Here are some easy to make cookies for your cats and dogs this Halloween

For Cats, some easy Kitty Kookies:

1 cup whole-wheat flour
1 6-ounce can tuna in oil (do not drain)
1 tablespoon oil
1 egg

Mix all ingredients in a mixing bowl, adding a little water if dough is too stiff. On a lightly floured surface, roll dough to 1/4-inch thickness. Cut into shapes with your favourite cookie cutter, or use a pizza cutter to cross-cut into small diamond shapes. Place on ungreased baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until firm. Store in an airtight container.

For Dogs, healthy Pumpkin Cookies:

Use your bread machine to mix the dough, or your mixer with a dough hook, or mix by hand.

• 1½ cups whole wheat flour
• 1 ½ cups unbleached flour
• 2 tablespoons dry milk
• 1/2 cup oatmeal
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon dry yeast
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup canned pumpkin

Jim Willis

It is January 25, 2006, the second anniversary of the fire that destroyed my home and took the lives of 14 rescued animals. The fire marshal had told me that if I had been home that afternoon, I likely would not be here today.  

  On the first anniversary of the fire, I wrote a tribute to my lost animals and focused on one dog from a Pit Bull fighter, who I named “Cleo.” (The tribute was entitled “Where’s Daddy’s Baby?” and can be found using most search engines.)*

I am writing this in the morning, because I know that about 3 p.m., the approximate time that the fire started that day, it will take all of my energy to focus on the here and now and the present rescued animals under my care, over 30 of them including five of my survivors and the foster animals.

I don’t believe that “time heals all wounds,” but time allows one to put events in perspective. I no longer relive that tragedy daily or suffer from frequent nightmares about it, although I still greatly miss those I lost. It was a life-changing event and my surviving animals and I were the recipients of the greatest mass outpouring of kindness and generosity I have ever experienced. I received so many cards, gifts, and messages that it was impossible to thank everyone individually and I still hope that somehow my gratitude has been conveyed back to them. I had seen the best of humanity.

Life after the fire was difficult, but made easier by the family who boarded my horse and took me in for five months. During those months, I adopted a Pomeranian, who had been rescued by a woman in North Carolina, and sent to Pennsylvania. I named him “Dandy Lion.” I then moved out on my own, took back my survivors, and frankly, did not do well on my own. If you’ve read my first book “Pieces of My Heart – Writings Inspired by Animals and Nature” then you know that I survived my father’s suicide. Following the publication of the book, I survived a divorce. And now I was expected to survive a devastating fire that not only cost precious lives, but also took nearly everything of family heirloom and sentimental value with it. I was tired of surviving and I became blind to the love and beauty and help around me. I had become angry and bitter, a textbook case of post-traumatic stress disorder.

When the offer came to live with a fellow animal rescuer, where my animals were welcome, I took it, blindly. I was thrust into an animal hoarder situation way beyond my control until that situation exploded. At the beginning, I took an emaciated, blind Pit Bull puppy that had lived for weeks in a filthy crate, with diarrhoea, and I named her “Cleo” in memory of my first “Cleo.” Near the end of that brief residency a network of private animal rescuers and I got as many of the animals to safe havens as possible. Again, I began to see some of the best of humanity.

We watched as the humane authorities first investigated the situation after it was reported and then left the animals there under terrible circumstances for another week, until they raided the premises and seized them. I did not agree with some of the decisions being made and called in the media. Some tried to turn the tide against me. I saw authorities behaving ineffectively and taking credit they didn’t deserve and a court system woefully  unprepared to deliver justice on behalf of those who can never speak for themselves. I saw some of the worst of humanity.

“Cleo” saw nothing – we were the blind leading the blind. Once again, I needed a place to live and I moved to a friend’s house and lived in a cellar room with access to a deck and backyard for my dogs. One evening, while I was on the phone, “Cleo” was stolen off the deck in a town known for its Pit Bull fighting horrors. I was frantic. I called the police and by the next morning had over 100 flyers posted around the town. That afternoon, I got a call from animal control that “Cleo” had been found wandering the streets.

Apparently, her kidnapper discovered she was blind and threw her away. “Cleo” never saw my tears of worry or my tears of relief.

Then the greatest individual outpouring of kindness and generosity I have ever experienced occurred when the woman who had rescued my “Dandy Lion” offered me a room in her home in North Carolina, with enough space for all my dogs and a place for my horse. I moved again, blindly.

“Cleo” saw nothing. She was treated for a severe bacterial infection left over from her former life, she began to thrive, and was spayed. It took her only days to learn the new backyard; at first she spun in circles, finding her perimeters, then she trotted, and then she ran. My Arctic wolf female and her male mixed-breed companion became surrogate parents to “Cleo,” even though the first, “Shania,” cannot abide any other female.

In the evenings, my new host, Betty, and I sat on the front porch and talked, about our animals, about our respective life-changing events, about life, about our animals…about all animals. We fell in love. We were married this past November (with “Dandy Lion” present, sporting a white collar and bowtie).

I was watching “Cleo” through the window this morning. “Shania” was licking the pup’s face and then began sparring with “Cleo” and then using her as a hurdle. Each time she sailed over the pup’s head, “Cleo” did her whirling dervish routine. Then she began to run, as if she was chasing “Shania.” I still marvel at her agility, her ability to find her toys and her sleeping quarters. “Cleo” can see through the darkness when I cannot.

I realize now that “Cleo” and I are a lot alike. At first, I was not seeing clearly. Then I began spinning in circles, for me a downward spiral. I made a few blind, false moves. And then with blind faith I found love, a family, a home, a new life – and like “Cleo,” I stopped stumbling and began to run faster and faster, as if I knew where I was going. I’ve started writing another book and enjoying life again.

