This document is an expose' of what I call, The Animal Conspiracy! I want to take this opportunity to detail numerous facts about these felonious animals & their so-called owners. It is possible you and I have much in common when it comes to these furry creatures.
I will first and most importantly expose you to the Chain of authority that should exist in any (representative city or community). While the subject at hand we are discussing is the (Cat)&(Dog), it also logically follows that all domesticated warm blooded animals allowed and understood to be (pets) fit directly into the overall documentation in this paper. CATS, because of their popularity and the special problems they pose, will be the focus of this writing. In most cities, not all unfortunately, a chain of authority exists to properly manage the exploding pet population!
In properly managed communities you generally have a Health Authority, who supervises a City Animal Control facility who is authorized to issue citations for violators of city ordinances. The local ASPCA also works closely with Animal Control because of its vested interest in the well being of properly managed pets! There is also help and assistance from the local Law Enforcement Authorities available to keep order, because emotions run high and wild in these situations involving people and their animals!
Let us now begin peeling off layer after layer of little known facts of what can be, humane care and treatment of managed pets! The one word that is never acknowledged openly is Responsibility! When you have a pet, it’s like when you have kids...Right? Not exactly! Unfortunately and more times than you could ever imagine being a pet in some families affords them better care than the kids in that family. Hopefully this is not the case or the norm but know this, there is much evidence uncovered nationally of Child Abuse when investigating, Animal Abuse! I can assure you that a lot is hidden and swept aside that never makes it into the paper or on television!
Consider this, you can own a dog but a cat is not owned by anybody! A cat by nature is a hunter and will provide for itself. A dog on the other hand properly restrained is dependent on someone to feed and water it and provide shelter from the elements. Cats are opportunistic hunters, left on their own and do quite well supporting themselves. When pets are not properly managed and controlled many bad side effects start manifesting themselves very quickly.
Cats in particular bring about numerous situations that perpetuate dire circumstances in our society. Since all warm-blooded animals pose serious health concerns when not managed properly, diseases lurk at every turn and episodes of stark terror exist in every situation encountered. Consider these particular aspects of Cats you may not hear about. When a feline defecates, it scratches soil or some other covering material over its deposits. Problem # 1 (Cat Scratch Fever). This problem is benign in light of other more serious health concerns cats pose, but it is serious enough on its own to be mentioned as part of this report. I feel that there are many cases of this problem misdiagnosed and no doubt attributed to some other cause.
The fever and achiness associated with cat scratch fever is nonetheless significant because the symptoms mask and mimic other maladies such as flu, ECT. Scratching and clawing transfer the disease organism to you or anyone else unaware of hidden dangers. Even digging in your pansies has become dangerous to your health when a cat decides to use your flowerbeds for its latrine.
Problem # 2 Cats are known to be the "Typhoid Mary’s" when it applies to being (carriers) of diseases. One disease in particular is known to decimate the dog population but leave cats essentially unaffected called, Toxoplasmosis. Parvovirus and (Feline Aids) are major areas of concern hardly ever mentioned in the press or in news releases for public consumption.
Problem #3 the dynamic interaction between Cats and Mice (small rodents) present a very serious disease interface that cares not as to whether it’s a dog or a cat.... Fleas! These parasites cause Bubonic Plague in warm-blooded animals. We all know how cats in particular love to play and eat these tempting morsels found in places you wouldn't venture into with a spacesuit on! So fleas present a direct link in the chain of disease, that a Cat or Dog could expose you to.
Problem # 4 (Rabies) this disease occurs with probably the most frequency in the warm blooded animal population both nationally and internationally. Thankfully Bubonic Plague does not occur on the same level as Rabies. If it did, there wouldn't be anyone left to testify as to the results. It should be clear by now if you are still with me to this point, we are skating on very thin ice with a ongoing cavalier attitude toward animal borne diseases.
The entire population is at risk ultimately! The sad truth in all this is that the population who has the most to lose allows it to continue and refuses to get involved. It’s always easy to look off the problem and discount its effects and hope it gets lost in the shuffle. Lets put it another way. Would you knowingly allow your son or daughter to walk up to a coiled rattlesnake and pet it?
