Pet Pages Spirituality and Inspirational Pet Stories

I have always had dogs in my life, but my little Rat Terrier 'Terry' has taught me so much. Maybe it is because dogs work in and on all twelve dimensions, while we are still trying to accept the seven within our understanding. Through Terry I have truly come to understand the meaning of unconditional love and how that is a gift of the Divine.

We all love those dear fur people we call pets. I have my special stories about the animals in my life and how they helped me understand myself better or taught me something I was overlooking and I'm certain each of you has a story that relates to the spirituality of the animals in your life.
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2K Orphaned Kittens Put Woman in Debt

NEW YORK -- Afternoon sun pours through Tammy Cross’ Upper West Side one-bedroom apartment, bouncing off her salmon walls and soaking into her plush white couches. Yet the brightness fails to immediately illuminate the apartment’s rotating fixtures: kittens, all 15 of them.

One-by-one, the animals, as young as four weeks, poke their fluffy, minuscule heads out of the “nursery,” or Cross’ bathroom, and approach the company with an ease their foster mother says comes from the attention she has delivered to each of her approximate 2,200 "babies." They strut around on this early fall day, all bearing inquisitive expressions and names like "Willie," "Chunky" and "Wild Thing."

Cross, 51, bottle-feeds these orphaned and stray kittens, who often come to her sick, but always needing a home. Each weekend, Cross shows her kittens to prospective owners on the corner of Columbus Avenue and 72nd Street.

Cross founded Kitten Little Rescue Inc., a New York City Mayor’s Alliance-affiliated nonprofit organization three years ago. Cross has been tending to stray felines for 18 years, and housing them for the past 15 years in her cozy and surprisingly clean, apartment.

Kitten Little Rescue Inc. got its start 20 years ago, when Cross shopped for catfood for her two pets at an Upper West Side bodega late one night. The store clerk showed her four newborn kittens, huddled together in the basement. A car had hit their mother and the cow’s milk he was feeding them out of a teaspoon did not suffice -- one baby had already died.

“It was evident that the rest of these kittens were going to die,” Cross recalled. “The guy wanted to do the right thing but he didn’t know how -- he asked me to take them. I didn’t know, either, but I figured it out.”

Cross contacted the ASPCA, which later called on her to help bottle-feed stray kittens -- a time consuming task few public organizations have the resources or individuals to handle.

“Since then, there has been about five days in 18 years where I haven’t had kittens living with me,” Cross said.

Cross spoke with Zootoo Pet News on a Friday afternoon, after a morning spent bringing some of her current brood to the veterinarian.

“When they are this young, around four to five weeks, you have to give them a bottle every six hours,” she explained. “But if you get them when they are even younger than that, you have to be there to bottle-feed them every two hours, or so.”

She uses a human baby bottle, as opposed to a syringe, because it allows the kittens to drink at their own comfortable pace.

Kitten Little Rescue has a volunteer staff, but only two foster homes, and one individual who bottle-feeds, caring for the feeblest of the strays. Almost all of the animals come to Cross through New York City’s Animal Care and Control.

“My situation with ACC is, ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you, when I have room,’” Cross explained of the demand for her services. “I take what I can, but I got to be honest -- it isn’t even a fraction of what needs to be done. What needs to be done is more trap, neuter and return, and people need to spay and neuter their cats.

“The kittens that I can’t take haunt me. Knowing that they are likely going to be destroyed, that I can only do so much, is just a really difficult thing to take.”

Aside from feeding the kittens, Cross tends to their medical needs: Fleas and diarrhea are common.

Cross cleans the apartment daily, getting down on her hands and knees to scrub the bathroom floor each morning. The kittens naturally gravitate toward the litter box, she says, but that understanding settles around the time they start eating solid food, at approximately six to seven weeks.

Kitten Little Rescue charges $150 to adopt a kitten, and $175 for an exotic breed. The fee, though, is barely enough to cover the animals’ medical and other needs, Cross says, noting that it costs $125 alone to get a kitten spayed or neutered. A recent graduate of nursing school, the New Yorker has gone $10,000 in debt to save those thousands of kittens. And she'll keep them until adulthood, if need be, until they find homes.

This month, one cat found a family after living with Cross for three years.

Yet the New Yorker says the joy she derives from saving those kittens is worth the debt.

“These animals -- I don’t know how to fully explain it, but I think they have a lot more wisdom than we do, and something about them brings out the goodness in most people,” she said. “I have had a seven-day-old kitten teach me more than a human has in our whole association. It’s really a learning experience. It’s not selfless work -- it’s very rewarding to me.”

Cross and Kitten Little Rescue volunteers, as well as adoptable kittens, are stationed at Columbus Avenue and 72nd Street each weekend afternoon, as long as it is over 60 degrees and sunny. At the end of October, they move to “The Pet Stop,” a pet store on Columbus Avenue, between 87th and 88th streets.

Schools fight families over autism service dogs At issue is whether the dogs are true ‘service’ pets or simply companions

CHICAGO - Like seeing-eye dogs for the blind, trained dogs are now being used to help autistic children deal with their disabilities. But some schools want to keep the animals out, and families are fighting back.

