his cat, Cutta Cutta (or "stars, stars" in the Australian aboriginal language), drank. His enthusiasm spread to Aristoff, Jung and Pedro Rios, a physicist who works on the mechanism of soft solids.
"Science allows us to look at natural processes with a different eye and to understand how things work, even if that's figuring out how my cat laps his breakfast," Stocker said. "It's a job, but also a passion, and this project for me was a high point in teamwork and creativity. We did it without any funding, without any graduate students, without much of the usual apparatus that science is done with nowadays."
While the work on cat drinking was done for professional pleasure and to answer a question, the researchers said that there could be useful implications gleaned from their "fundamental" research.
Engineers, for example, are moving into the field of "soft robots" and are working on the basic mechanisms of how non-metallic parts behave. Aristoff said there's great interest in creating robots that can walk on water, and this research could help.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/11/AR2010111104952.html?referrer=emailarticle
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Cat Crisis
There's a 'cat crisis' at Twin Cities animal shelters
By Bob Shaw
Pioneer Press
Updated: 09/22/2010
Where's the love? That's what Minnesota's cats should be asking themselves, at the grim evidence that Minnesotans seem to be loving their cats less — and their dogs more.
In shelters, abandoned cats should be looking jealously at their canine colleagues — because cat adoptions are falling in Minnesota, even as dog adoptions increase.
"We have a cat crisis," said Deb Balzer, spokeswoman for the Animal Humane Society, whose five Twin Cities facilities are being engulfed by a river of 70 unwanted cats per day.
At the cat rescue group SCRAM, adoptions have plummeted by half in one year.
"Oh, the calls ... the calls ...," sighed SCRAM founder Laura Johnson, who talks with an endless stream of fed-up cat owners.
"People want to move, and the cats can't come with them. They ask for help with cat food or kitty litter," she said. "There are no jobs. Unemployment has run out. They can't get medical insurance."
The widening love-gap between dogs and cats is a national trend, said Nancy Peterson, the Cat Programs manager for the Humane Society of the U.S.
Nationally, there are more cats in shelters, while the number of dogs in shelters is remaining steady. Many shelters are being forced to convert dog kennels into cat cages, Peterson said.
Dog owners, like dogs, are more loyal. About 30 percent of dogs in shelters are reclaimed by owners, compared with about 4 percent for cats, according to the national Humane Society.
Pet owners lavish money on dogs (an average of $225 annually) more than cats ($203).
And now, dogs are finding more homes. In fact, Minnesotans are so eager to adopt dogs that the Animal Humane Society imported nearly 1,000 dogs from Oklahoma and Georgia last year.
"People want dogs. That is why we are able to help other rescue groups with dogs," Balzer said.
Why is there such a difference in human feelings for dogs vs. cats?
One reason is simple math. There are far more cats than dogs. Cats — nature's perfect breeding machines — can get pregnant at the age of 4 months and can have up to three litters a year.
About 42,000 kittens are born every day in the U.S., compared with 10,000 people, according to the group Spay USA. The feral cat population is about 80 million — with an estimated 480,000 in the Twin Cities.
Cats dominate shelters, accounting for 58 percent of the animals taken in by the Animal Humane Society in 2009.
That imbalance increases the urgency, Balzer said, of finding more loving homes for cats. Dogs don't have that problem.
"A puppy's face, people come running for. But cats have a different role in society," Balzer said. "This is a community problem."
With adoptions down, the Humane Society will have about 3,000 more unwanted cats to deal with this year.
Officials are trying to find them homes. The group announced this month that it has slashed adoption fees to $50 for a neutered, vaccinated, microchip-implanted cat.
And it is extending a two-for-one sale. The "Double the Love" program allows families to adopt two adult cats for the price of one — $50.
The Humane Society neuters thousands of cats each year and advocates for all owners to neuter cats. Because of such programs, it slashed euthanizations in 2009 by 9 percent to 11,000 animals — most of them cats.
But this year, it will be difficult to keep euthanizations down. Balzer wouldn't estimate how many more cats would be killed in 2010, but she did say, "Euthanasia is a reality."
"Does it break our hearts? Absolutely," she said. "Are we looking for any opportunities to help? Absolutely."
It's too soon to tell if the new programs will be enough to deal with the stampede of incoming cats.
Last July's cat adoptions at the Humane Society were down 15 percent. Adoptions in the two-for-one "Double the Love" program have dropped by 36 percent in one year.