The answer of course is No! By allowing them to pet animals running loose with no vaccination tags is tantamount to rattlesnake petting. Remember this also you, being a human homosapian are warm blooded too! A prime-breeding environment for exotic disease organisms! Unless I have grossly underestimated, things Superman and Wonder Woman could manage to defeat these demons but you and I don't stand a chance!
I have owned and had the responsibility of a pet. It takes time and patience and yes a certain amount of money to properly care for a legal pet. A welcome pet speaks reams of the family who is charged with the care and well being of the animal. As I said earlier there are many things we can agree on, not that we will agree on everything else I have to say here! I am simply hoping you still have a open mind now and still will have one when you finish this paper. There is a line of departure we are now crossing from this point on and the crux of the matter of what I am speaking about hangs in the balance!
The whole issue of animal control affects all of us partner, and ultimately many of our local political, and law enforcement officials. You must by now admit that animals left to run without being vaccinated specifically for Rabies poses a serious health department code violation! If you don't already know, in the City of Irving there is a LEASH LAW specifically for Dogs as well as Cats. Unfortunately there is no licensing law required as well!
There is also a requirement for the pet to have a proper restraining collar, a muzzle is also required if the animal has a history of possibly being a potential biter with annual vaccination tags that are current for the year! This does not mean that if the pet specifically stays in the house it does not require shots annually; the law applies to ALL pets without exception they must be vaccinated!
If you allow a pet to run free you are in effect committing Animal Abuse and can be fined and prosecuted if need be for your irresponsible care of your unattended animal. If your unattended animal becomes diseased and bites someone, your troubles have just started my friend! It then means you pay all expenses such as Rabies Shots and all future associated medical bills! The common sense approach will definitely relieve you of this financial burden, all you have to do is do the right thing, properly restrain your pets. Please understand I am speaking from the grown up adult parent perspective here!
If you the parents do not teach your children these common sense measures also, then you, Mom and Dad deserve to be required to foot the bill for not doing your part! The application of a good stiff fine will very quickly establish the value of the pet. In tough economic times paying a unnecessary fine such as this puts the problem into true focus! This brings up another interesting point of discussion. If your (pet?) is in fact as valuable as we are led to believe why do you allow it to run unrestrained and unsupervised?
Lets do a quick review so far. If you are responsible for a Cat, do you let it run unrestrained during the day and at night? Do you get the cat a annual Rabies vaccination and up dated tags as required by law? What about a litter box, or does your cat conveniently use your neighbors flower beds instead? Ever notice how it always becomes someone else’s problem? Your nose on a warm spring or summer day will let you know where the cat's real litter box is located, usually between the pansies or the daffodils! Remember: having and caring for a pet and being a good neighbor is going to cost you something. You can pay a little now or a lot later on but you will pay eventually! I also remind you again that Irving, Texas has a LEASH LAW, FOR DOGS AND CATS! It also needs a mandatory licensing law as well!
Lets shift the focus now to the administration aspects of this problem and how the City and local municipalities figure into the mix. A city or local government is only as effective as the people who elect officials to represent them. The animal control laws on the books establish the criteria by which even the elected officials and the general public must abide by, no respect of persons allowed! A fully informed citizenry armed with the facts is still the best controlling factor in this out of control menace. The Health Department works directly with the City Government to produce the Codes that outline and set the bounds of authority in respect to Animal Control and then becomes the conduit to the municipal Animal Control Facility who performs its function to physically put the whole plan into action.
Here is where the answers are arrived at and the bureaucratic nightmare created at the top echelon of authority is at the worse! Working to the advantage of NONE is a policy that ties the hands of Animal Control completely in that they are not allowed to come to a complaint location unless the offending pet is contained! Now this is the most outrageous bureaucratic policy you can ever imagine! If you live in a private residence and have a problem pet, (you, a tax paying citizen) must rent on deposit a trap from the Animal Control facility to capture and contain the offending animal risking contact with a potentially diseased animal so finally, maybe you get help to solve your problem.
