Animals 24-7

News on dogs, cats, horses, wildlife, zoonoses, & nature

Feral cats, TNR, & what we could learn from the fall of Rome

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Video “Covid-19 & TNR for cats” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_AWoreQQ_I&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3wEMorrwskWhz6am72-SEkUQYzEeFXynGOO9kQyNZ0_HbSS1alKlTfAd0 Reviewed by Merritt & Beth Clifton Edward Gibbon,  in authoring the 1776 six-volume tome The History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire,  said nothing of feral cats,  but a parallel plot outline may be developing––just out of sight and out of mind––in and around the […]

Spay/neuter resumes in Italy despite COVID-19, Camorra & Nigerian mobsters

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Quarantine keeps crime in check––for now             ROME,  CASTEL VOLTURNO,  Italy––The deadly global COVID-19 pandemic,  killing nearly 32,500 Italians to date,  might if anything have made Castel Volturno,  the unlikely spay/neuter hub of the nation,  just a little bit safer. Certainly stay-at-home orders seem to have at least temporarily reduced the mob violence for which […]

Puppies & kittens everywhere, but none in shelters to adopt

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Suspension of spay/neuter & intake services due to COVID-19 cuts adoptions by a third from 2019             NEW YORK CITY––Celebrating rehoming every dog and cat in custody soon after COVID-19 shutdowns began,  animal shelters from coast to coast are suddenly––and predictably––weeping,  wailing,  and tearing hair about having no adoptable animals to offer in response to […]

$5 for a cat head: True stories of animal welfare,  with hands-on tips for helping animals

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by Linda Chitwood Director,  The Homeless Animals Relief Project 200 pages,  $29.00,  c/o HARP, POB 371, Senatobia, MS  38668;  https://homelessanimalsreliefproject.org/index.html. Reviewed by Merritt Clifton Describing herself as “eighty percent of the way to dead,”  longtime Memphis nurse anesthetist Linda Chitwood relocated forty miles south to Senatobia,  Mississippi in 1996,  apparently expecting to spend a lot […]

We need to open up spay/neuter – now!

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by Bryan Kortis, National Programs Director, Neighborhood Cats When the shutdowns in our country began due to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus,  in early March 2020,  the animal welfare field reacted quickly.  Shelters were closed to the public,  services were curtailed to the bare minimum,  and cages were emptied through adoptions and recruitment […]

COVID-19 suspensions of shelter intakes & spay/neuter: at what cost?

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ANIMALS 24-7 readers raise two critical questions: 1) How will this impact stray populations months down the road? Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic,  all the shelters in Houston have either shut down or have very limited intake. As you know, Houston has tens of thousands,  if not hundreds of thousands, of stray dogs and cats […]

COVID-19: animal shelter “experts” circle back toward pet overpopulation

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by Ruth Steinberger Founder, Spay FIRST A dear friend once shared the adage,  attributed to Herman Wouk,  “When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.” Never has a better example of this adage been seen than in the current movement by so-called shelter management experts to support a return to intact […]

COVID-19: India feeds stray dogs; ASPCA says “don’t fix them”

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ASPCA advice to shelters could increase puppy & kitten litters by about half a million  While pet keepers in the developed world fret about the apparently infinitesimally small risk of pets and humans infecting and reinfecting each other,  following the discovery of COVID-19 infecting one cat in Liege,  Belgium,  and two dogs and a cat […]

COVID-19:  What can wildlife management teach us?

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No,  it is not “shoot the victims”!             SEATTLE––Perhaps the most startling statistic pertaining to the global spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus is the statistic almost nobody mentions:  the ratio of compensatory versus additive mortality. What’s that? It is not that as of March 10,  2020 there are still only about 140,000 COVID-19 cases of […]

Heart failure fells Vier Pfoten (Four Paws) founder Helmut Dungler, 56

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Dungler died at the Lionsrock sanctuary he founded             BETHLEHEM,  South Africa––Helmut Dungler,  56,  founder of the international animal charity Vier Pfoten (Four Paws),  died on January 5,  2020 from a sudden massive heart attack suffered on one of his frequent visits to the Lionsrock sanctuary,  among the biggest and most ambitious of the many […]