A reader wrote this below, and we thought we’d share it with all of you. We wish to clarify and qualify that the thoughts expressed are those of her own. The intent of publishing this email is solely for the purpose of sharing and reflection. No malice is intended on any person or organisation.

Our disclaimer holds.

End of year is approaching and many of us involved with animal welfare is facing a really difficult time and have a rather gloom outlook for the future especially where street and community animals are concerned. Recent times have also seen the vanishing of street animals be it dogs or cats. Many caregivers are distraught and those who do genuine rescue are heart broken; all hard work, time, energy, effort and money down the drain.

Due to this recent activities I actually take a closer look at the draft animal welfare 2012 bill amendments. My bad that I did not take a closer look at it before but recent developments make me curious.

I observed the ‘bottomline’ of the amended bill is that there is no consideration for protection or caring of strays at all. Looks like they are bent on eliminating and wiping out all existence of community animals and community animals have no place at all in community nationwide. Recent incident of rescuers being hounded and harassed and compounded merely goes to show that the amended bills have actually come into effect.

No provision for shelter for strays and those who want to set up shelter for strays will be subjected to every 3 years’ review and licences will only be renewed if the power that be deem fit and if they feel there is no element of abuse on the animals under the shelters’ care. But animal testing and animals for breeding purposes are covered. There is no anti dumping law by pet-owners or breeders covered under the bill (but I could wrong due to oversight in reading).

I might be totally wrong here on my observation of the amended bills as I’m no law person just a lay person but reading through the amended draft bill that is my observation. A disturbing point is one point whereby the power that be has the full power to break in any premises without warrant where they deem appropriate according to their investigation for example if they suspect that drug is available in the premises.

I remember long time ago my girlfriend had a cat whom she adopted (escaped from her home) from a shelter, it was poisoned by rat poison and killed in her neighbourhood. Then, her front door was splattered with cat faeces. I sought advice from a friend, a chief inspector in BA. His advice to my friend was that she make a police report asap as in his experience, people who are capable of poisoning animals are capable of doing much worse e.g. planting drugs in my friend’s home and there is nothing she can do if police raids her home but get arrested for drug possession. Drugs, it seemed, is the most common tool to sabotage a person as he sees it his in entire career.

Hope that our country is the not triggering a ‘Greek Tragedy’. Prior to the summer 2004 Olympics the Greeks in order a present a beautiful Greek to visitors the olympic poisoned and killed 15,000 strays dogs and then after we can see what is happening to Greece now. The downfall of Greece economy was triggered by the the Olympics 2004. There are also natural disasters i.e. fires and earthquakes that followed 2004.

Karma?

One of the arguments why strays should be culled is that Gandhi also advocated culling of strays as he presented in his papers inYoung India: http://www.karmayog.com/dogs/gandhijiletter.htm

I thought I highlight these to you as who knows you might know of someone who wants to run as a candidate. Looks like a hung parliament is not so bad after all and if here’s a small group of independents who are compassionate towards not exterminating strays but helping them it might help to influence some result to help these poor creatures whose only sin is to exist.

I apologise for the gloominess but recent happenings are hard to swallow.

I must admit that I did not read the Animal Welfare draft in its totality as I saw many parts written about the destruction of strays, and that is something we had never advocated. We wish the government would consider CNRM, but try as we did, with those whom we’ve spoken to, the answer had so far been a “No”.

“You have to get people to stop complaining” – that’s what we were told.

Hence, education, especially education by example.

Once the complaining stops, the killing will stop. We were told that the authorities would only respond to complaints, so it’s the complaining that has to stop. And we hope the complaining will stop if we, at the grassroots, take care of the breeding of the stray population by CNRM-ing as much as we can.

Yes, CNRM is ideal and yes, some quarters insist that it will not solve the stray problem, but it is compassionate. That matters most to us – that each life is precious and that we have no right to destroy another living being, no matter how mercifully or painlessly, or so it is claimed.

We have problems (who doesn’t?). The whole world has problems, but problems cannot be solved by killing. There has to be other ways.

Take a look at the history of humankind. Has killing ever solved any of its problems?

So while the future may look bleak for our street animals, as expressed in this reader’s reflections and hers is not the first treatise we have received; there have been others too, we would still like to hold on the Starfish Principle that every single life saved is a precious life saved.

Here’s something I wrote many years ago:

On saving a starfish

In our quest to save lives, especially the little kitten or puppy from the drain or the lizard crawling by the roadside, sometimes we stop to wonder…  There must be thousands, or millions who suffer the same fate as this one…

How many can we help?

Yet we must.

This reminds me of the story of the little boy who was saving starfish on the beach.  Thousands were stranded and he was picking them up one by one, and throwing them back into the sea.  An adult walked past and stopped to watch the little boy.

“What are you doing?” the adult asked.

“I’m saving the starfish”, the little boy answered.

“But there are so many of them!  How many can you save?  Would it make any difference??” the adult asked.

“It would… to this one”, answered little boy, as he threw another starfish back into the sea.

Little things DO matter.

The starfish deserves to be saved, as do the little puppy or kitten in the drain, the lizard by the roadside, the thousands of baby chicks, piglets and their parents in the factory farms, and the starving children in poor countries.

All life is precious

Let us not discriminate.

We may not change the world by saving one animal, but we will certainly change the whole world for that one animal we save.  

The Starfish Principle…
Let’s carry on.
One little animal at a time.

What others do is their karma, what we do, is ours.