Today I have a very special request for you. All my life I have been an animal lover. I'm a lover of almost all animals. Snakes, bugs, and things that bite (hard! lol) are the exception, but I still try to treat them with love and respect. Every time that I see an ASPCA commercial, I cry. My friends at K-Joi feel exactly the same way. That is why I'm bringing you this very special request today.
A special message from the blog hop coordinator, Liz of Lizard Dau Designs:
We at K-Joi Studios love our pets as much as our children and sometimes they are our children. We would love to promote pet rescue by giving you a glimpse into the world wide net of animal adoption. Please visit this site at the bottom of this post and do a bit of browsing - it is extremely interesting and if you are a pet lover then you might find some useful information too. We have made some wonderful freebie kits for your digital scrapping pleasure and as a huge thank you for looking at these very deserving animal rescue sites. And don't forget that we all live on different time zones so please be patient with us!!
Now, unfortunately with the new release and everything going on I do not have a freebie for you today. But I do have a link to the K-Joi Studios Blog, which is the designated train station for the blog hop. And I have a link to a few animal rescue sites you can visit to see how you can help!
A few statistics for you:
In media-reported animal cruelty cases, dogs are the most common victims of animal cruelty. Pit bulls, in particular, constitute an increasing percentage of victimized animals.
- 64.5 percent (1,212) involved dogs
- 18 percent (337) involved cats
- 25 percent (470) involved other animals
*some cases involved multiple species
- In 2000 and 2001, pit bulls were the victims in 13 percent of reported dog abuse cases.
- In 2007, pit bulls were the victims in 25 percent of reported dog abuse cases.
An examination of government data measuring intimate partner violence and scholarly studies of the prevalence of animal cruelty in such cases reveals a staggering number of animals are victimized by abusive partners each year.
- The HSUS estimates that nearly 1 million animals a year are abused or killed in connection with domestic violence:
- Methodology:
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- About 2,168,000 women and men are physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States (U.S. Department of Justice, 2000).
- Sixty-three percent of U.S. households own a pet (APPMA, 2006).
- Seventy-one percent of domestic violence victims report that their abuser also targeted their animal (Ascione, 1997).
- In 2007, 7 percent of media-reported animal cruelty cases either occured in the context of a domestic dispute or involved a person with a history of domestic violence.
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Forty-five states currently have felony provisions for animal cruelty. (Those without are Arkansas, Idaho, Mississippi, North Dakota and South Dakota.)
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Before 1986, only four states had felony animal cruelty laws.
- Forty-one of the 45 state felony animal cruelty laws were enacted in the last two decades: 13 were enacted between 1986 and 1996, and 26 more were enacted between 1997 and 2007.
I love my pets to death. I have 3 animals currently. I have a part-Golden Retriever puppy (and full ornery!) named Shiloh who will be 1 year old at the beginning of 2010. Our cats, 1 adult female, Calico, who is probably around 3 or 4 years old, and our 3-month-old female kitten who is 1 of 3 kittens born to Calico, who is currently unnamed (we're leaning towards Sassy or Lily, because her pattern reminds me of a tiger but black and I think of Tiger Lilies!). Just yesterday, the other two kittens were given away to a very good family friend who lives on a farm, because we just can not handle them (they are a MESS!) and he will take SUCH good care of them. While they were all here, I got so frustrated with them (they literally TORE my house up) but I loved them so much. I miss those two kittens dearly.
On another note, my grandma and mother are literally the cat ladies. Recently a bunch of stray cats started hanging around my grandmother's house and my mother and grandmother care for them like they are their own. They spend massive amounts of money on them per month just feeding them. Although they can't take them into their homes (there are literally about 30 of them, I'm not kidding), they care for them like children. They often have lots of litters of kittens and we spend hours cuddling on those precious little things. Recently, one of my favorite babies of any of the cats died from an unknown cause and my heart has just been broken. Here is a precious little photo of him and one of his brothers/sisters goofing around, a few days before he got ill and passed away. (He's the black and white one.)
Doesn't it just melt your heart?
That's why I ask that you please visit these sites and consider making a donation. These stray kittens happen all over the place and often there is no one there like my mother and grandmother who have the heart to take them in and care for them. (My own Calico was a stray that I rescued!) They often get run over, or taken in and mistreated, or cruel people come along and torture them. I won't even tell you what happened to my cousin's cat by some very cruel neighbors. Please consider making a donation to save these precious animals' lives!
Here are some websites you can go to to make some donations:
http://hsus.org
http://www.animaladoption.com.au/
http://www.aspca.org/
http://www.pet-abuse.com/
And here, finally, is the link to the K-Joi Blog where you can go download your goodies:
http://www.kjoistudios.net/blog
I leave you with a quote from pet-abuse.com - "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter."
Thank you for your time and have a fabulous day!
I cannot agree with you more! I love my cats, they ARE my family. Two were "rescued" from a pet store, two were strays who, I'm fortunate to say, found me. Animal abuse is about defective people, as defective as people who rape little girls and boys, about ignorance, and about a lack of respect for life. But the recovery for animals is so much harder because the numbers are so huge and so many value them so little. THANK YOU for this, and I hope you continue this great sharing of gifts and wisdom, not just now but in the future also.
ReplyDeleteFrom me and my seven cats, all of whom were adopted from local rescue shelters, thanks so much for the blog hop and the links :)
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