Karma Cat + Zen Dog Interview

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Every day you and I get bombarded with negative news. Just like the body becomes what we eat, the mind becomes what we’re putting in. It is important to listen to stories that not only give you hope, but also inspire you and uplift you.

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Hey, if you want to help protect plunderer, make sure you like and subscribe to the channel, because Great Dotcom is a philanthropic project where we’re donating 100 percent of our profit towards the most effective culturist, like protecting the rainforest or funding climate change technology. The topic of this interview today is why protecting animals is creating positive karma karma in the world. Protecting animals would be the general topic. And to understand more about this, we have invited Rebecca Smith, who is working at Karma Cat and Sam Dog, and there are nonprofit organizations who are helping protect animals.

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So I want to say hello and welcome, Rebecca.

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Hi. Thank you for having me.

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Rebecca, tell us, what is it that you are doing and how is that connected to what’s the name that you’ve chosen? Karma and the state of San Karma? Catherine Sandhog.

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So we are an all volunteer nonprofit animal rescue worker based in central New Jersey and Milltown in the United States. And our mission is to provide homeless animals a temporary respite from shelter, life or life outside while we get them adopted out. And we do that by creating a peaceful environment for them. We put them in a foster home where they get the medical attention they need or the quiet rest that they need from a chaotic shelter environment and bring them to their best self and then either adopt them straight from a foster home or we put them into our adoption center and they get to showcase themselves their.

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How I understood it correctly, that some of these shelters would have some kind of policy where the animals can’t stay long enough, so they would have to get rid of the animals, actually maybe kill them.

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Yes. So we do have an animal overpopulation problem.

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In twenty eighteen alone, there were five million cats and dogs that entered the shelter system in the United States and over seven hundred thousand of those, unfortunately, were euthanized. We help lessen that problem. We pull from shelters in our local area a bunch of different shelters. We have close partnerships with these shelters and they identify animals that wouldn’t necessarily be considered adoptable from a shelter environment because they’re too scared and just don’t thrive. We pull those animals and bring them into our foster system and like I said, give them a peaceful home where they can relax and be their best self. And then animals from that would be considered unadoptable and possibly euthanized in a shelter environment, thrive in our foster homes and our adopted out and into a forever home and become wonderful pets.

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Did I hear correctly that you said that five million cats and dogs are being sheltered in some kind of facility, correct?

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Back in twenty eighteen? That was the number.

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It’s difficult because not all shelters are required to give their numbers.

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It varies by state and municipality here. And that’s the best estimate, is throughout the year, five million animals entered the shelter system in some fashion.

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I guess not all animals would even get into the shelter. So I guess this is even the bigger kind of problem where animals or cats and dogs are looking for a home. How far away are we from giving animal rights to or a home to these animals?

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There it’s hard to quantify, but in general, we are able to decrease the numbers that are entering the shelter and increase the number that are being adopted out over the past few years since we opened our own adoption center. We’ve increased our number of adoptions this year already. We’ve adopted out over two hundred and eighteen cats. And that number is not going to slow down through the end of the year.

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So we’re able to make our own impact through pulling from these shelters, which can then have more room to take in more animals. Another way that rescues and advocacy groups can help is through programs like Trap, Neuter, Return for Community Cats. The T in our programs go out to these feral cat colonies.

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The caretakers are feeding these cats. They’re very happy to be outside, but if they’re not spayed and neutered, they’re only producing more kittens. So in order to reduce that strain on the shelters where these kittens would then be taken into the shelters. We fix these cats and they’re happy to live outside their caretakers and and the

cats are bonded and they have a good relationship, but they would not be considered adoptable. And most often feral cats when entering the shelter system are euthanized because they’re not socialized to people. So they don’t like being around people, but they’re happy to be in their own colony with their own cats and their hierarchy and everything. We take these cats, we trap them, we take them to the spay neuter clinic, we get them fixed, vaccinated and microchip, and then we return them to the colony that they came from. And this way, we’re making an impact by reducing the number of kittens that are born outside that are usually ending up in the shelter system, if not in our straight intake, for our own rescue.

