"You don't know me at all. You don't know the first thing about me. You don't know where I'm writing this from. You don't know what I look like. You have no power over me. What do you think I look like? Skinny? Freckles? Wire-rimmed glasses over brown eyes? No, I don't think so. Better look again. Deeper. It's like a kaleidoscope, isn't it? One minute I'm short, the next minute tall, one minute I'm geeky, one minute studly, my shape constantly changes, and the only thing that stays constant is my brown eyes. Watching you. That's right, I'm watching you right now..." -You Don't Know Me by David Klass
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Shelter Work
It’s emotionally draining and I’m reluctant to go back.
See, me and two other interns were in the back shed checking the traps and making sure that they worked, cleaning them, and then re organizing them. a huge truck came and the kennel attendants told us to stay in the shed. i peeked out and saw they were loading metal barrels of bodies. just bodies thrown into barrels. on top was a rottie and in another i could see a skunk tail poking out. and it’s really depressing, you know? if people would just fix their fucking animals and learn a thing or two about animal behavior, the shelter wouldn’t run out of room. so after they take the bodies away one of the attendants asks me to clean the cat cages. so i go into the isolation room where they monitor for rabies and i see some plastic boxes on the floor. i think nothing of it and start cleaning the vacant cages. I look into an occupied cage and see a cat resting in a plastic box. I realized that the boxes on the floor had cats in them. There were about 10-15 boxes and two attendants came in and took them away to be euthanized. i kept cleaning the newly vacated cages when they came back, pulled out more cats and took them away. these were feral cats that couldn’t be adopted out.
And I don’t blame the shelter. I blame people for letting their animals breed whenever they want. I’m not against pure bred animals. But if you KNOW you cannot afford to keep a litter of puppies or kittens, FIX your damn animal instead of thinking that you can find homes for all of them, because there are thousands of other people out there thinking the same thing as you and they just keep multiplying and they eventually end up in a shelter with only 72 hours to find a home before they’re ushered off into the next life by a syringe. And if your excuse is that you cannot afford to fix your animals, shut up. Some vets offer discounts for people living in certain areas, some cities even pass out free vouchers for spaying and neutering. There are even programs where the castration of your animal can be funded by someone else. If you still say you can’t do it, don’t even get an animal. Just this one day has changed my whole perspective on spaying and neutering.
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