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Chapter 37. Ultimately, We Are Not God
Once settled into the new apartment on East 88th Street in 1995, I began to set my goals upon rescuing more animals from CACC. Unfortunately, the number of pound animals needing rescue far outweighs our abilities to house or find suitable foster for. It's a bottomless well of abandonment, endless faces peering out of endless cages and endless need.
I learned quickly that there are advantages and disadvantages to the rescue of pound animals, as opposed to the rescue of strays.
The advantage of rescuing shelter animals was that one could choose from a huge array of available animals, the friendliest, the youngest, the prettiest, the healthiest and in many cases, purebred animals. The obvious disadvantage was having to make such "choice" at all.
As good as one might feel leaving the shelter with one or two rescued animals, there were always ten more coming through the doors, thereby nullifying any sense of achievement one might temporarily feel. Not to mention all the animals in the shelter cages, all on very limited time. One leaves the shelter with the image of doomed faces fresh in the mind and the disturbing feeling, "Couldn't I have saved just one more?" torturing the heart.
It is like playing "God" with animals lives. Not a good feeling at all, as no one wants to feel that kind of burden and that kind of guilt for, in reality, our all too human limitations. We are not God, after all. We are human. "How do I rescue this one and not that one?" was and is the oft repeated question and burden. It is one I still feel today, so many years later. It seems to have no answer other than,"Because you are not God."
The advantages of dealing with a specific group of strays is that one has time to work out a plan and rescue according to available resources (money, fosters and placement). There is usually a finite number of cats (or dogs) one is focused on. If one is doing the job right in terms of neutering, placement and monitoring, there is an end in sight. Either all cats are picked up, neutered, socialized and placed. Or, (as is the more common practice now), feral animals are neutered and placed back to a safe and carefully monitored environment.
When previously working in Harlem, I did not have the option for "neuter and release" of hard to place cats for two reasons. First, the environments were neither clean nor safe. The abandoned building on 108th Street was slated for renovation and the filthy junk lot on 109th Street was a reservoir for disease and other dangers such as close access to cars or dogs.
Once, when going to feed cats on 109th Street, I found a dying cat in the lot. The cat had pulled himself into the lot and behind a fence after being hit by a car. He was convulsing on the dirty ground of the lot. I could not let him die like that.
I climbed the chicken wire fence to retrieve the cat and once in a cab to get to my vet, the cat perished in my arms.
It was a horrible experience and one I would never forget.
It forever altered my view of allowing cats to go outside and served as the motivation to write in our adoption contract that, "no cat adopted from New Yorkers for Companion Animal should ever to be allowed to freely roam outdoors."
On another occasion, Janene Tyler told me that one of the cats we had been planning to rescue from the 109th Street lot was killed by a dog. "Some of the kids set their dogs on the cats," she told me. "They think its some kind of game." Guilt and sorrow plagued me as I asked myself, Why couldn't I have gotten this cat sooner? The question had no answer other than I was already full. Unfortunately, now the cat was dead. "Soon" wasn't soon enough.
The other thing one could never be sure about when cats had access to outdoors, were the neighbors. When doing cat rescue in the alleys on West 88th Street a few years before, I had become friendly with one of the resident Supers. Tom Kelly was originally from "The Ol' Country" (Ireland) where the thinking was, that cats enjoyed going outside. Because he lived in a ground floor apartment of one of the area buildings, Tom allowed his two cats to roam around the back yards and alleyways of the buildings. "Princess" was a lovely spayed Tortie cat and Domino was a black and white neutered male. Both cats were very friendly and well known to neighborhood residents. They would walk right up to you.
One night I got an anxious call from Tom. "Patty," he said in his thick Irish brogue, "Did you by chance pick up my cats when setting out the trap?" "No, Tom, of course not. I know your cats and would never pick them up. What's going on?" "The cats are missing for almost two nights now!" Tom said, sounding panicky. "They haven't come back to eat or anything. They always come back and sleep with me at night." "Oh my," I said, concerned. "That doesn't sound good. I will ask around on that. Maybe you want to make up some signs and post them all around the block?"