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Carmageddon sandhog organization that you are with, you are saying that you are doing different programs and one of those would be to help people to adopt and one would be to try to turn to their own kind of communities, cat communities. Correct. And. Tell us more about the work that you’re doing. Do you have more of these programs?

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Yes, those are two main programs in our adoption program and the number two in our program. We’re actually working this year to really expand our program into the community, to advocate with our community members who care about these cats, who care about the community cats.

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They feed them, they socialize with them, and we help them get that under control so that there’s no more kittens that are being born. And our adoption program pulls from the shelters. We pull in adoptable animals. And also from the in our program, when we run across kittens in our program, a project, we will pull those kittens in most often and they will become adoptable.

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Every animal that comes into our care, whether through our adoption program or through the tanah, is fixed and vaccinated. And this way everybody is healthy and not contributing to the pet overpopulation problem.

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My assumption is that part of why this would be a problem is that it’s difficult for humans to have empathy for the situation that these animals are in, so we cannot neglect it.

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Could you tell us a little bit about the situation for let’s put yourself in the minds of a cow that doesn’t have a home? Or could you leave us through a little bit about their life situation?

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So for the cats are outside these. We like to call them community cats. Most people know them as feral. There’s a difference. Feral cats have not had any kind of socializing with humans. They’re scared of humans. If brought inside to a shelter or a home, they would hide. They would be in constant stress and fear alerts. They just don’t do well. So they’re happy outside.

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And there’s also strays, whether they’re accidentally let outside or abandoned by previous owners, they’re slightly more socialized. They’ve been with people and around people. But because they don’t have a home, they’ve been integrated into what we call the colony. And these community cats, they create a bond. They’re very happy together, living outside. They find ways to keep warm and find shelter and get the the they find the people who will take care of them. We have so many people that have reached out to us in our program and they truly care about these cats and they want to do what’s best for these cats. And they know that the cats won’t be happy inside, but that they need to be healthy and reduce the population, which means getting them fixed by fixing these animals. Not only are we not proud that only are we preventing more kittens from being born, but we’re preventing health problems such as rabies infections or they also get FBAR C.p vaccinations to keep some healthy things like cancers that can be caused from the hormones, mammary cancers, stuff like that are prevented and the animals are also tipped. So you can see on my ears, I have my left ear tipped. And this is an indicator that the animal has been fixed. It’s happy being outside and there’s no reason to catch it. Generally, if animal control comes around and sees that an animal has been attacked, they won’t even bring it into the shelter environment because they know that it’s fixed, vaccinated and healthy and happy being outside where it is most often being taken care of by a colony caretaker who truly cares. And those animals make that person happy and that person makes those animals happy.

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So I’m hearing kind of two different visions, one where cats could actually be just living outside, where they would be taking care of from an external human who would provide food to start purchasing to correct.

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Yeah, the colony caretakers. Sometimes they fall into this position. A cat will show up with kittens on their doorstep and need some help taking care of their cats. And that’s how they come into the situation. And they’ll provide food, daily feedings and the cats survive outside. They’re they’re pretty resourceful and find shelter. And sometimes these caretakers have heated homes that they provide for them for the cold and warm, warm water dishes so that the water doesn’t freeze during the winter and stuff. And they’re often very well cared for, just not happy being inside and they’re happy being outside and taking care of.

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So I guess that will be the optimal solution here, because they would be able to access nature because I guess that would be one of the things, why would it feel so almost like a person that the cats have to be inside?

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But I guess in some cases with adult adoption, you would have to make that sacrifice.

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I stated that it was the majority of our adoptable animals. They’ve been socialized. They’re used to being inside. If and if a cat is born outside and has no interaction with humans or very little or negative interactions through approximately the age of six months, that’s that’s the window. And if we get a kitten within that time frame, bring it inside and get it socialized and get it spoiled, it’s more than happy to stay inside. However, after that time frame or with no socializing within that time frame, the cats aren’t used to people. They’re not used to being inside. And that’s when they have the fear and the stress reaction to being inside.