Two autistic elementary school students recently won court orders in Illinois allowing their dogs to accompany them to school. Their lawsuits follow others in California and Pennsylvania over schools' refusal to allow dogs that parents say calm their children, ease transitions and even keep the kids from running into traffic.

At issue is whether the dogs are true "service dogs" — essential to managing a disability — or simply companions that provide comfort.

Conjoined Twin Rattlesnakes Separated by Surgery

Conjoined Twin Rattlesnakes Separated by Surgery: Born in the wild, the pair of female Western Diamond backs would have died quickly but instead they were given a second chance for life when a Good Samaritan took them to a wildlife center in Arizona.

NEW YORK -- Rattlesnakes in the deserts of Arizona are nothing new, but two baby Western Diamondbacks were a rare find on a construction site a couple weeks ago near Tucson, Ariz.

"I don't know the statistical chances but I have been at the museum for 25 years and this is the first time anyone has ever called us on such a thing," said Craig Ivanyi, executive director for living collections and exhibits at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.

The snakes were conjoined twins, just days old when they were brought to the museum for help.

"We took an X-ray when we first received them and it appeared that they only shared soft tissue," Ivanyi said of the snakes conjoined behind the head and neck area. "But as they did they surgery there was a slight amount of vertebra and bony material shared between the two."

Eds. Note: This article is one of several news stories happening right now in the world of pets and animals. Be sure to watch the Zootoo Pet News videocast above to stay current.

Reptile and amphibian specialist, Jim Jarchow, DVM, performed the surgery on Friday, August 28. According to Ivanyi, the snakes' surgery was a first for Jarchow, who, in a similar procedure, has separated conjoined tortoises in his more than 30 year career.

"One was obviously dominant and the more subordinate one died sometime overnight and was found Saturday morning," said Ivanyi. "The other one appears to be doing well."

Without the surgery, Ivanyi says the pair would not have survived long in the wild.

"Twin snakes usually share one yolk sack and because they share all the nutrients, the weaker one was already going down this road before surgery," Ivanyi explained. "So it wasn't the surgery, it was the lack of nutrition.

"The smaller one would have died along this time table, but then, of course, with it being attached to the other one, it would have killed it as well."

Believed to be a set of female twins, the surviving twin is now doing well, although it could take several weeks to months for the rattlesnake to grow enough for a definite full recovery.

If she recovers fully, then the museum, Ivanyi says, will continue to tell her story and include her in an exhibit. But she will remain nameless.

"Normally we don't name animals here, especially reptiles because there is a fairly extensive collection," Ivanyi said of the museum's 100 species of various reptiles which equals hundreds of individual creatures.

If it sounds peculiar for a snake to be at a museum, that would be an understandable. However, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, as Ivanyi describes it, is "a living museum, a museum, zoo, aquarium, botanical park and natural history museum all wrapped into one. And because of the living museum focus we have, we have two staff vets that come out on rounds every week and a complete hospital."

As for the hundreds of species, Ivanyi says "some for educational display, others are breeding programs -- such as a small refuge population or one species which might be released back into the wild because there are so few of them out there."

The conjoined twin reptiles are one of many stories of animals being brought to the facility, says Ivanyi of the museum which does turn away exotic species, such as Burmese pythons or African tortoises.

But thanks to the rattlesnakes, the public is more aware of the work the museum is doing.

"Most people have been very fascinate by it, the fact of conjoined twins and then the surgical separation of them," Ivanyi said. "There's been a lot of supporters for taking on these animals."

Although the attention has come with some naysayers.

"There are those who are concerned about why we spent money to do this," Ivanyi said of the snakes' surgery. "But we are a complete non-profit organization, and it was within the normal rounds (of Dr. Jarchow) and it was our own hospital so there virtually was no costs in doing this surgery."

Robin Wallace is the editor for Zootoo Pet News and can be reached at rwallace@zootoo.com.

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Gov't Kills Once-Endangered Cormorants

ALPENA, Mich. (AP) ―

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On Minnesota Lake, more than 300 cormorants and more than three dozen pelicans were found dead.

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The mostly bird-free skies above Lake Huron's Thunder Bay during the recent Brown Trout Festival were a welcome sight to anglers who have spent years competing — often unfavorably — with double-crested cormorants for their catch.

Federal and state agencies have waged war in recent years against the large, black waterfowl notable for their orange facial skin and hooked bills. Cormorants can dive up to 25 feet deep and stay under water more than a minute, gorging on yellow perch, bass and other species. Fish farmers in the Mississippi Delta say they devour $5 million worth of catfish fingerlings a year.

Ironically, cormorants were endangered in much of North America a few decades ago. Now they're so abundant — and destructive — that wildlife managers have blasted tens of thousands with shotguns, destroyed nests and covered eggs with oil to smother developing chicks.

The campaign is getting results, at least in some places. Cormorants haven't disappeared from Thunder Bay, but charter boat skippers say the days when gigantic flocks hovered like storm clouds are mostly over.

