On January 25 I got a notice from Cristi Metropole saying that Stray Cat Alliance had rescued 40 live cats from a "hoarder" a few days before. The cats belonged to a very ill 80-year old woman in Northride, the same area as Ron Mason, and apparently they had not eaten in days and had no water. Some cats were desperately ill.
Remember, according to Lt. Boswell, Ron's cats had been eating well, had water, shelter, and they had verified records of medical attention with vet visits; so their medical condition could not have been worse than Cristi's rescues.
On January 25, I said we have a real opportunity to compare the live save rates of a private rescue group and Animal Services. LAAS killed 65% of Ron's (57 to 63) animals within a day or two because they were ill, or in Boks' words, irremediably suffering.
A kill rate of half, 33%, would be 100% better than Animal Services, 16% would be 400% better, and 8% would be 800% better, etc.
So, what was the Stray Cat Alliance live save rate 25 days after the rescue?
ONE cat died durng treatment at the vet; 39 out of 40 survived! All the others were successfully treated.
What was the Stray Cat Alliance's live save rate?
97.5%!!!
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Unbelievable isn't it? An underfunded private rescue group did almost 2,000% better than Animal Services in treating ill animals.
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So when Boks claims to be making fantastic success at saving animals never saved before, or more animals are dying in the shelter now because they are trying to save more animals than before, know that that is not true. They are failing the animals.
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I hope Dana Bartholomew., Rick Orlov and Carla Hall are reading this. This is a valid comparison over a similar sample or rescued cats, of what a private rescue group, without an in-house vet staff, can do versus a 300 employee department with an in-house veterinary staff of six.
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This is the post from the Stray Cat Alliance. This shows the living conditions and gives the background of their rescue. Please send a donation. Hopfully this post will not lead to them being raided by the ACTF for being hoarders.
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22 comments:
And I am sure that they will get lots of donations for this well publicized rescue. Does AC get donations after a rescue, not usually. Again you have to compare resources, space, etc. You are comparing apples to oranges when you are comparing a rescue group to animal control.
Animal control does get donations. In fact they were accepting donations for wildlife rescues done by rehabbers. They didn't give the money to the rehabbers who actually rescued the animals. LAAS gets donations for STAR, Felix...and all the other nonexistent programs.
Of course you can compare. If you look at the Chameleon data sent to Jensen, every one of Mason's cats listed as sick at impound was euthanized, except 1 that died in kennel. That is a save rate of 0%.
In fact, of all the sick cats entering all but 1 listed as sick were killed. One was adopted by a rescue such as Stray Cats.
Apparently NO effort was made to treat sick cats that day.
On November 20, another "hoarder" bust impounded 18 cats listed as sick. 12 were immediately killed, one was adopted and 3 were Green Listed, 1 died in shelter.
I am tired of LAAS excuses that they are so incapable of saving cats because they are bigger. Bickhart uses this excuse over and over.
The rescue groups are manned by volunteers who care. Where are the LAAS volunteers?
I forgot to add. The ONLY source of money for rescues is donations. They do not get $22,000,000 from the city to hire hundreds of full-time employees and pay to maintain seven shelters.
Rescues usually do not have shelters, if they do, they are small. They have fosters.
There is no comparison. LAAS has far more resources than rescues, but rescues save 1,500% more sick animals than LAAS. Why are so few being successfully treated?
I work at a rescue and I WISH we got "lots of donations." Although unlike LAAS we're actually accountable to our donors and woe betide if we baited-and-switched people by asking for donations for one thing (STAR program), then used the money for something else (Boks Legal Defense Fund), then told people it was none of their business where their money went.
Actually, the hell with donations, I wish we had one-twentieth of LAAS' budget.
And I can tell you where at least one LAAS volunteer is. I went to a private rescue, because I couldn't do anything at the City Shelter to help the cats and dogs. Of course, LAAS did JUST send out an email offering the dog-walking class you're REQUIRED to take before you can walk their dogs. And this was only an eight-month wait, as dogs go cage-crazy in LAAS kennels.
Of course you had to sign up quick. They were only letting five people into the class.
I can't make this stuff up, people.
Are you kidding me? Lots of donations?
The place I volunteer at has been around for years, and it's a freaking PIT. Every cent goes to the cats and the dogs. I am not even sure whether utilities and maintenance comes out of LAAS's budget, but it comes out of our pockets.