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Ok, I didn’t know that I was the winner, he said search for six month.

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Yeah. So if we get a kitten small enough, we can socialize it and bring it inside. Any older than that, it’s a lot, it’s difficult and time consuming, and they’re pretty much better off being fixed and returned to their colony. Outside, the cats create a hierarchy and they’re bonded. There’s siblings and mothers and sons and everything. And there’s research that shows that TNR helps reduce the impact on shelters and that the impact on birds and wildlife is less than people believe. And so, really, TNR is a good solution to the huge stray feral cat problem that we have.

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When you hear karma, cats and dogs, I’m guessing it’s also a part of this would be how it affects humans to actually care about other beings. Could you tell us a lot about how that’s how you think about not caring about someone else, but that that’s what gives you as a person?

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I yeah, definitely.

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The feeling that we get our organization is actually very closely knit. We call our group of volunteers our ohana, which is the Hawaiian word for family. And we’re very close. We socialize outside of volunteer activities. We have our own friends and interests. And we have formed these bonds around that joint feeling of empathy for these animals and truly caring for the well-being of these animals.

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And that brings out such good feelings.

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I tell people that I don’t do this for the animals. It’s really for me because it makes me feel so good. And there’s no other feeling like taking a scared cat that we pull from the shelter and bringing it into a foster home and working with it and showing it that humans can be nice and giving it treats and spoiling it and giving it fresh catnip and watching their reactions and seeing this animal grow from a scared, shy kitten or cat from the shelter where it probably would have been euthanized because it was terrified in the back of the cage and nobody would adopt it to bringing it to our adoption center for its final. We call it the Freedom Ride, and they go home to a forever home where they are loved and spoiled with their own family. There’s such a feeling of satisfaction and success and just makes you want to do it over and over again. And we’ve been around Carmageddon. Zenda was founded in 2010, so this is actually our 10 year anniversary and we wanted to celebrate in style this year. But the pandemic had different, different plans for us. But even through that, we continue to work because these animals give us such a feeling of pride and success and even more so working through this tough time where people might need their cat if people are quarantined. A lot of times all they have is the animal in their home to keep them feeling safe and secure and centered. And I know I myself with my dog and cat, that was my go to for stress and take my dog for a hike in the woods and kind of recenter myself and remember what’s important. And part of that is thinking outside yourself and not only for other people but other beings. You know, the simple act of putting bird food out for the birds and the winter and thinking away from just yourself and taking care of the other animals is one thing that we definitely all have in common within our organization.

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We’re going towards the end here, so I would like to ask you what kind of support or what would you like people to do after hearing this into you, just to think outside of the box?

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Not all animals want to be in a home. Research what TNR means in your own community in New Jersey right now, we have the compassion for community cats, Bill, that is coming up in our legislature. And I encourage everybody to research and support that. It will help local communities pay for our programs. Go out, reach out to your shelter, reach out to the local rescue group, give us a call, volunteer, donate every dollar. Five dollars will feed one of our foster cats for a week and doesn’t take a lot. But the more we have, the more we can help.

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If you would like to end this by empathizing something that you would like for more people to understand, what would you like to empathize?

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I would say just that.

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The cats have this reputation of being independent and off to themselves, and that’s that’s not quite true. Some cats, yes, they like to be aloof and by themselves, but most cats enjoy interacting and having love and pets and attention, whether it’s on their own terms or when you want to go pick it up and hug it and squeeze it.

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And the same goes for these cats that are outside. They have their own system of love and bonding, and they love each other and have their own bond for their caretaker. And it’s not just some nuisance that’s outside. It’s an animal that has feelings and needs basic care, but also has its own place and our community.

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And until we can. Take this problem and get it fixed, just have a little patience and reach out for help if you feel that there’s community cats that need it.

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