Things that aren't true
Uhhh, I don't remember where I was told this -- my panel at SPACE? my trip to the Ukraine, where social issues were talked of muchly? -- but someone stated that the gender ratio in the united states was 60% women to 40% men. I questioned this, saying that I heard this was the current gender ratio of college, but as I recall she (it was definitely
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Sure, it doesn't sound that bad, but force spay/neuter programs haven't worked. Why let government take away your choices? Public education campaigns do work, and they aren't cooercive!
Sure, public education programs work fine. On people like you and me, that is. However, might I be so indelicate as to point out that we are, generally speaking, smarter than the average bear? And perhaps a bit more conscientious than average? Sad as it is, I've known many people who don't view pets as living, thinking beings. They see them as possessions, as amusements. To those people, spaying/neutering is just another cost, because they sure don't care enough to find out the nearest low-cost or free spay/neuter clinic. Public education programs will have to get a lot louder, a lot more invasive, and consequently a lot more expensive before most of these people even take notice, and many (most?) still won't care. Who cares if Fluffy gets pregnant, so long as she goes off somewhere else to have 'em?
No, it seems pretty clear to me that the problem isn't people's opinions towards spaying/neutering, or a lack of understanding of the reasons behind it, it's people's whole outlook on having pets. Ideally, I'd say adopting an animal should be just as hard as adopting a child. It still wouldn't be perfect, of course, since history has shown that distressingly many people can't be trusted to take care of their own children, but it'd probably help. But realistically, as much as I hate any sort of coercion, requiring spaying/neutering is about the most that can be done at a legislative level.
Did you know that, while PETA funds spay/neuter programs (good), in the "shelters" they run over 90% of their animals are euthanized as of 2005?
I agree that this blows. However, I would like to point something out: most shelters only take healthy, people-friendly animals. When we picked Jack up off the street in East Orange, she was pregnant and had feline leukemia. We had her spayed, since the chances of her kittens not having FELV were slim to none, and set about finding a home for her where she wouldn't infect our kitties. Both of the FELV shelters within a hundred or so miles of us were filled to capacity, with waiting lists a mile long. We finally found someone way out in rural Pennsylvania who could take her - it was a five hour drive, but fortunately Jack was a good car-kitty. But if we had picked up any of the other n (at least 2) cats living in our alley, who probably also had FELV, this house certainly wouldn't have had room for them, and we'd have been looking even further out.
But in all this looking, we found something interesting. Most shelters wouldn't take her at all. A few, including the PETA shelters, would take her but would immediately euthanize her because of the FELV. We didn't want her euthanized, because we'd already fallen in love with her, but given the epidemics of FELV and FIV and the enormous overpopulation of feral cats in urban areas, I'm not sure this is such a bad thing. As much as I hate wanton killing of animals, I also feel like we have a responsibility to help curb the epidemic, since it's primarily due to human influence.
Granted, as far as the shelters go, there's no way to know which way the causation goes - perhaps PETA takes any animal *because* they euthanize most of them *anyway*, or perhaps (and this was my assumption) they euthanize so many because they're willing to accept any animal, even the sick ones.
PETA still sucks, of course :)
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