Betty Forel (who aided me in the 88th Street rescues) and I looked for and asked around on Tom's cats. One woman who lived on the block told me, "Well, not everyone loves Tom's cats. There is some guy up the block who's always complaining about 'em going into his yard and diggin' up his flower beds. He's threatened, more than once, to bring the cats to the ASPCA."
With that information, I immediately called the ASPCA as soon as I got to a phone. "Did you receive, or did anyone bring in two cats in the last couple of days from around 88th Street and Columbus Ave?" After some minutes, the woman's voice came back on the line. "Yes, two cats were brought in as strays from that area on the 23rd.. A Calico and a black and white." "Yes, yes! That sounds like the cats we're looking for! The owner will be in to pick up his cats. Make sure nothing happens to them!" "Sorry, Ma'am" the voice said in a somber tone. "The cats have already been euthanized. No one came to claim them in time."
"Euthanized?" How could that be? My heart immediately sank to my shoes with the news, but I found myself angry with the messenger on the phone. "The 23rd was only two days ago! Aren't you supposed to hold animals at least 48 hours? How could they already be dead? These were two friendly owned cats! Why were they killed so soon?" "Ma'am, the cats were brought in as strays and they were determined to be aggressive," the voice told me coolly now. "Well, this is not the last you will hear of this!" I sneered. "The owner is going to be devastated to hear his cats were killed at the ASPCA!"
Tom was indeed devastated when I broke the news to him. "God, I hate to tell you, Tom, 'I told you so,' but you know I warned you not to let the cats out." "My cats had been going out for years, Patty!" Tom yelled defensively, while trying to fight back tears. "I never thought anything like this would happen. Everyone loved my cats!"
"Not everyone, Tom," I corrected. "It only takes one person to do something like this."
Tom demanded a meeting with the shelter supervisor at the ASPCA and I and Betty Forel accompanied him the following day. We demanded to see the intake forms on the cats to determine what exact time they were brought in and what time they had been destroyed. It appeared that the documents had been altered in order for it to appear that the animals had been at the shelter 48 hours before being destroyed. As suspicious as the forms looked, we could not prove anything. "How is it," I asked, "that someone can pick up friendly owned cats, bring them in as 'strays' and the ASPCA kills the cats? Does the owner have no recourse?"
"Once the owner lets his cats out, they are legally strays," the ASPCA supervisor answered without emotion or sympathy. "If they trespass on other people's property, they can be brought in for animal control. The man did not steal the cats from the owner's home."
The sad and seemingly unjust experience with Tom Kelly's beloved (but obviously not by everyone) cats taught me once again, that no matter how many times one gets away with "taking chances," it only takes one time for a tragedy to occur. It took only one person to perpetrate a mean and callous act despite all the other people who "loved" Tom Kelly's sweet and endearing cats.
Over the years I have had many occasions to question and admonish those who insist that cats should be allowed to roam outside. Often, the rationalization is, "My cat's an outdoor cat." To which my answer always is, "Look in a cat breed book. There is no such breed as 'outdoor cat.'"
But, in the end, whether dealing with a finate number of strays who may or may not be socialized or may or may not be easy adoptions, or trying to fish out the oceans of abandoned shelter animals with a teaspoon, there is no route easier than the other and there is no way we ever reach the top of the mountain of our goals of saving every possible life.
The problems are always bigger than we are. The number of animals needing rescue is always bigger than the number of available fosters or responsible adopters or money to pay for optimum care and boarding.
We cannot control the actions or attitudes of other people. We cannot control whether an animal might get sick, how long an animal will live or what happens to an animal when s/he is allowed to free-roam outside. Indeed, we cannot control what happens to an animal once s/he is adopted out. That is essentially what makes the job of "adoption screening" so important and so challenging. Having gone to the trouble of rescuing, vetting and caring for a cat or dog until placement, one has to be sure not to put that animal in a similar situation that led to his/her abandonment in the first place. We cannot simply "give" cat or dog to anyone who claims to want one. Animals are not toasters or computers.
And always, we have to remind ourselves again and again, that despite our mission of trying to save lives and often having to make choices of life or death, ultimately, we are not God.