The perch fishery that crashed a decade ago near the Les Cheneaux island chain at Lake Huron's tip has rebounded since cormorant numbers there were reduced by 90 percent, said Dave Fielder, a Michigan Department of Natural Resources biologist.

The Great Lakes cormorant population, one of North America's largest, has steadied at about 230,000 after rising exponentially since the 1970s. Continentwide, it's estimated at 2 million.

Yet debate still rages over the effectiveness and morality of lethal control, which has been tried in 16 states and a few sites in Canada.

Critics say cormorant growth was showing signs of leveling off before the killing began, suggesting the birds were reaching their natural capacity. They say the cull does more to chase them elsewhere than reduce numbers.

"You're making people in a few areas feel better, but no one really knows what the overall effect is," said Linda Wires, a University of Minnesota waterfowl researcher who helps conduct a biennial census of Great Lakes cormorants.

It's also inhumane, said Liz White, director of the Animal Alliance in Canada. Many birds wounded by gunfire dangle painfully from nests or branches until they die, she said.

"It's a pretty miserable thing to watch," White said.

Cormorants get little sympathy in Alpena, where sport fishermen at the Brown Trout Festival likened them to a biblical plague.

"You can't stand a chance against them," said Rick Konecke, a charter captain. "They're eating machines."

Large cormorant colonies compete with other waterbirds for food and habitat. On some islands, they ravage trees by breaking branches and stripping foliage for nests. Their highly acidic excrement alters soil chemistry.

Some 20,000 have overrun Middle Island in Lake Erie, reducing the canopy — the upper layer of trees — by 40 percent and endangering some of the Great Lakes region's rarest vegetation.

"If we don't try to control the cormorants, we are going to lose a valuable ecosystem," said Aaron Fisk, a researcher at the University of Windsor in Ontario, who studies effects on island soil.

Sympathizers say cormorants have their place in nature and the damage they cause is exaggerated.

They've nested on just 260 of 30,000 Great Lakes islands, Wires said, and there's little hard evidence they have taken a significant bite out of fish stocks. Invasive species, pollution and overfishing cause more harm, but cormorants "make an easy and targetable scapegoat," she said.

Cormorants once were threatened by DDT, the pesticide that also nearly wiped out the bald eagle. The Great Lakes population stood at just 230 in 1972, but exploded after the chemical was banned. In the South, their winter refuge, an aquaculture boom created a magnet for hungry flocks.

"There's no precedent I can think of for a species that was in so much trouble to be doing this well so quickly," said Pete Butchko, Michigan director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's wildlife services program, which handles the culling operation. "It's just stunning."

Federal officials in 1998 allowed fish farmers in 13 states to shoot cormorants. Five years later, the government authorized lethal control in 24 Southern and Great Lakes states.

More than 73,000 cormorants have been shot under the 2003 order. Eggs in about 70,000 nests have been oiled, and 13,000 nests have been destroyed.

Supporters of the cull acknowledge it's unclear whether the aggressive response will succeed in the long run. Thus far, it's just thinned out cormorants in overpopulated spots. Biologists are debating whether to try managing them across entire regions or migratory flyways.

"If you're controlling them on one site and think your problem is solved, you're going to be surprised," said Mark Ridgway, a biologist with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources.

Escape from Certain Death

Panajachel — Monday began at it’s normal pace with Ezzie making follow up calls to people who “put their name” on a dog at our quick little adoption event held on Saturday. We were all very excited about possibly having homes for 10 out of 12 puppies who are now in foster care.

Then a frantic phone call came into the office from Maribel D. on her way down from San Andres with a nursing mother and two of her pups. For those readers who don’t understand Spanish, the video below is Maribel’s description of the events that led to the immediate need to evacuate the mom and pups.

Evidently, mom had a family but was booted out because she continued to have too many puppies. She delivered her newest litter a few weeks ago. Some children in town decided to take her puppies away and she went wild. The kids were molesting her and when she defended her babies, the town’s people rose up against her. They beat her with poles, sticks, a hammer and threw rocks at her. There was such an uproar, it was decided that she would be publicly put to death by poison. All this because she tried to protect her babies who are only about 3 weeks old!

Maribel witnessed this, broke it up, grabbed mom and the two pups that where left, hired a flete (small pickup truck), called Healthy Pets and headed to Panajachel. At that moment, she believed the other 5 puppies to be dead.

Lady Luck, that seems like an appropriate name, and the babes had a restful night at Selaine’s. Then luck struck again! Maribel called to say that she and her husband had located all 5 of the puppies. Thankfully, mom and puppies are now reunited. As these pictures where snapped, Mom was “kissing” Selaine on the cheek! It makes it all worthwhile!

Locals — we need a foster home ASAP for mom and the puppies for a minimum of 4 weeks. Please consider offering this family a temporary space at your home and in your heart.

HURON, S.D. (AP) ―


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A search is under way in the Huron, S.D. area for a miniature horse that might have rabies.

Police Capt. Dan Marotteck says a helicopter has even been called out.

Authorities say the black horse might be ill with rabies or West Nile. It's been missing since Saturday.

Marotteck says the helicopter is being used in the search because the horse might be lying down in a field.