Jane Velez-Mitchell show tonight---cats being killed by town of Monessen Pennsylvania
Glen
By Stacy Wolford
VALLEY INDEPENDENT
Thursday, April 21, 2011
A group of cat supporters said they will not go away until city council stops trapping stray felines.
City residents Charlotte Luko and Lori Cheroki, who co-founded Coalition for a Humane Monessen, asked council Wednesday to place a moratorium on the trapping of such cats.
However, it appears council will not budge.
The activists are upset about an amended ordinance adopted in February that allows for free-running cats to be impounded.
Nearly a dozen women supporting a moratorium attended the meeting.
Luko and Cheroki asked Alley Cat Allies, a national advocate for feral cats, to join their fight.
Cheroki said Chloe, her indoor-outdoor cat, was one of 18 felines a contracted trapper captured and delivered to the Fallen Timber animal shelter. The animals were euthanized.
Luko and Cheroki asked council to conduct a meeting to discuss the trap-neuter-return method. Under that plan, cats would be spayed or neutered and vaccinated. Alley Cat Allies promotes the method.
"Catch and kill is a total waste of time and taxpayer money and does not have our support. Trapping and killing is not a solution. If you want to clean up the city, the only viable solution is trap-neuter-release," Luko said. "We are here to inform you we are not going away. We ask you to acknowledge us. We are willing to work with the city to carry out a solution that includes spay and neuter education and TNR."
Cheroki, of Reeves Avenue, said city officials did not know where the trapped cats were taken, which prevented owners from finding their pets.
She said trapping cats is not effective.
"Trapping and killing temporarily reduces the numbers, but that is short-lived. Un-neutered survivors continue to breed and others move in to take advantage of food and resources. This is known as the vacuum effect," Cheroki said.
"TNR stabilizes cat populations. They are identified by an ear tip. You have an opportunity to make the humane choice and work with your citizens to resolve the issues for all the people involved."
Council also heard from residents who said stray cats are a problem.
Brett Lepresti, of Sixth Street, supports the battle against stray cats.
"I feel for the cat-lovers, but I got about 30 cats living across the street from me," Lepresti said. "They're in and out of the garbage and doing their business in my car port.
"You see them laying on the road, dead, hit by a car or something. I think we need to get rid of these cats. I don't know how you're going to do it to please everybody. But we've got to do something. If you spay and neuter them, they still have to do their business somewhere."
Leanne Snyder, of Knox Avenue, said she has a problem with irresponsible cat owners.
"It's not just stray cats that are a problem. We have someone on our street who owns six cats," she said. "You can smell where these cats have sprayed the outside of my house. They go in our bushes. The people who own them don't care.
"The cats are always pregnant and nothing is done about it."
Snyder said she keeps her pets on her property.
"We have dogs. They're fenced in," Snyder said. "The cat spray is sickening. I don't know what the answer is, but if the dogs have to be on leashes, then make the cats go on leashes, because it's not fair to everyone else."
Mayor Mary Jo Smith said cat-trapping has been placed on hold until the city can find a shelter that will accept the animals. She said Fallen Timber stopped accepting the animals because officials there were intimidated by cat supporters.
She said a man who wrote a letter to the editor to The Valley Independent last month supporting cat-trapping, received an anonymous death threat.
Smith said police are investigating.
"We have dealt with several of the people who have sent letters and e-mails and asked them to take the cats, and they've refused them," Smith said. "So as soon as we find a place, our trapping will begin again.
"If people want cats in the City of Monessen, just like every other pet, they need to keep them in their house and in their yard."
Smith said she has two neighbors who keep cats on leashes in their yards.
"What's good for the dog owners in Monessen is good for the cat owners in Monessen," Smith said.
Councilman Josh Retos said cat owners can protect their pets.
"If you are a responsible cat owner and you love your cats and went to the expense of spaying and neutering your cats, you should go to the additional expense of having a collar on it and identifying it," Retos said.
Luko said the group will stage a protest near the Monessen Municipal Complex in the Eastgate section at noon April 27.
In other business, council heard from resident Roderick Wilson, who presented a proposal to operate the Civic Center through his organization, Save America's Youth.
