Some pets have all the luck & some bears live to suffer

Some cats are lucky; other cats (and pets in general) are not.  Example: the small animals like guinea pigs who are being surrendered or given away “in droves as the world reopens,” the New York Times reported earlier this month.

The predictions about dogs and cats being returned or surrendered to shelters once people were back to work or school didn’t play out – happily for them.  But “small animal surrenders spiked by more than 50% nationwide in the first six months of 2022, compared to the same period the year before.”

Those suddenly homeless small animals include reptiles, birds, rodents and even fish.  The return traffic is so heavy that Manhattan’s City Council is considering a bill to ban sale of guinea pigs in pet shops.  In Central Park, numerous domestic red-eared slider turtles and rabbits have been found, along with guinea pigs. 

By comparison, surrenders of cats and dogs have climbed less than 7% over the year before.  One theory for that is “human attachment”: people feel that small animals are “less interactive” than dogs or cats, less able to fill a void and provide the companionship that people are looking for.

Adding to the issue of shelters now being “glutted” with small animals, fewer adoptions are taking place.  So, still more animals in need.

Nor is the problem of abandoned “pandemic pets” limited to the US; it’s also happening abroad.  In England during a six-month period ending in July, there was a 24% increase in reports of such animals (including numerous fish and snakes). Last month’s “Guinea Pig Awareness Week” accompanied “a 90% increase in (their) abandonments, on top of a 49% increase in rabbits.”

Right now, there’s widespread big bad news for small animals.  Is anyone out there pining for a guinea pig, or 3 or 10 of them?  https://tinyurl.com/5888pfyh 

For another view on pet adoption and abandonment, read the column linked here.  It’s one more excellent essay by Margaret Renkl.    https://tinyurl.com/58hk2kzk   

 Lucky cats

. . . And the winning number is 31!  That’s how many cats were spayed or neutered last week through one concerted effort to make it happen.  The felines involved would not have benefitted from the procedure without the shuttle-to-sterilization sponsored by the Animal Protection League of NJ  (https://aplnj.org).

                                                                 Obi pic

Promoted in the last post here, the procedure will allow the cats, now also vetted and microchipped, to lead kitten-free lives, thereby doing their bit to help manage cat overpopulation.

Best of all, the plan is to do it again.  Next time, though, the initiative may be called the “Kitty Kab,” says APLNJ’s Sandra Obi, who coordinated the spay-neuter operation.  Already, three people with 6-10 cats to be “fixed’ are on her wait list.

Fracture

by Ellen Bass

When the grizzly cubs were caught, collared, and taken away—

relocated they call it—

their mother ran back and forth on the road screaming.

Brutal sound. Torn from her lungs. Her heart,

twisted knot, hot blood rivering

to the twenty-six pounding bones of her feet.

Just weeks before

I watched a bear and her cubs run down a mountain

in the twilight.

So buoyant, they seemed to be tumbling

to the meadow,

to the yarrow root they dug, rocking

to wrest it from the hard ground, fattening for winter.

They were breathing what looked like gladness.

But that other mother . . .

Her massive head raised, desperate to catch their scent.

Each footfall a fracture in the earth’s crust.

(c. by Ellen Bass. First published in Poem-a-Day on August 17, 2022.)

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