We had gas pipe problems and had no hot water and no dryers for weeks. I had to take a day off work to dry towels at the laundromat.
We have crappy furnture. We fight neighbors every day just to exist.
How did Bickhart get to be the animal guy? Does he actually think the bimbos Boks hangs around with represent actual rescues?
WOW- one of the earlier comments really opened my eyes to the realization that we probably are paying the legal fees of Ed Boks for his numerous lawsuits, and obviously the many more that are to come.
Is Villaraigosa too busy campaigning for Hillary to realize we need to cut our losses with this schmuck NOW!? Antonio obviously doesn't care about the animals, but what about the taxpayers' money??
This ruined my schadenfreude I enjoyed every time I heard of another lawsuit. :(
Oh please, drop the "holier than thou" attitude about rescues. They don't exist without donations. And they can't put themselves in jeopardy with all those vet bills without the anticipation of donations. By the way, when was the last time you made a donation to Animal Control? Look what happened with Zepher, when people learned about this death, the blankets came pouring in. Publicity = donations. A perfect example of how it works. You think Best Friends gets involved unless there are donations to be had? Hardly. I served for years on a Board of a major organization and "rescues" were decided based upon the amount of anticipated donations, not need. Common sense says that a group will not put it's entire operation in jeopardy by taking on so many sick animals and vet bills without expecting donations for doing it. Look at some groups 990's on Guidestar. Don't get me wrong, they have their place, and they do some good but they have learned marketing techniques and one is to pick and chose their battles.
Seems its not uncommon for cats entering LAAS shelters to be killed due to sickness even if those cats are healthy on intake.
1,400 Hayden Law Violations?
Keep scrolling down.
Brad Jensen
Cypress, CA
Commenter #1,
Why should animal services get donations when they kill 65-100% animals siezed during their well-publcized rescue?
The Mason "rescue" was extremely well publcized and they killed 37 animals. Why give them donations? A reward for incompetence?
Most of the cats that are killed because they're sick came into the shelter healthy. There isn't enough concern for the animals by many of the workers to clean properly and prevent the spread of disease.
Commenter #8,
Honey, you need to hang with a more downscale crowd. It would give you a more realistic idea of what goes on.
The rescues we're talking about are not politically connected. They are not run by savvy businesspeople. If they have a Board it's a bunch of old ladies whose big project is maybe getting new cages. Or, as was mentioned earlier, getting the utilities to work right.
The shelter I work at could never do a big, media-oriented rescue. We simply have nothing like the resources. But we save cats and dogs every week from being killed, from being left at a City Shelter where, depending on how "cute" they are, they may or may not die.
We save injured pit bulls, sweet and lovely purebreds who would have been killed by a breeder for minor cosmetic "defects," dogs and cats with perfectly treatable conditions that would get them a needle at a City shelter. And the people who decide whether we can take in a new dog or cat, to my ABSOLUTE knowledge, make those painful decisions literally based on if we have the physical space to do it. And we always have to keep in mind that, at a whim, LAAS could shut us down for having animals they would kill. Smart, sweet dogs and cats get saved and made well and hopefully adoptable under the most psychologically constricting conditions possible.
Yes, there are PR-based rescue groups. There are certainly vanity-based rescues. But it doesn't take much work to find the groups who work below the radar, who don't seek publicity, who stay up til 2:00 in the morning getting out quarterly newsletters that generate the $25 checks that keep us running.
The notion that long-running rescues choose who to save based on projected donations would be funny if it weren't so cruelly wrongheaded.
If all the rescue groups and their fosters and city and county shelters are overcrowded now due to kitten season, then how is it possible that there adequate room anywhere to put over forty cats that were supposedly rescued from the old woman?
Are they stuffed together somewhere in cages, or all the sick cats who are requiring over $15,000 in veterinary care sitting together with healthy cats "fosters" have at home and in their yard amd exposing them to the illnesses for which they need weeks of treatment under isolated conditions?
Do the fosters have 22 cats in their one bedroom apartments and more to add to the load, or are they stuffed in some back room somewhere they call a "cat room," with no proper ventilation or sanitary conditions to keep the cats healthy? Do all the cats use real litter boxes or do they have a plastic bin usea for mixing concrete that they all have to share and use as a litter box? The norm is one litter box per cat. How many litter boxes are there and how often are they kept clean? Do the cats with diahrrea use the same litter box as the others or are they isolated?
