pet connection

The Monday morning news crawl …

I love, love, love this story following up on Molly, the cat who was trapped in a wall in New York City:

Molly, now 18 months old, spent 14 days in April trapped in the walls of the 157-year-old building, which houses Myers of Keswick, the British specialty foods deli where Molly lives.

Rescuers used drills, miniature cameras, and a raw fish to lure Molly out. A pet psychic even tried to help, and the drama got international attention. In the end, a volunteer pulled the cat from a crawl space after rescuers drilled and hammered out bricks in the cellar.

Enough people have stopped by Myers of Keswick to see Molly since, that Ben Allen, a deli employee, said he’s considering printing T-shirts that declare "I met Molly at Myers."

"She’s just fine," said Allen, 34. "If she was older, 14 days in a hole would have finished her off, but she was young enough to bounce back from anything."

The building, pockmarked from holes Molly’s rescuers created trying to find her, has been repaired thanks to more than $1,000 in do nations to a fund created in her name.

Continued health and happiness, Miss Molly. Here’s the rest of the piece (and that’s her picture, post-rescue, above).

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Animal-advocacy groups pushed the government to report less-than-ideal trips for animals on airplanes. The surprising result: Air travel is relatively safe for animals. In many cases, the animals’ owners were responsible for not protecting their own pets, either by not securing the fasteners on the carriers, or by shipping animals who were not in good health:

Since June 2005, airlines have reported 74 pet incidents, involving just 0.01 percent of all animals carried in cargo holds during that period, a review of reports filed at the U.S. Transportation Department found.

Of the 74 pet incidents reviewed, almost all involved defective kennels that allowed animals to escape, often to be run over by tarmac baggage trains, or animals that were old or sick and died in flight or soon after.

American, the world’s biggest airline, said it is almost never at fault when something happens to a pet on its planes.

quot;In the few cases where there has been an issue, routine autopsies of the animals have almost always shown some sort of pre-existing medical condition that the owner did not know about or did not disclose to us," the airline said. American estimates it carries 200,000 pets annually, half in cargo holds and half in carry-on kennels.

Lisa Weisberg, senior vice president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said she fears airlines may be underreporting incidents and noted that the 5,000-animal projection included not just passengers’ pets but all kinds of creatures carried on planes, such as laboratory animals and pets being shipped as cargo by breeders.

Here’s the rest of the piece. Even if the airlines are indeed under-reporting, the general trend in safety is surprisingly good news. If you’re shipping your pet, you can make things even safer by making sure your animal companion is healthy and that the carrier is in good shape with all bolts securely fastened.

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Finally, a big, big shout-out to Dr. Patty at the great Dolittler site. Her piece this morning on idiot backyard breeders deserves to be spread to every corner of the Internet. So read, and post everywhere you can, please:

This week’s case was similarly disastrous. The bitch`s uterus was fluid-filled and unresponsive to oxytocin—it had clearly been over-used and less than cared for. In its current state it was a perfect candidate for pyometra (an overwhelming infection of the uterus). The owner did not, however, grant permission for the recommended spay

After an hour of working on the pups it became clear we couldn’t maintain their hearts or respiration in the presence of all that fluid. Suction, oxygen, drugs….and then nothing. Yet this owner was undeterred. (Next time I’ll have to keep her inside when she starts to look big.) Great. You do that. We’ll look forward to your next visit.

You’re thinking: There should be a law against that! Nope. That’s not negligence in the eyes of the law. Nor is it considered animal cruelty. If you overstuff your fridge and it breaks that’s your dumb luck. While in Miami-Dade County (where I live) breeders have to obtain a license and fulfill some basic puppy care requirements, no pre-birth regulations are included in the legislation. Dogs are your property. You can f— them up any way you like as long as you don’t actively do them violence.

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Until backyard breeders stop doing their thing and until laws can be installed and enforced to make them stop, I’ll have to keep doing these disaster C-sections. There’s no point in denying any animal a life-saving surgery. But I will continue to make those responsible observe the outcome of their ignorance and arrogance. I want the "miracle of life" to be at least a fraction as painful and uncomfortable for them as it was for their pet.

You go, girl!