How I Spent My Fourth of July Holiday

By Jessica, Field Worker for PETA’s Community Animal Project

On the day before the holiday, I took in a young dog who had lived his entire life in a crate. I am quite a small person, but he was so afraid that even if I crouched down and talked softly to him, he urinated all over himself. His hackles stood straight up on his back and neck, and he bared his teeth pathetically, warning me as best he could not to come near. Who knows what had been done to him to make him think that every interaction with a human being meant that he was going to be hurt?

On Saturday, a man drove into the PETA parking lot and handed over a cat in a shockingly debilitated condition. The man said that his roommate had moved four days earlier, leaving the cat without medicine, and that now he was heading out of town himself. The cat he turned in was diabetic and dying. It cost hundreds of dollars to stabilize his little body, and in the end no one wanted him.

On Sunday, I managed to find a climber who spent more than four hours rescuing a cat from 40 feet up a tree. Some cats, like some humans, get too frightened to come down when they see how high they are, and this cat had been up there for three days in the heat and rain. The fire department and animal control would not help. I'm hoping that someone will claim him, but usually no one does.

Last week, although PETA is not an animal shelter, my colleagues and I answered 57 calls to pick up 101 unwanted, sick, aged, and dying animals, including a sweet 13-year-old cocker spaniel who had gone deaf and blind and had multiple tumors. There were no prospects for her either. If you are reading this and thinking, “Surely they can find homes?” please remember that if you or anyone you know can provide a home for an unwanted animal, the shelters are waiting for precisely that miracle.

You can improve the lives of dogs and cats suffering from cruelty and neglect.

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