The Animal Control facility has professionally trained employees who know how to address situations such as this, yet because of a bureaucratic snafu emotional, untrained stressed out citizens are required to put themselves at increased peril. If that is not enough by itself, the offending trapped pet creates a major point of contention that often involves police intervention and in extreme cases a need for legal action. The unauthorized release of a (trapped/contained) animal is a direct violation of city codes and ordinances. Particularly in these cases involving Cats, once they are (contained) (trapped) many owners completely disavow ownership in earshot of younger family members who know the truth and their tears oftentimes belay the true facts.
In the same neighborhood type situation that involves public housing such as apartment complexes, the management company must assume its proper role to address the situation also. In most of these living quarters space is a premium, so unlike a private residence where space could be less of a problem the situation becomes acute! Litter boxes for instance may be considered a space-grabbing nuisance so flowerbeds and gardens are obvious options for irresponsible pet owners who let them run loose!
So society, which insists on having a pet, continues to push aside legitimate concerns of health and safety that fly in the face of common sense and citizen rights. In each of these last two specific examples something should be crystal clear! The Animal Control facility should be free to come to the offending location to begin analyzing the situation; after all they are the professionals who have the objective training and City mandate to address the problem! Do you get it YET?
Addressing the symptoms and passing the buck like what is being done now instead of ADDRESSING THE PROBLEM professionally only serves to fuel the fires of ignorance and Animal Abuse, solving nothing! Some common sense must come along with this suggestion. Please understand this also, a lot of people know how hamstrung agencies are and essentially have little or no fear and in a lot of cases simply don't care what's right or wrong. When Animal Control receives a nuisance call from a general area usually numerous times, a simple plan of RANDOM UNANNOUNCED VISITS would provide surprising results in locating offending pets and their supposed owners.
Then the original hoped for results we desperately need would be given to Animal Control Officers to carry out the Mandate they are charged to enforce. There is simply no way to disavow this common sense measure that ensures that people can have their pets, without becoming a nuisance or a health hazard to the rest of society at large.
Well I hope you are still with me so far, as you can see even though you may not agree with my assessment to this point many valid points have been made and can be enforced legally. Code Enforcement is designed to protect all of us from outrageous acts that normally we wouldn't even think about. They are always working for us even if we don't have an immediate or pressing need at the moment. It only takes a moment however or a chance encounter to put you in dire peril. I can remember numerous occasions when driving and watching other drivers attempting to avoid a animal running loose hit another vehicle or object and in worse case scenarios seriously injure themselves or other innocent people while the offending owner's pet escapes and leaves society holding the bag once again. This may sound silly to some but it is a fact and it happens far too often!
I know that for some of you this discussion is a hard pill to swallow and has probably succeeded in raising your blood pressure somewhat but we are now into the heart of the matter I want to discuss with a open mind. The law of the land is in essence designed to save us from ourselves. I think it is fair to say it’s a jungle out there, and when we neglect the very system put there to prevent these things we invite the jungle to come in. In reality this is just the tip of the iceberg we are seeing at this time. The main issue of our discussion as I said is what we will concern ourselves with now. Animal Abuse is in every single example I have talked about from the onset of this document!
Everyone, it seems is concerned about something these days and some are very passionate about their feelings when it comes to things personal. Society moves forward by teamwork and taking care of business, it regresses into the dark ages through neglect and lack of concern. As I said early on, all kinds of abuse are linked together by a common thread. We are obligated to expose it at every turn. Did you know Animal Abuse exists for example, if you notice that someone's Dog that is a outside pet and does not have adequate shelter to protect it from the elements? Summer heat, winter cold, and rain have an effect on you personally don't they? A poor neglected animal deserves at least what you get don't they? Allowing puppy and kitten mills to turn out unwanted animals in hopes of selling them for a profit further complicates the Animal Abuse problem.
While breeders in these situations are not responsible for pets sold any more, at some point those still under their control reach a point where they require their vaccination shots. Do you now begin to see why these reckless breeders fill their own secret little niche in this part of the Animal Control problem? If you buy a pet from one of these kind of operations that is unlicensed and unregulated, a sick and a diseased animal is certainly a possibility and you are still required to start a regular vaccination program annually regardless of where you purchase the animal. A healthy animal adopted from a Animal Control facility or a licensed pet breeding company that has been spayed or neutered is the #1 option in you acquiring a pet.
