No Kill is an Established Brand

Despite Nathan Winograd’s books not being sold in Australian bookstores and less than half of shelter leadership having read them, we’re living in a global village where information travels freely across borders. The following table shows Australians search for ‘No Kill’ twenty times more than they search for ‘getting to zero’.

No Kill is Simple To Explain and Understand

Just like ‘No Kill’, G2Z calls for a live release rate of above 90% for animals admitted to pounds and shelters. One place it falls down is in communicating exactly how to achieve that. The No Kill Equation spells it out plain and simple.

The mandatory No Kill programs and services include:

1. TNR Program
2. High-Volume, Low-Cost Spay/Neuter
3. Rescue Groups
4. Foster Care
5. Comprehensive Adoption Programs
6. Pet Retention
7. Medical and Behavior Prevention & Rehabilitation
8. Public Relations/Community Involvement
9. Volunteers
10. Proactive Redemptions
11. A Compassionate Director

Getting to Zero or Starting from Scratch?

If you google for ‘No Kill’ you will find oodles of information including wikipedia, blogs, news reports, books and more. No Kill has been successfully achieved in many U.S. cities and has withstood attacks that include misinformation campaigns by the likes of PETA and the ASPCA.

The G2Z site suggests that No Kill shelters are not open admission. As the president of Victoria’s 3rd largest open admission animal shelter I can tell you this is not true. It goes on to state that “No Kill implies no animal should be killed” but that “Getting to Zero” somehow doesn’t. Huh? Either term could be read to mean “don’t kill pets”. Surely it would be easier to help educate people about what No Kill really means than start a new movement.

The No Kill movement is a Tribe. A global tribe with leaders who get written about in Forbes and spoken about in a TED talk by Seth Godin. We can do more by growing the No Kill movement than trying to start a new Tribe. To do so without good reason would mean lost opportunities and wasted resources.

I’d like to leave you with the talk that introduced me to No Kill in 2009 and led to me realising that we can and must do more for these animals.

Cat Trappers are on the Rise

I can’t help but wonder how many of these pets have been caught and taken to the pound by cat trappers.

While some believe they are helping the cats there are others who see cats as a pest that do not belong in our communities.

Most Councils freely loan out traps to any resident who asks for one.

When Council receives a request, a trap is delivered to a specific place.

Trapped cats are collected by Council officers and impounded at The Lost Dogs’ Home.

The traps catch cats humanely and are the same type as those used by animal welfare agencies such as the RSPCA and The Lost Dogs’ Home.

If cats are registered and/or microchipped, they are returned to their owners.

The Lost Dogs’ Home holds unidentifiable cats for eight days and assesses them to see whether they can be adopted out.

Yarra City Council Website

What isn’t made clear is that The Lost Dogs’ Home killed almost 90% of the cats they received in 2010. For the vast majority of impounded cats, being trapped is a virtual death sentence.

The Lost Dogs' Home killed 9 out of 10 cats in 2010

Pound Contractors to Benefit from Increased Impounds

For the holders of Melbourne’s Council pound contracts, an increase in impounds means more business. Some have been lobbying for changes that would increase the number of cats trapped.

• the “Who’s For Cats” program has led to an increase in impounds
• the introduction of cat curfews could lead to fines for trapped cats

How can we improve this situation?

Notify Owners: If owners go to the trouble of posting notices on power poles, why shouldn’t those trapping cats also be required to do that same? Why not require Councils to post the details of trapped cats (including time, date and address of trapping) on the nearest power pole to where the cat was trapped?They could also be required to post a photo of the cat within a certain timeframe to their website and the website of their pound contractor.

Regulate Trapping: Being trapped can be highly stressful and poses serious welfare risks to cats:

• lacerations on face and body from smashing into cages
• risks from exposure to the elements
• contraction of disease if the trap has not been properly cleaned
• contraction of disease if mixed with other cats
• poor handling
• being left in hot cars
• In the case of pets being trapped, it is also causes great distress to owners.

Perhaps cat trapping should restricted to trained and authorised animal welfare personnel?

Note that RSPCA Vic is not being criticised and has far higher save rates than LDH or CPS.

If calling yourself “Australia’s Largest Cat Welfare Organisation” with the “highest adoption rate of all shelters in Victoria handling a large number of cats” brings in the bequests, does it matter whether these claims are actually true?

Cat intake and rehoming numbers for Cat Protection Society of Victoria have been called into question in recent months. CPS directors have been refusing to answer some simple questions about the figures.

What is the true number of cats adopted in 2008?

It’s been suggested that CPS has been misleading about it’s adoption rate. One Melbourne vet found the dollar value for cat sales in their annual report was much lower than would be expected.

Bayswater veterinarian Harry Corbett said he believed the society was misleading about its adoption rate of cats and kittens in order to retain its status as ”Australia’s largest cat welfare organisation” so it could continue to attract donations, grants and legacies.

The society – which had total assets of $7.86 million, including $6.2 million in cash, as at December 31, 2009 – received $1.25 million in legacies, $41,000 in donations and a $50,000 annual state government grant for the Who’s For Cats campaign in 2009.

The Sunday Age has been told by a well-informed source at the society that the true number of cats adopted was only 6.5 per cent, or 1036 cats. If the society had adopted out 30.3 per cent or 4782 cats, sales would have been worth more than $250,000. Cat sales amounted to only $77,670 for 2008, according to the society’s financial statement.

When asked if the published adoption rate figure for 2008 was incorrect, the society’s executive director, Dr Carole Webb, said she did not have to respond.

Cat Group May Face Watchdog, The Sunday Age 28 Nov 2010

CPS Annual reports indicate adoption numbers have been inflated for over a decade

The following figures were taken from CPS annual reports and show the number of cats reportedly adopted in red and the approximate number represented by the cat sales figures in green.

Notice how the reported number of adoptions fell to the number indicated by the cat sales figures around the time that questions were being asked about their accuracy.

Carole Webb presented the following graph to an audience of her peers

At the 2009 NDN Summit Carole presented the following graph that clearly shows more than 4000 cats being rehomed by CPS each year for the previous decade.

The Age profiled Carole Webb in 2005

A profile in The Age reported that Carole Webb kills about 10,000 cats a year and that this is around 2/3 of their intake.

“Dr Webb takes each animal – or “person”, as she likes to say – into the privacy of her office. ”

“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.”

“So far, Dr Webb has delivered about 200,000 healthy cats to the big sleep.”

“She kills about 10,000 a year.”

Unloved Kittens Leave a Job No one Could Want, The Age [5 June, 2005]

CPS Stop Accepting New Members

The Cat Protection Society returned my membership fee with a letter explaining that they are not accepting new members while they make changes to the constitution. We are left to wonder what the board have planned and whether these plans have been disclosed to ASIC (as required by law under the Corporations Act). One possibility is that the board will try to wind up the society rather than permit a change of leadership. The answers to the questions above may be something they never want discovered.  Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that for the sake of all who have donated and volunteered in good faith.

References

Protection society in catfight, The Sunday Age. 17 Oct 2010

Cat protection scrap widens, The Sunday Age. 30 Oct 2010

Cat group may face watchdog, The Sunday Age. 28 Nov 2010