Written by PETA
It's Spay Day—do you know where your neighbors' cats and dogs are? Or, more importantly, do you know whether they have been spayed or neutered? I do. In fact, one of them is here with me as I write this (and he seems to think that I need to write "#%^)tfr*^lpxc%$#?.>l" here instead of a period). Sam is one of nearly a dozen cats who once belonged to one of my neighbors. The cats came to my attention when I noticed the "free kittens" sign outside my neighbor's house.
I called the number on the sign and offered to get the mama kitty and the kittens spayed and neutered. Rather than being offended, as I feared she might be, my neighbor gratefully accepted my offer. "She just keeps having kittens," she sighed, "and I can't afford to get her spayed." She also agreed to let me find homes for those kittens I could convince her to part with. (I wanted to carefully screen the adopters, which I knew she wouldn't do.)
According to a recent survey, people's reasons for not spaying and neutering their animals usually boil down to simple economics and logistics, rather than a conscious decision not to do it. The neighbor whose cat kept having litters has three kids and is on welfare—she just couldn't afford to pay for the surgery. (Eventually, the bank foreclosed on her house, which is when she asked me to take the remaining animals—Sam, his sister Bibi, and his mother, Tiger.)
Another neighbor doesn't have a car, so I offered to drive her to the clinic for her cat's appointment. Yet another neighbor didn't realize that his 5-month-old female kitten could come into heat any day. Wanting to ensure that this busy single dad didn't put it off until it was too late, I offered to make the appointment and take her myself. He readily agreed, and I did the same with the family's other cat and two dogs.
In total, I have arranged for more than a dozen dogs and cats in my neighborhood to be spayed and neutered at PETA's "Spay and Neuter Immediately, Please!" (SNIP) mobile clinic. In some cases, the animals' guardians were willing to pay for the surgery—it was just a matter of making the appointments and arranging transportation. That was a small investment in time that reaped huge rewards in terms of the prevention of unwanted litters—and suffering.
No matter where you live, there are animal companions in your town who have not been spayed or neutered. Here are some easy steps you can take to make your neighborhood a "no-litter" zone:
Written by Alisa Mullins
It's a good thing that my hubby, Tim, has such a huge heart, or I would probably be in a pickle right now. You see, this year, he shares his birthday with Spay Day, which is this Tuesday, February 23. Lucky for you, that means a starry slideshow of PETA's brightest and boldest spay-and-neuter ads (versus mushy photos of Tim and me on vacation in Boulder).
Feeling inspired? Great! Tell us how you'll help animals on Spay Day.
Written by Karin Bennett
When Ron Artest isn't sticking it to his opponents on the basketball court, he's sticking up for animals. That's why the Houston Rockets forward teamed up with us and the Houston Humane Society to star in an ad urging people to get their dogs "fixed."
"These animals are literally dying for a good home," says Artest, the NBA Defensive Player of the Year for the 2003-2004 season. "Millions of dogs and cats in shelters across the country are euthanized every year because there simply aren't enough good homes for them. Spaying and neutering your [animal companion] will help control the overpopulation problem."
Artest unveiled the ad today in honor of Spay Day. Check out photos from the event below:
Written by Christine Doré
On Monday, a 15-year-old chimpanzee named Travis, who was kept as a "pet" by a woman in Connecticut, went on a rampage and mauled a visitor. Travis was stabbed multiple times, "pounded" with a shovel, and eventually shot to death.
A former "star" of Coca-Cola and Old Navy commercials and an episode of the Maury Povich Show, Travis was "raised almost like a child by this family," according to a police officer. Great—except that 200-pound chimpanzees aren't children.
Keeping any wild animal as a "pet" is inhumane and dangerous. There have been scores of incidents in which captive chimpanzees inflicted grave injuries on people. This tragedy illustrates the need for Connecticut to add primates to its ban on potentially dangerous animals—which already includes big cats, bears, and wolves—and we have asked Governor Rell to do that.
Academy Award–winning actor Anjelica Huston has spoken up in a moving public service announcement in behalf of great apes used for entertainment. Check it out below:
Thanks to companies like CareerBuilder and, more recently, Castrol Oil, whose ads show baby chimpanzees dressed up in clothes and "monkeying around" in offices and service stations, many people seem to think of chimpanzees as comical sub-human clowns. They aren't. They are wild animals who are torn away from their mothers at an obscenely young age and beaten into submission. By the time they are 8, they are big enough and strong enough to fight back, which earns them a one-way ticket to a cage in someone's basement or a concrete pit at a roadside zoo.
Neither Travis nor any other great ape belongs in show business. Who ends up happy in this story? Were those 30-second commercials really worth a lifetime of confinement in an unsuitable environment that eventually led to a woman's grave injury and Travis's death? Click here to take action on this issue.
Please, complain loudly any time you see a primate used in a movie, TV show, or advertisement. To learn more about this issue, you can catch PETA's Lisa Lange talking about Travis on Bill O'Reilly's show tonight at 8 p.m. on Fox News.
One unaltered female cat and her offspring can produce an estimated 420,000 cats in only seven years, and a female dog and her offspring can produce 67,000 puppies in six years.
With that in mind, here are my personal favorites among the many videos we’ve produced over the past couple of years to raise awareness about this issue. Let me know which one you think is the most effective. And have a glorious Spay Day.
And just in case you need even more Spay Day inspiration, check out this great story about a Michigan group who are doing their part to end animal overpopulation.
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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