Uncontrolled breeding has dramatic consequences. Did you know that a pair of healthy cats left to breed undisturbed, have the capacity to produce over a normal estimated lifetime of ten years over 10,000 offspring from just one pair up! Other sources say that this same match up could produce many thousands more than I have indicated here! The end result requires no further mention. On a ranch in the western part of Texas they had a problem with Prairie Dogs. Horses, cattle and sheep fall victim to stepping into their holes, so in a very stupid move to poison them out of existence they made matters much worse! Here is the mistake they made, by trying to poison them. Prairie Dogs produce a normal litter of about six to eight pups (normally). In this fiasco however the Prairie Dogs retaliated by increasing the size of their normal litters. You see another mistake was made earlier by messing around with the coyote a natural predator of the Prairie Dog. The balance in each of these situations was upset because a vital chain link was broken.
If you cannot keep all this straight just remember this. When humans breed usually the result is predictable. When animals breed, large numbers are quite the norm. Animals have four legs and we humans have but two! When we try to bring animals into our world, animals usually leave three of their four legs in their world; this is why they are animals. The characteristics that make you what you are reside in animals also. This means nothing can be left to chance. Animals do not make rational well thought out decisions, they are highly reactionary creatures that desperately want to please us if they can but can turn on us without warning simply because they are what they are, Animals!
If those people flirting with disaster trying to rid themselves of Prairie Dogs had consulted with organizations like the ASPCA and others they would have found out what they were about to do! Documented cases of similar problems would have saved them a lot of grief but you live and learn. So we must put forth the premise that if we continue down this same path creating more problems than we solve, we are going to lose big time! The natural events we see happening all around us is not just a simple nuisance we can ignore, we are seeing the walls crumble around us. Flesh eating bacteria, Ebola type viruses from tests on monkeys are no laughing matters any more. Dynamic interface of test animals that could escape and our own group of free to roam pets could produce a deadly disease organism that could spread to humans and endanger all of us. Consider this documental example of the out of control problem.
In the late 1980's a stray cat bit a woman in a town where we lived. The cat naturally escaped capture, and left the poor, hapless woman to take Rabies shots... Oh! Yes I also forgot to mention this, she was pregnant and worse still the cat was never found and was not wearing its required vaccination tags! How would you like to face that situation? In another equally disturbing pair of events in this same area in less than a year the locals came up on the losing side once again! One incident in the city involved a pit bulldog off a leash that attacked a small child, nearly taking off its arm! The animal was only defending its "territory" the owner said. Believe me friend this person wishes he never had laid eyes on that pit bulldog!
He is finding out the hard way how expensive his irresponsible act was. Reconstructive surgery and many painful hours of therapy still plague the innocent victim and his family. The other incident happened in a rural setting where a mountain lion mauled another child in the family! Except in very rare cases exotic type animals are not allowed to be kept except if you are a licensed exhibit or zoo facility. Well, once again as I mentioned before when we invite the beast into our world at least part stays in their world! Remember, they are Animals and must not be taken for granted. This family has learned a hard lesson and like the other one in town they too must abide the rules or suffer the consequences! What then is the responsible citizen to do? We as humans have certain rights we enjoy. Animals (pets) essentially do not have the same rights as we do. Animals do deserve to be treated humanely, watched over and cared for in a respectable manner! Here's a thought for our free spirited environmentally sensitive "Tree Hugging, Neo-Pagan, Pantheists" to ponder and get on their soapboxes about. What if their precious "Spotted Owls", "Snail Darters" and "Mud Skippers" were treated like Dogs, Cats and other equally deserving creatures? Could it be that they too might be a part of this problem and don't think it applies to them? Maybe the Dogs and Cats and other equally deserving creatures should lobby to have themselves declared "Politically Correct"! At least then they would have a chance and someone to plead their cause! I am personally tired getting left holding the bag.