After a forest burns a new forest begins to grow from the ashes. “Cleo” and I are both grateful for the love and the chance at a new life, and the view beyond the horizon.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

*To read Where’s Daddy’s Baby? Please click here:

Jim's book, "PIECES OF MY HEART - Writings Inspired by Animals and Nature" (includes "How Could You?") is available in the USA, the UK and Europe. For more info and a special fundraising discount, see:

http://www.crean.com/jimwillis/

(Written on the second anniversary of my fire in memory of my 14 animals)
Copyright Jim Willis 2006

The last day of October is the secular holiday Halloween, principally celebrated in America and a few other countries, and having its roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain, marking the end of summer and harvest time, and the eve before the Christian All Saints Day, November 1. 

It is customary for many American animal shelters to not adopt out black cats during the Halloween season, for fear they might come to harm, or suffer ritualistic killing at the hands of “witch covens,” or Satanists. Media has fostered the impression that many animals have been harmed, but in truth, most shelter directors don’t even believe the mythology and instead prefer to err on the side of cautiousness.

Black cats are particularly vulnerable to cruelty because of age-old myths connecting them to misfortune and evil. However, during the Inquisitions, or the “Burning Times” as witches refer to them, cats were condemned as the “witch’s familiar” and often tortured and killed along with accused “witches.” It was believed that witches could shape-shift into cats, or that the felines could embody evil spirits, although cats of any color were uniformly persecuted. In 1730s Paris, printers apprentices revolted, choosing their masters’ cats as a symbolic target for their revenge (because pet cats were fed better than apprentices) in The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Severin.

Most animal cruelty is attributed to troubled humans, not members of a particular religious sect, and true witches – practitioners of Wicca – are tired of unfair accusations. Wiccans are pagans who celebrate the earth and all of creation, including animals, and none of their observances or practices is based in evil or malice.

A Florida witch called Wren wrote, “It is instead the ‘thrill seeker,’ the wanna-be ‘Satanist’ ala Hollywood movie scripts, or the emotionally disturbed individual who perpetuates such crimes against animaldom. We join with the animal protection agents in the hope that the people who abuse cats and other animals will be caught and then prosecuted for their heinous and cruel acts.

“The larger professionally run animal shelters know that, indeed, it is not the Wiccans who are doing the abusing. Thanks to all of the concerned pagans who have written shelters, the newspapers, and town officials during the ‘scaredy cat’ seasons past, we have gotten the point across rather well.”

For animal shelters, black dogs and black cats represent an especially needy problem. Fewer black animals are adopted, therefore many more are euthanized – so much so that regarding the former, animal rescue professionals have dubbed the problem “Black Dog Syndrome.”

Kim Saunders, head of shelter outreach for Petfinder.com, an American website listing over 300,000 animals for adoption, recently told ABC News, “What we’ve learned is that large black dogs, and also black cats, tend to be the last ones to get adopted from shelters,” and added that one of the reasons she believes black animals are overlooked is that they don’t photograph as well as lighter-colored animals.

Sherry Skidmore, founder of the Utah-based Black Dog Rescue Project [www.blackdogrescueproject.com/] agrees and said that superstition about the bad luck of having a black cat, or the way black dogs are portrayed in movies as villainous or dangerous also compounds the problem. (Her website includes suggestions for how to better “market” black dogs.)

In many breeds, black is the genetically dominant color, and since many mixed-breed dogs claim the much-loved Labrador Retriever in their pedigree, it doesn’t help that many black dogs are large dogs; city dwellers frequently prefer smaller dogs.

Black Dog Syndrome remains a theory with no data to support it said Julie Morris, senior vice president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, “which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not true, but just that there is no data.”

 “Human nature leads people toward things that are more vibrant and riveting in color,” said Hope Hancock, executive director of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of Wake County in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her shelter has a special program with posters of black dogs decorated with blue lights and adopters of black dogs receive a special discount from the regular adoption fee. They plan a similar program soon for black cats. The shelter also has a special section of their website dedicated to black animals.

Across the US, animal rescue professionals are making a special effort to obtain better photographs of black animals for adoption and to house black animals in well-lit areas of the shelter, as well as highlighting black animals during adoption events.

Those of us who have shared our lives with a black animal know that no special color blindness is required. From Black Beauty to appreciating the inkiness of a Bombay cat, we’re entranced by black magick. One of the most loyal and loving dogs I’ve had was a Black Lab who lived his first 11 years at the end of a chain until I convinced his former owners to release him to freedom and me. A black cat, a stray who stayed, spends most of her hours on my bed and I’ve happily discovered shed black hair is easier to isolate. Adopting any homeless animal holds its own rewards, but in the case of a black one who might not have received his or her deserving worship otherwise, perhaps there’s a little bit more of white magick therein.

Jim Willis

http://www.crean.com/jimwillis

Below is a link to a video.

Strong men will need tissues. I wasn't sure I could make it through this video on euthanasia; it would be impossible to love animals and not get teary eyed. I wish it could be shown repeatedly on every television station:

http://borntodiepets.com/born-to-die-vid/ 

Also click on the various sections of this site and watch some of the other videos on the plight of homeless pets and euthanasia, and feral cats. They are accurate and done with great sensitivity.

We need to find ways to get these well-done messages sent beyond the animal-people community. Please send the link to your local television stations and ask them to air this video, and if they won't, do they have the guts to create one of their own on their local situation?

Jim

Jim's book, "PIECES OF MY HEART - Writings Inspired by Animals and Nature" is an international best-seller. For a Special Discount, see:
http://www.crean.com/jimwillis/