SVFF Happenings

It was a slow week -- the cats in most of the colonies we're actively working on were uncooperative. Came up quite short, we only ended up fixing 5 cats this weekend, though we had appointments for about twice that. *sigh*

I just thought I'd share these kind thoughts sent to us by someone responding to our running adoption ad on Yahoo! Classifieds.

That is one ugly looking cat. You should give it away for free.

Kids these days... *sigh*

Well, yesterday I just happened, for "no special reason", to be crawling through some bushes, when I stumbled upon this:



There are 6 of them, though you can only see 5. If you think you might like to adopt any, contact our kind friends at Alley Cat Rescue, who have agreed to foster them. They're three and a half weeks old now, so they'll be of adoptable age in late May.

Wikis are an interesting new web medium. Basically they're collections of documents that are editable in a collaborative manner -- if you see an error or omission, you can just use the built-in tools to go fix it, expound on it, revise it, etc. Wikipedia is an example, it's intended as an encyclopedia in wiki form. It's actually a pretty neat thing, you ought to take a look.

Because of the collaborative nature of the medium, disputes can arise ("edit wars") when contributors to the same article or document disagree about some point. They might repeatedly change or revert each other's edits so as to undercut the opposing point of view. Of course, the spirit of Wikipedia is that articles should be written from a neutral point of view so that the article can accurately represent the different viewpoints of a controversial issue. Administrators have the ability to protect documents from malicious users who actually vandalize the collection.

The idea of a collaboratively updatable encyclopedia is cool, and I played around with it recently. There wasn't much in it on feral cats, so I added to what was there and added a new article on feral cat colonies and the TNR approach.

And guess what. I've found myself in an edit dispute with someone who is an apparent bird enthusiast who has added to the TNR article the sentence "However, Trap-Neuter-Return does little or nothing to address destruction of native wildlife by feral cats." I wouldn't mind that so much (after all, the full spectrum of viewpoints ought to be represented in an unbiased article) if he wouldn't revert my revisions that include the qualifying phrase "Many wildlife and bird advocacy organizations believe ..." to it. To this guy, the idea that TNR doesn't do anything to address the predation issue is not a matter of opinion, but is an indisputable fact, and that my inclusion of the qualifying phrase misrepresents that. The guy is also apparently an admin of Wikipedia, which makes things somewhat more complicated. Stay tuned ...

Wikis are an interesting new web medium. Basically they're collections of documents that are editable in a collaborative manner -- if you see an error or omission, you can just use the built in tools to go fix it, expound on it, revise it, etc. Wikipedia is an example, it's intended as an encyclopedia in wiki form. It's actually a pretty neat thing, you ought to take a look.

Because of the collaborative nature of the medium, disputes can arise ("edit wars") when contributors to the same article or document disagree about some point. They might repeatedly change or revert each other's edits so as to undercut the opposing point of view. Of course, the spirit of Wikipedia is that articles should be written from a neutral point of view so that the article can accurately represent the different viewpoints of a controversial issue. Administrators have the ability to protect documents from malicious users who actually vandalize the collection.

The idea of a collaboratively updatable encyclopedia is cool, and I played around with it recently. There wasn't much in it on feral cats, so I added to what was there and added a new article on feral cat colonies and the TNR approach.

And guess what. I've found myself in an edit dispute with someone who is an apparent bird enthusiast who is added to the TNR article the sentence "However, Trap-Neuter-Return does little or nothing to address destruction of native wildlife by feral cats." I wouldn't mind that so much (after all, the full spectrum of viewpoints ought to be represented in an unbiased article) if he wouldn't revert my revisions to include the qualifying phrase "Many wildlife and bird advocacy organizations believe ..." to it. To this guy, the idea that TNR doesn't do anything to address the predation issue is not a matter of opinion, but is an indisputable fact, and that my inclusion of the qualifying phrase misrepresents that. The guy is also apparently an admin of Wikipedia, which makes things somewhat more complicated. Stay tuned ...

In a previous blogpost, I described news we had heard that Santa Clara County was going to discontinue their feral cat spay/neuter subsidy program. I sent an email early this week to the County's Board of Supervisors, and today received a personal response from Don Gage, the Supervisor for County District 1, and chair of the subcommittee that deals with animal control issues.

He said that there was not, in fact, a plan to discontinue the feral cat program, but there was a proposal to restructure the program so that FIV/FeLV testing would no longer be mandatory. The proposal was floated as a way to reduce the per-cat cost, and direct the savings back into the program. Supervisor Gage says that the savings should allow even more spay/neuter surgeries to be done under the county subsidy.

Very good news indeed!

Well, here's something that never happened to me before.

Last week we had an urgent request for help from someone whose yard feral gave birth on her roof. We responded quickly -- I requested help from IBOKRescue, and they went over there and rescued the kittens the next day, and I attempted to trap the mother cat with the client the day after that (last Friday). No luck that time.