He said the nonprofit group would offer mentoring programs and other activities for all ages.
"It would be a safe haven. We would provide a positive platform, and I believe we would make a difference," Wilson said.
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"In [those] days............people met other animals in much the same way people today meet each other. You were sharing the same neighborhood, after all. You used the same water, you ate the same foods, you sometimes found yourself peering out of the same cave waiting for a downpour to stop."
----Alice Walker, from her novel, The Temple of My Familiar
Glen
Coming up I`m going to talk to famous Hollywood actor, Eric Roberts. He has a plan to save millions of stray dogs and cats.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CROWD: Educate. Don`t eradicate.
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VELEZ-MITCHELL: An angry protest from animal lovers fighting to save cats killed by a city trying to get rid of stray animals. But some say those strays are actually indoor/outdoor pets that people cared for and fell in love with.
These taxpayers are angry. They are furious over the killings of animals, wiped out simply because they are deemed and damned as strays; just one of many battles out there over our out-of-control stray pet population. Check this out from youtube.com.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ERIC ROBERTS, ACTOR: The number one cause of suffering for dogs, overpopulation. Many counties that have no laws against cruelty to animals control stray dog populations by poisoning, hanging, and shooting and beating to death.
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VELEZ-MITCHELL: So sad. The Humane Society of the United States says 4 million cats and dogs are killed in the United States every year because there are no homes for them. Some people say it`s twice that. But even at that level, that`s a dog or cat killed every eight seconds in our country. That`s obscene.
Now there`s an exciting new plan to make a birth control device for dogs and cats. Joining me now is Hollywood movie star Eric Roberts; Eric, so glad to have you here on ISSUES. You`re working with 600million.org to come up with essentially a birth control method that would solve the world`s horrific stray pet overpopulation problem. Eric, in basic people terms what you trying to do?
ROBERTS: It`s great to see you, Jane.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Thanks.
ROBERTS: Thanks. Thanks for the cause. Look, this is called 600 million and you can find out about it at 600million.org because every day there are 600 million stray dogs in this world who need our help. And Alex Pacheco, co-founder of PETA decided as his legacy he was going to solve the problem. So he wants to come up with a way to spay and neuter all dogs without having to have the operation and the costs and all that. So hopefully it will be in a pill form and we can spay and neuter dogs so they stop having -- because my wife and I travel, all over, all over the world all the time.
We were in Nashville, Tennessee. And we feed all the strays always. We met a pregnant stray mother dog and fell in love with her and we lost her, of course. We couldn`t capture her and help her. But we realized that all of her babies will also grow up to have babies who won`t have homes.
So, we got involved in this project and Alex Pacheco is our new hero because the cause is awesome.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Yes. And I`ll tell you what. I`m also involved in this. I did a documentary about stray dogs in the Caribbean. It`s a business. Killing these animals in vicious violent ways is a business. And we need to switch that around and make at it business to feed them a cracker or a pill and sterilize them.
(CROSSTALK)
ROBERTS: Well said, Jane. Make it a business to do it.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Let`s make it happen. We`re going to stay on top of this. Eric, we`re going to be back in just a second.
Remember you at home, you can get involved. If you love cats and dogs and this can be expanded to deer, so many animals suffer because of over population. We want you involved. So we`ll hear more in just a moment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: It`s estimated that around the world there are more than 600 million stray dogs. They live in deplorable conditions, suffer from hunger and disease and survive by eating human garbage.
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VELEZ-MITCHELL: We`re back with actor Eric Roberts. What are you trying to do now? You`re working with scientists, I understand, to come up with this one dose formula, a cracker or a pill. It would be absolutely extraordinary. The scientists are working on this as we speak?
ROBERTS: That`s the idea. That`s the idea. To make it very simple and very easy where anybody can do it and where they can`t be poisoned with it, they can`t be OD`d on it. It`s very difficult and we need the financing for it.
(CROSSTALK)
VELEZ-MITCHELL: All right. Well, go to 600million.org and get involved. We`re going to save these millions of animals and in the meantime, spay and neuter your pet, and adopt don`t shop.
Nancy Grace next.
END