How do you isolate so many sick cats from each other, unless there isn't room to do that?
Are many in somebody's back yard and garage now, with 20-some other cats? What about proper shelter for them?
Are they going to be stuffed together for ages until they find a home, which will be virtually impossible to find, or are they going to be altered and released/dumped somewhere with someone who has other colonies of cats they are feeding and will eventually abandon to fend for themselves when that person moves?
There aren't enough homes or fosters for 40 plus cats. What's really going on and what is really becoming of those cats? Is the future and well-being for the life of each cat taken into consideration?
Will these rescuers provide nutritious food, shelter, and medical care for the life of the cats when they aren't adopted out into a loving and forever homes, or will they just be altered and reabandoned somewhere?
Are the fosters able to provide the proper care and cleanliness each cat deserves for the life of each cat for the rest of it's life or will it be always treated as a rescue and one that isn't really an owned pet, so it doesn't get the same treatment as an owned pet?
Those are a lot of cats those people got from the old woman's house. What is going to become of those cats? Will they end up in a situation of neglect all over again after the initial medical treatments following the rescue?
Is the future and quality of life for the life of the cat being taken into account?
What is going to happen to all those cats when FCA and their fosters end up with a bunch of kittens when they go out and trap? They need to be removed, fostered and adopted out.
What is going to happen to all the other older cats? There will be a lot of competition among the kittens coming in and the older cats who were taken from the old woman.
What will they do with all of the cats then? Will they be hoarded or dumped, both perhaps?
Last commenter.
What can I say about your made-up, negative attitude towards unnamed rescue groups?
What Muzika was talking about was some combination of rescues to take over the operations of the open shelters, not their cuurent financial status.
Most rescues that I know are hand-to-mouth operations where a big donation is $250.
LA City and County together have a combined income of $52,000,000. Any donations added would be "chump change," as Muzika says.
Fundraising would not be the central focus of activities but using resources to help animals.
Now, as to your imaginations based on your 200 year of experience, do you think the animals in the public shelters live in your utopian concept of what you consider what they deserve, with universal health care and shelter guaranteed for life?
We can't even guarantee that for our children. We can try, but not guarantee.
What is your solution? Euthanize every cat and dog that walks the streets--round them up and kill them?
You are not a half empty sort of person, but an everyone else is empty sort of person.
Wow, #13, you certainly put us in our place. With your endless list of unanswerable, yet suggestive-of-evil questions, you certainly have managed to imply (though not succinctly) that Stray Cat Alliance doesn't REALLY care about those cats and that they have carelessly tossed them away to abuse and litterbox-sharing.
The horror! You're right, it would have been better to let LAAS kill the cats.
Ed Muzika, fold up your tent and go home. The clearly not-agenda-driven #13 has proved with geometric logic that all cats (and no doubt dogs, horses and guinea pigs) can IN NO WAY be cared for up to his standards and therefore must die.
Are you happy Boks, or Bickhart, or Boswell? Can you go back to your REAL work now?
You know what would do #13 a lot of good?
He should get a cat.
The way a rescue can handle animals is quite different from how a public agency can handle them. The rescue has much more options about handling illness, etc. because they don't have anyone looking over their shoulders. Many times the animals aren't going into ideal conditions with the rescues. If you think so, then look at Cindy Bemis or Charlotte Spadaro. These are "rescuers". There are many more examples of deplorable conditions and the rescues see nothing wrong. If these examples were not available, I might agree with half empty but no can do. If we truly want to do the right things for the animals then we must make sure that they are going into ideal conditions rather than "at least they are alive" conditions. And keep in mind that private organizations are not subject to public records and are not that open to scrutiny. And here we go again whenever someone points out the negative of calling them murderers. How childish that is, there are always two sides and adults can realize that and deal with it. We all want the best for the animals. To ignore the negative sets one up for failure.
Okay #13-cum-#17, now you have moved past humorous to blatantly ignorant and revelatory of either your bias or your utter dishonesty.
Cindy Bemis IS NOT a rescuer. How do I know? Because if she was a legitmate rescuer she would live in fear of LAAS. Every time she saw cat litter on the floor of a cattery she'd picture the reaction of "Animal Reg." Every time she took in a hurt or malnourished dog she'd hope Animal Reg's goons didn't come and "inspect" before she'd had a chance to transform a sick, neglected skeleton into a bouncy, chubby puppy, or she might get thrown in jail.