So this week, I arranged to try again. We exchanged a couple of emails to the effect that I would be by on Thursday evening.. Yesterday night, I showed up at the client's house. Nobody was home, but I went ahead and set the trap in her backyard, and left a message on her voice mail stating I had set the trap and would return later in the evening to check on the trap and requesting she call me if she saw that the cat was trapped.

After picking up cats from elsewhere, I returned to the client's house, to find a police car parked in front and one of the officers knocking on her door. I parked on the far side of the street (as there was no place to park on her side), and walked across to talk with the officer in the car. He asked what I wanted and I said I was helping to catch a feral cat for the person who lived there and needed to check on the trap. He stated that they (the police) were there because she had called to complain of me having been in her yard without her knowledge or authorization!

After hearing my side of the story, they allowed me to retrieve my trap (under escort, of course) and leave.

We've had plenty of difficult clients before, but none quite like this.

And the saddest thing about this is that this could have turned out to be a heart-warming success story, about the rescue of kittens from a dire situation and a prompt final resolution with the capture and spaying of the mother.

Some of our cases are easy. One or two strays in someone's backyard, trapped, fixed, and released, with the work completed in a week or two.

Then, there are the much more difficult cases. We have a handful of large, regional cases, with multiple colony sites located in the same general area. Many of these revolve around the urban creeks that run through our valley, and handling them is kind of like playing "Whack-a-Mole", the infamous amusement park game in which each time you slap down the plastic critter a new one pops up in another location.

Don't get me wrong. "Whacking" is not one of the methods SVFF uses on feral cats. What I'm talking about is the fact that in these big cases, each time we get one site under control, we discover another location in the area with unfixed ferals that we need to work on.

The creeks are a big factor in this. They provide both a haven and a migration route for the cats, safe from the cars in the nearby streets and parking lots, yet also provide easy access to the dumpsters behind the businesses and homes that the creeks run behind. Add alot of half eaten lunches to the dumpsters or some sympathetic folks to feed the cats directly, and you get a whole series of colonies forming along the creek.

Some have claimed that one in ten households have someone who feeds feral cats. So what about a small business with ten to fifty employees? On a street with a dozen of these businesses on each side, near a creek, how many feral cat colonies might there be? The conclusion we're coming to is a friggin lot of them.

Feeding feral cats? Don't wait until there are kittens. Get them fixed, or request help to do so. The "just one cat" you're feeding could turn into a dozen by the end of the summer.

One of our members just got notified last night that her feral cat appointment at the Humane Society of Silicon Valley had been cancelled. They have used up all of their county subsidy funds, and won't be able to offer the $10 program anymore.

*sigh*

By the way, we've also heard that Santa Clara County is not going to renew the feral cat fix subsidy program in the next budget cycle. Once the funds at the other clinics are used up too, that will be it. The program won't start up again later this year.

If this program is something that is important to you, and you're a Santa Clara County resident, please write to your county supervisor and ask them to keep the program alive, even if reduced funding is necessary. You can email them at these addresses:

District 1 - Don Gage - don.gage@bos.co.santa-clara.ca.us
District 2 - Blanca Alvarado - blanca.alvarado@bos.co.santa-clara.ca.us
District 3 - Pete McHugh - primo.mchugh@bos.co.scl.ca.us
District 4 - James Beal Jr. - jim.beall@bos.co.santa-clara.ca.us
District 5 - Liz Kniss - liz.kniss@bos.co.santa-clara.ca.us

Right now there are 11 of us in the group, not including our supportive significant others. 2003 was a big year for membership. Almost half of our members -- five -- joined last year. We'd be somewhat larger if not for a bit of attrition. Four have left the group over the past few years -- two no longer had time to participate, one moved to Colorado, and one had some philosophical objections to the way things are run around here. Almost all of us are actively working at least one feral cat case, and some of us are juggling several.

In case you've been wondering about the fact that there aren't any real little kittens listed on our adoption page, don't worry, they are coming. We've got plenty of reports of kittens in the field for the cases we are currently working on, as well as presumed litters born or coming soon if we don't manage to trap and spay the mothers in time. It is starting to look like it is going to be a very rough summer...the dam is broken and the water is headed this way.

So, we did make an appearance at the San Francisco Revelers Cat show. Raised a bit of $$, though not a huge amount, but more importantly got our message out about spaying & neutering and TTVAR for ferals. Several other rescues (Persian Cat Rescue, Pets in Need, Homeless Cat Network, and the SFSPCA) were there, as was our partner organization Itty Bitty Orphan Kitty Rescue. (Incidentally, we realized that their acronym reads "I be OK rescue", which is pretty cool).

Three of our adoptable cats -- the Irish Girls -- were shown in the household pets category and two of them won ribbons! Now, that is really cool. I mean, how often is a cat that wins ribbons in a show available from a rescue, huh?

Anyway, we were pretty happy with the experience, and we probably will be doing additional shows later this year. There's one in San Jose in June or so that we might attend, so stay tuned!

Well, I finally got a chance to find and fix the stupid HTML bug that was causing the blog to be formatted in a manner inconsistent with the rest of the web site. Now that that's done, it's been linked to the rest of the web site so people can actuallly see it. Enjoy...