Often we’re all so focused on working with community cats, we forget the importance of reaching community members, with information on feral cats. FixNation has outreach programs specifically for public education and on April 12th, 2012, we were focused on community kids!
It was a beautiful spring day in L.A. as Dali Colorado and Liz Cava from FixNation traveled to Long Beach to speak to 24 very bright and energetic young children attending a week long humane education camp at the Los Angeles SPCA Humane Education Camp, at the P.D. Pitchford Companion Animal Village & Education Center.
Although we can’t consider feral cats pets or companion animals, people definitely bond with their backyard stray cats, even though they can’t pick them up or pet them. We spoke to these kids about how a feral cat colony starts in the first place and the importance of spaying/neutering their own pet cats. We talked about how cats often get abandoned outdoors, when people lose their jobs, their homes, and move away—leaving their formerly tame pet cats to fend for themselves outdoors.
We talked about how the kittens born to these abandoned former pet cats are born “wild”, and that it can be dangerous to try to pick them up or pet them. Wild is wild.
We talked about the humane approach of trap-neuter-return (TNR), and how this approach sterilizes the cats, thereby cutting down on the number of homeless kittens born outdoors.
We showed iPhoto and video presentations with many pictures of all the FixNation ferals our trappers have emailed to us—both before being sterilized/vaccinated/eartipped—and after. The iPhoto presentations have specific songs linked to them. One of the songs used in the kitten presentation was Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire”. The kids wound up stomping their feet in time to the song. Dali was pleasantly surprised to see that many of the kids actually knew the words to this vintage Johnny Cash song and sang right along with him. All the kids verbally ewww’d and awww’d over the kitten pics.
It was great to enlighten these bright kids about feral and stray cats. We’re also thrilled to report that our presentation and talk was so well-received, we’ve been invited back!
If you’re interested in having FixNation educators present at your school, church, or community group, contact us today!
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