News Updates
February 2010: Educating dog and cat hoarders
Dear Friends,
What is behind animal hoarding? There are compassionate animal lovers who, unfortunately, wind up hoarding far more unwanted animals than they are capable of taking good care of. Ms. Leelavati is a good example (her story is below). She means well, but the animals suffer.
VSPCA is filling the gap between compassion and care by taking these excess animals off the rescuers' hands VSPCA has gently been educating Ms. Leelavati and even partnering with her in animal rescue. People like her come across animals we might otherwise miss. Working together we can help a lot more animals.
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| In one small house she has too many dogs. | And she kept cats too! |
We have just rescued these cats as they were living in these cages for the past few years. We have taken the cats to our new cat facility which we have built with your kind donations. All have gotten the spay/neuter operation now.
Watch a short video of VSPCA's new and unique cat house which I took on my recent visit to VSPCA. This is one of several VSPCA buildings built to help cats; the design is innovative for India where there are very few cat shelters.
With time and your donations we will keep rescuing and counseling more. Please donate here!
Below is the full account from Pradeep Nath, VSPCA President. It was VSPCA Board members Sarada and Malliki Buddhiraju who counselled Ms. Leelavati and are working on the ground to make a real change for Visakhapatnam's dogs and cats.
– Eileen Weintraub, on behalf of VSPCA
The story behind Leelavati's cats
She has in her house around 38 rescued dogs, including 14 "pure breed" dogs. The others are rescued Indian Street dog friends.
Previously she has had up to 78 dogs which we have helped her with. Due to our ongoing counselling, she is not taking in any more.
Besides her resident dogs, she feeds around 200 street dogs. From 5:30 PM to midnight she goes around with a bucket covering more than 20 kms by foot! She does this all alone. She is really a saint for the animals, but instead of lauding and helping her, her family members have now shunned her.
Middle-aged, she works as a class IV employee earning around Rs.14000 per month (USD $350) and has been helping the animals for the past 14 + years.
As to cats, she didn't have any until two years ago when she first rescued two tiny kittens. The kittens were thrown by the roadside wrapped in paper! Unable to bear the cries of the kittens she picked them up. She never thought that they would survive as she never had cats or saved any kittens or cats before. But the kittens survived!
Then on another day while walking towards her office she observed a poacher with a gunny bag around his shoulder. She could see the ominous bulge and the struggling movements of the full grown cats caught inside. For further info on this terrible problem, please see our VSPCA link about stopping the cat eating "trade."
Unable to bear the pain and wanting to save them she questioned the person. He replied that he was taking the cats as per the orders placed to him by people who wanted to do experiments. She paid Rs.100 (USD $2) and took the cats away. Since she had no room in the house she placed them all in a cupboard in between the dogs (see photo above of VSPCA removing the cats from where they have spent the last few years). They are now rescued and have bene relocated to our new facility, after spay/neuter, for life or adoption.
So far in our city the only way people could save cats from poachers was by hiding them, but without spay/neuter the conditions remained dire for the cats. VSPCA is working slowly and diligently to educate people to bring cat overpopulation, cat poaching and other sufferings to an end.
We will continue to pursue these issues with your kind support to save the cats of Visakhapatnam. We appeal to all to support our cat rescue programme.
Kind regards,
Pradeep Nath