For SCRAM founder Johnson, the stress of dealing with so many unwanted cats is grinding.
She was recently called to help one female cat in Blaine, abandoned when her owners moved. Johnson said the cat has been sitting by the back door for weeks.
"She cries and cries. The neighbor feeds her. And now she has had two kittens," said Johnson — the start of another feral colony.
"It makes me crazy," she said.
Bob Shaw can be reached at 651-228-5433.
By Bob Shaw
Pioneer Press
Updated: 09/22/2010
Where's the love? That's what Minnesota's cats should be asking themselves, at the grim evidence that Minnesotans seem to be loving their cats less — and their dogs more.
In shelters, abandoned cats should be looking jealously at their canine colleagues — because cat adoptions are falling in Minnesota, even as dog adoptions increase.
"We have a cat crisis," said Deb Balzer, spokeswoman for the Animal Humane Society, whose five Twin Cities facilities are being engulfed by a river of 70 unwanted cats per day.
At the cat rescue group SCRAM, adoptions have plummeted by half in one year.
"Oh, the calls ... the calls ...," sighed SCRAM founder Laura Johnson, who talks with an endless stream of fed-up cat owners.
"People want to move, and the cats can't come with them. They ask for help with cat food or kitty litter," she said. "There are no jobs. Unemployment has run out. They can't get medical insurance."
The widening love-gap between dogs and cats is a national trend, said Nancy Peterson, the Cat Programs manager for the Humane Society of the U.S.
Nationally, there are more cats in shelters, while the number of dogs in shelters is remaining steady. Many shelters are being forced to convert dog kennels into cat cages, Peterson said.
Dog owners, like dogs, are more loyal. About 30 percent of dogs in shelters are reclaimed by owners, compared with about 4 percent for cats, according to the national Humane Society.
Pet owners lavish money on dogs (an average of $225 annually) more than cats ($203).
And now, dogs are finding more homes. In fact, Minnesotans are so eager to adopt dogs that the Animal Humane Society imported nearly 1,000 dogs from Oklahoma and Georgia last year.
"People want dogs. That is why we are able to help other rescue groups with dogs," Balzer said.
Why is there such a difference in human feelings for dogs vs. cats?
One reason is simple math. There are far more cats than dogs. Cats — nature's perfect breeding machines — can get pregnant at the age of 4 months and can have up to three litters a year.
About 42,000 kittens are born every day in the U.S., compared with 10,000 people, according to the group Spay USA. The feral cat population is about 80 million — with an estimated 480,000 in the Twin Cities.
Cats dominate shelters, accounting for 58 percent of the animals taken in by the Animal Humane Society in 2009.
That imbalance increases the urgency, Balzer said, of finding more loving homes for cats. Dogs don't have that problem.
"A puppy's face, people come running for. But cats have a different role in society," Balzer said. "This is a community problem."
With adoptions down, the Humane Society will have about 3,000 more unwanted cats to deal with this year.
Officials are trying to find them homes. The group announced this month that it has slashed adoption fees to $50 for a neutered, vaccinated, microchip-implanted cat.
And it is extending a two-for-one sale. The "Double the Love" program allows families to adopt two adult cats for the price of one — $50.
The Humane Society neuters thousands of cats each year and advocates for all owners to neuter cats. Because of such programs, it slashed euthanizations in 2009 by 9 percent to 11,000 animals — most of them cats.
But this year, it will be difficult to keep euthanizations down. Balzer wouldn't estimate how many more cats would be killed in 2010, but she did say, "Euthanasia is a reality."
"Does it break our hearts? Absolutely," she said. "Are we looking for any opportunities to help? Absolutely."
It's too soon to tell if the new programs will be enough to deal with the stampede of incoming cats.
Last July's cat adoptions at the Humane Society were down 15 percent. Adoptions in the two-for-one "Double the Love" program have dropped by 36 percent in one year.
For SCRAM founder Johnson, the stress of dealing with so many unwanted cats is grinding.
She was recently called to help one female cat in Blaine, abandoned when her owners moved. Johnson said the cat has been sitting by the back door for weeks.
"She cries and cries. The neighbor feeds her. And now she has had two kittens," said Johnson — the start of another feral colony.
"It makes me crazy," she said.
Bob Shaw can be reached at 651-228-5433.
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