.
Read the current edition of Pet Press, the May-June issue.
She asks a question that any feral colony manager might ask.
If Boks truly supports TNR, why is Animal Services busting homeowners like Mason and Marc Madow for tending feral cat colonies?
How can they demand that they stop feeding and giving water to cats they may have been feeding for years.
She asks, is this not only a demand to commit animal abuse (not neglect). I ask, is this not also a demand that they commit another criminal act of animal abandonment?
She asks how can the department, in a sense, be hypocritical and support TNR officially, but bring in SWAT teams if you actually keep a colony?
It appears the two faced policy really depends on whether a neighbor complains. If not, it is o.k.; if they do complain, you are dog meat.
This is why no rational colony manager will ever register their colonies. If a neighbor complains--and there is ALWAYS some neighbor complaining about the cats--Animal Services will come swoop down and demand they stop feeding the cats and giving water, or a demand to relocate the colony.
Have you ever tried to relocate a colony? The only way, really, is to remove them from the area and keep them in a new place for a month or so until they consider it home. Usually that entails taking them home and maybe re-abandoning them later at a new location. Or, one just fills up one's home with cats, until the ACTF and Boks swoop down again, only this time at your house.
Talk about animal cruelty and hypocrisy, we see it right in AS with the top guy, Ed Boks, saying he supports it--one day--and then a few days later condemning it and sending colony managers like Mason to jail.
Boks has to think this out. He reacts to whatever complaint drifts by. He cannot afford to let neighbors complain to Council and the Mayor that Animal Services is not doing something about a neighbor's cats, so he creates a media circus bust of caretakers, calling them hoarders, arrests them and then kill their cats. Then he brags about what a great service to animals he and Animal Services have performed.
Boks is really screwed up here.
3 comments:
Lori is right. Why is Boks for feral colonies in public parks but not for them in someone's home? Why is it okay to feed a cat in the park but not in your own yard? They poo and pee just the same. Why doesn't Boks go raid parks, arrest the park manager, gardener, feral cat guardian. It looks like discrimination to me. Feeding over three cats in your yard is a crime. Feeding 500 cats in the park is "saving lives." He praises TNR people, feral cat feeders. The Dept sponsors feral cat colony events, trains people in TNR. What's the difference? I would think the public would prefer you do it on your own property. I'd rather have colonies on people's own property.
Look here. Boks is all for feral cat coloniesThen he goes and raids people for having over three cats. He takes all cats over three and kills them. He speaks out of both sides of his mouth. He says killing ferals is cruel and pointless, then he does it and gives himself an award for it.
The dept is a government agency yet he refuses to post the government's take on feral cats. Fish & Game doesn't like feral cat coloniesThere is some research cited from the government there.
I read that column in the latest Pet Press and was really impressed.
She (and you, Ed) are right, no matter how you look at it it makes no sense.
On top of which, it seems to me that a small cat colony on or near your property, where you know all the cats is much more manageable than a giant colony of 500. How can you know which cats are potentially adoptable, which ones have been spay/neutered, which ones have kittens, etc. when there are 500?
But again people, keep in mind that people like Antonio Villaraigosa and Ed Boks absolutely benefit from creating and stoking this confusion and ambiguity. They profit when things are unclear and they can be capricious in how they interpret the law. That's why Boks worked so hard to first pick victims like Ron Mason and Marc Madow, who, being middle-aged white men, are not anyone's idea of a classic "victim." Then, at least in Ron's case, he went to such extreme lengths to paint Ron as an abuser (which he does with every hoarding case he chooses to pursue). It wasn't enough that Ron had a bunch of cats, he also had to have dead cats (LIE!), he also had to be breeding cats (LIE!), he also had to have a home that presented a community health hazard (LIE!), he also had to have disease-ridden kittens that would infect the neighborhood (LIE!), he also had to be mentally ill (LIE!), he also had to not be providing adequate medical care for these cats (LIE!).
That way Boks can stand up and say "I'm defending the poor downtrodden cats of L.A. from monsters like this guy" at the same time deliberately scaring all the cat rescuers in L.A. that they might be next. What does this accomplish? It keeps them from coming to LAAS with their feral cats/kittens. It keeps them from being too vocal in their opposition to Boks, lest he turn his eyes to THEIR houses. And, Lord of the Flies-style, it keeps the rescue community paranoid and untrusting, so we can't cooperate effectively to get Ed Boks the hell out of LAAS.
Don't think for a minute that it isn't a deliberate strategy by Boks and his flunkies to keep us in our place.
The irony here is that last year I visited two shelters to find out about volunteering. Of course I went to say hi to the cats, and in both places I was encouraged to think about adopting the cats I was talking to. When I said I was already at the legal limit for City of L.A. staff in BOTH shelters said the exact same thing: "Four cats is not so many..."
Ed Boks and LAAS know exactly what they're doing, and they don't give a crap who they hurt. They just want to be able to continue doing it unopposed.
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