It’s just not enough to get mad and say I'm not going to take it anymore or worse yet, do nothing. If you and I do not take the minimum basic appropriate action with our local elected officials, nothing has changed! I hope you (we) never find us in need of these services that agencies should have the power and authority to provide. The exchange of critical information is where the answer lies in solving this long-standing problem.
Education remains the single most important thing any of us can do! Once we quit addressing the symptom then we quit doing like a dog or a cat does when chasing its tail, we can focus on the real problem! Time is of the essence and cannot be overstated! In Schools, Boy and Girl Scout environments and situations where free exchange of information exists we must continue to get the word out. Information comes back to the home by a strange route these days. Active programs in these locations are designed to get Mom & Dad informed about how to be responsible with pets! Sad, isn't it, these days a kid can't be a kid and have a pet, and probably risks getting beat up if he or she mentions to their parents that they are not responsible! Unfortunately like I said earlier ANIMAL ABUSE HAS A DIRECT LINK WITH CHILD ABUSE!
Remember also a dead giveaway sometimes in these situations are a crying child thinking about what might be coming after the officials leave. This is a horrible mess society has heaped upon itself that causes some of the most dangerous confrontations imaginable. We all have a role to play in all this though and it might as well be a positive one.
On the positive side and the #1 thing that must happen is that the Trained Animal Control Officers must be allowed to be freely investigate complaints with random visits to identify offending irresponsible (owners?). Removing and minimizing the exposure of untrained Tax Paying Citizens from contact with potentially diseased animals, trying to trap them! This professional approach is the only logical way to address the problem! Another positive action would be to work closely with the local ASPCA organization.
These people are a vital link in the Education of our children, which hopefully will eventually reverse many of the downward trends we see in this Crisis! Another critical need is for food and other items to care for the upkeep of the expanding pet population. Please make an attempt to visit a facility such as this and remember when there, what they are attempting to do on a very limited budget. Don't take my word for it ask them for pet information about disease and its potential (real) danger when animals are left to roam! If you are thinking of purchasing a pet please consider the ASPCA, or the Animal Control and for certain a Licensed reputable pet breeder. If there is not a plan designed on a invitational type basis for local veterinarians to rotate in and out of the Animal Control facility, there should be one encouraged!
This way they all can all benefit their practices to expand the spay and neuter programs that are the cornerstone of turning around this problem. This veterinarian involvement will also address another significant loss of revenue they have been having up to now, by enforcing the codes, they will also benefit and perform their roles in cleaning up this mess by vaccinating more animals and restoring the health of countless pets doing their critical function that we desperately need! A win-win situation is what we all want, I hope. If you have stayed with me till now at least you know more than you did. Knowledge is worthless unless you act upon it. To take action you don't have to identify yourself unless you want to! I myself do not seek notoriety nor do I wish to be known for writing this document. Who I am or who you are is only important to you. The local newspaper will not print this document unless you totally expose who you are.
I am not a gutless wonder, afraid of my shadow. I have my reasons to remain anonymous and I reserve my right to do so. Free exchange of information is available to us all and as a citizen I have choices. If you choose to go public with information that is highly controversial like a whistle blower in a corporation you must be willing to take what risks come with doing so. In my case here however since I am not looking to gain notoriety but simply exchange information. I am perfectly willing for some media star to reap the visibility but I warn you this is a "hot potato" issue and can turn on you very quickly. As a private tax-paying citizen I want only the best for all of us. If you turn this mess into a political football we all lose. Yes, I have a soapbox too, as you can see, but I don't have an agenda that goes nowhere! I plan to do my part because I have studied and unfortunately experienced first hand the Problem that I have written about here. Evil and ignorance progresses when good people choose to do nothing!
I hope you don't get the wrong idea from all this. Truly I'm not a cat fancier as you might suspect and a dog is capable of causing sustained grief if allowed to roam. I am a pet lover like you are I hope. What I take exception to is the insane actions of uncaring irresponsible people who allow (pets?) to roam at will, leaving society to clean up their messes. We have better things to do than stay bogged down in this quagmire! Insist that Pets are licensed, vaccinated and properly registered in the county you reside in. Don’t allow your family to become a statistic insist corrective action be taken to help protect all of us.
Wow, what a letter!