The TLC Cats Bask In A Virtual Outdoors

It was 9 months in the planning – but took only one day to erect -- our outdoor enclosure for the TLC Cats. From the outside it doesn’t look like much but it provides the cats with safe outdoor viewing of a myriad of wildlife -- birds, rabbits, pack rats and even a resident Quail family– that regularly hang out around our house.

We average about 6 or 7 cats out there at a time – and the outdoor feeling must be very real because the first few days we let them out, they would run back in the house when we approached the room – giving the impression they thought they had been caught sneaking outdoors. Now they’re getting the idea that it’s okay for them to be out and stay put. They have total access to the room when we’re home and awake.

To create the enclosure, we simply attached three electric shade screens to an exterior house wall and took advantage of the portal roof and paver floor to complete the structure.   An exterior living room door leads into the enclosure.

The cats now have a safe way to breathe in the fresh Santa Fe air, sunbathe, peep at the critters and nap without the inherent risks of being outdoors – predators, parasites or the possibility of getting lost.   All we need to add to complete the experience are a few pots of cat grass to munch on.

Would they prefer being in the real outdoors?  Probably.  But the open screened view is crystal clear from the inside so they can see the critters up close and personal but it's opaque on the outside so the critters don't see them. Ranging in age from 12 to 19 years old, these cats are much more a fan of spectator sports than live action -- and this safe enclosure optimizes their participation -- and it's just in time for the 4th of July!.

Oreo's Law Takes A Bite Out of Best Friends

Best Friends Animal Society is taking some well-deserved heat right now for their failure to support Oreo’s Law. By holding a neutral position on this bill, they let down over 70% of the animal organizations in New York State who had supported it – not to mention the many cats and dogs that will die in New York shelters because the bill didn’t become law. It was tabled in June and will not be brought to a vote again until 2011 if it’s brought back at all.


Oreo’s Law (NY Assembly Bill Number A09449) was introduced last November after the ASPCA opted to kill an abused dog named Oreo rather than turn him over to another animal organization who offered to provide him with life care. If the bill had passed, it would be illegal for a shelter to unilaterally euthanize animals – who are not dangerous, suffering irremediably or afflicted with rabies -- without first giving other qualified organizations 24 hours notice of their intent. And – if any qualified organization comes forward to take the animals, the shelter is required to transfer them rather than kill them. There are already similar laws in other states – most notably a 1998 California law which is credited with saving thousands of animals.

Best Friends staying neutral on such a bill is particularly curious because anyone who knows the story of how they started knows it was by doing exactly what this bill codifies – rescuing cats and dogs from death row. Have they forgotten their roots? Why would any animal organization at the forefront of the No Kill Movement not get behind a law that makes shelter euthanasia more accountable to the community? I went to their blog to find out – and was saddened by what I read.

They chose neutrality because they didn’t want to take sides in what they considered “a fight over ideology and history” between significant animal welfare figures – Nathan Winograd and Edward Sayres. Yet this wasn’t a cocktail party debate they stayed clear of -- it was hard-and-fast legislation that would ensure shelters availed themselves of every means necessary to reasonably save the lives of viable cats and dogs before resorting to killing them. Doesn’t this law support the very premise of No Kill? … Of Best Friends?

Then Best Friends concludes that staying neutral was reasonable because:

“Ultimately we believe it made no difference, with regard to its passage, whether or not we supported the bill. … Without the support from two of the biggest organizations in the region (ASPCA and the Mayor’s Alliance), the bill simply wasn’t going to pass.”

Of course the ASPCA isn’t going to support Oreo’s Law -- it reins in their actions. And by supporting the law they would have to acknowledge that shelter euthanasia should be used only as a last resort not as an assembly line taking homeless cats and dogs in the front door, killing them and then taking them out the back door.

Making a decision to stay neutral on a bill – not because of what it does to advance a No Kill Nation – but because you don’t want to be on the losing team is morally corrupt. We do – and should -- expect more than that from Best Friends. They have a stellar history but this action puts a major chink in it.