Cindy Bemis is a nationally known hoarder who is cruel to animals. As such, she has no fear of LAAS or LACDACC because if you seize her animals and kill them or stick them in cages for YEARS all she has to do is go get some more, as this shows: http://lacdacc.blogspot.com/2008/02/cindy-bemis-is-at-it-again.html
Apparently she can even let a bunch of dogs die in a fire and you will do nothing to her.
But you can ruin decades of work and a lifetime of love and dedication for a photo op with a legitimate rescue. You can slander and libel someone with a good heart and a genuine love for cats and dogs.
The problem here is that the one who can't tell the difference is YOU, not us. We know who genuinely looks after animals and who just collects them. And in the case of Cindy Bemis and Ivan Callais, we have even tried, desperately, to get help for animals in collectors' clutches. But the way you can really tell the difference between an abusive hoarder and a caring, stretched-to-the-max rescue is that the hoarder has nothing to fear from you and your goons.
Look at the pictures. Cindy Bemis is hoarding dogs and here you are, sitting on your sorry ass, trying to sow doubt among people who are legitimately trying to help thousands of L.A.'s animals, something I'll bet you are at this moment getting paid for - although you aren't doing it, are you?
Go home. Try to think what it would be like if you could feel shame.
PS - and tell Antonio Villaraigosa he'd better squeeze all he can out of his waning days as Mayor. He's not going ANYWHERE from here, and neither are you.
To boks= death, if you had legit arguments, I'm sure you would use them instead of resorting to name calling. Cindy Bemis according to the Attorney General's office is a rescue, 501c3. Yes, we all know that she is a hoarder and we know how she is getting her animals. OTHER RESCUE GROUPS ARE FEEDING THEM TO HER. At least they are alive!!! She is still getting them from rescuers as well as donations from those rescuers. This is happening even though everyone knows what she is.This is a concern for those of us who care about the quality of life for these animals. We have a saying that seems to fit here quite well, "The guilty dog barks first and the loudest" and you are coming thru quite clear. No shame here.
Wow! Finally ran into you again, #17! So good to hear your caring and rational commentary once again. Truly excellent.
Love those sayings. There's a reason why they exist, and you just proved the truth that is in them.
Animals should go to ideal conditions and not tossed out to "at least they're alive" conditions.
It's the same difference between TNVRM and Trap-Neuter and RUN when it comes to ferals. If ferals should be treated as owned pets, then owned pets deserve to be treated far better.
The minute you get your hands on somebody else's pets, you accept responsibility for their care --not for the rest of your life, but for the rest of THEIR lives.
Many people who Trap-Neuter and RUN have the same thinking as some of those who go around taking other's people's animals from their homes, only to throw them back out to fend for themselves.
It often takes thousands of dollars to bring a sick animal back to health, let alone a herd.
Just think of the stress those cats are under now that they're in places where they haven't been socialized with all the other cats on the premsies. And if they're in cages, they're going to stop eating and end up w/ pneumonias and kidney failure. What are the people who rescued them from the old ladies house going to do about money to treat then?
Oh, yeah. Guess no one will have to worry about what happens to the cats then because what they don't see can't hurt them. All they know is that at least they're alive.
The shelters are doing the same thing now. Giving away non-adoptable cats to people who want them as mousers. No shelter, just rats.
But no one cares because the cats will be far gone by then, trying to find their way back home, and getting into fights with all the other cats on the colonies where they're dumped.
If these less than ideal conditions makes you happy, so be it. You don't have to fight for your food or shelter, and you have insurance to pay your medical bills. You can also take yourself to your own vet when you get sick.
These animals depend on people for their survival and well-being.
Ed Boks legal bills are being paid by the general fund, not the department of animal services. Still, your taxes are paying his legal expenses and possible judgements if they lose. There are currently three cases against the City because of Ed Boks. Harassment, termination suit, car crash lawsuit, illegally locking a rescuer in the shelter after forcibly stealing her camera. I think there may be a few more.
Antonio said he will run for a second term as mayor, now that clinton is losing and he won't get a cabinet post. A famous person once said about a president "he's running for a second term because he didn't get anything done in his first term." Vote "no" for Antonio. We don't need another four years of this crap. The only good that's happened in the City is the police department and Antonio didn't appoint the new chief. Hahn did.
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