 Purred: Tue Apr 8, '08 7:31am PST | |
 | |  | | Please help the rescue lady who let me have my brief time on earth and saved me, my brither Patches, Scooter & Indy from the gas chambers!!! I know its long but we wanted to be sure everyone knew WHY we needed help...please help Barbara help kitties like me...
THOUSANDS OF ANIMALS WILL DIE!
We need your support today!
It is with much frustration and sadness that I reach out to each of you for help in getting the Here Kitty Kitty website reinstated on Petfinder.com. Petfinder took the drastic and not well thought out step of disabling the Here Kitty Kitty website for what amounts to an administrative issue. We have been trying for over TWO MONTHS to have a dialogue with Petfinder with respect to what they need from us in order to get our website reinstated but to no avail. Betsy Saul, President and Founder of Petfinder states they receive “5,000 emails a week and we promise to respond within 24 hours.” They do not answer our emails or if they do answer it is not prompt and the response does not tell us what we must DO to remedy this situation. As a result many, many otherwise adoptable animals have been euthanized because we were unable to find them homes. We have received many calls from the high kill shelters we work with asking for our help and have been unable to take action because we need our website in order to FIND potential adopters. Animals we would have pulled are now dead, because Petfinder has unfairly removed our site.
We thought we had proven to Kim, the VP of Shelter Outreach & Public Relations at Petfinder that the violation cited as the reason for the closing of our website was an honest mistake by another rescue group (who admits to same) attempting to assist the kitties on Death Row. The "violation" (and root cause of much of our misery with Petfinder) is regarding a practice called "cross posting" (or double listing) in which animals are pictured on a group's website even though the animal is not directly in the rescue group's care in the rescue group's zip code. This practice is forbidden by Petfinder. This leaves all the animals in the South and Midwest (where the surplus of animals is far greater than in the Northeast) that sit on Death Row without the help of innumerable rescues in other areas of the country that could save these lives and place the animals. The fact that this type of listing is a violation of Pathfinder's policy is short sighted and outdated in a time when we are more connected via the Internet than ever before. Understand that this policy makes no difference to the end user as the rescue group will get the animal to their zip code for an approved adopter. This policy also ULTIMATELY results in thousands of animals being euthanized in cases where shelters do not have Petfinder websites or do not have staff to maintain them. PF’s solution to this is to use their petscroller which enables you to put a copy of all the animals of another shelter on your site. The problem with this is we work with numerous shelters and this scroller in our case is unrealistic and will NOT solve the problem. We need our site to be reinstated immediately as each day lost is a day where more animals are dying needlessly!
We did NOT engage in the forbidden "cross posting" during this recent incident with Petfinder yet our website was shut down and, without the ability to post animals for potential adopters and rescue groups to see, we can not transport animals out of the high kill shelters where we have been doing our work for 10 years. What actually happened is that without our knowledge or approval two groups copied pictures on our site of animals on Death Row and then re-listed them on their own Petfinder sites. PF found out about one of the groups and that group CT231 has come forward and told PF that they did in fact re-list our pictures without our knowledge. They explained they were only trying to help save the lives of these animals that were almost out of time. They had no malicious intent and have apologized to PF for the unintentional violation.
We support the Petfinder organization wholeheartedly and applaud the wonderful work they have done in giving us a central point for adopters and rescue groups/shelters to come together. We also recognize that policies are NECESSARY for the proper functioning of the Petfinder process and to ensure the well being of the animals. However, was can not state strongly enough that Petfinder has crossed the boundary in our case and has now entered into the inane and bureaucratic. And who ultimately suffers?...THE CATS IN THE HIGH KILL SHELTERS WE WORK WITH.
With the help of the Petfinder site we have been able to save TWO THOUSAND animals that were on Death Row in high kill shelters. If we are unable to get our site reinstated the next two thousand animals will surely die! We cannot allow this to happen.
LETTERS ARE NEEDED FROM YOU to politely ask Petfinder to reinstate the Here Here Kitty NY413 and CT231 websites. We are hoping that a public response will provide them the sense of urgency they seem to lack AND provide them incentive to reinstate our website promptly. We need as many letters as possible, so please forward this to every individual you know that cares about the animals and ask them to send a letter as well.
Many of you were sent this email because you have adopted from us in the past. You know your kitty would not be alive today if not for the post on Petfinder. Help us to save the others that are out of time.
For those of you that know me, have been here, have adopted from us or worked with any others in our group you know first hand that I devote 18-20 hours a day/7 days a week to saving (and caring for the unadoptable animals we pull) the animals from Death Row. If you could include your personal experiences as a matter of a reference and validity of our integrity that would be great!
If Petfinder thinks we are just going to go away… we wont! Too many animals live depend on us! Betsy stated a few years back the site receives in excess of THREE MILLION dollars a year (which I am sure is much higher now) in advertising dollars through sponsorships from Purina, PETCO, and others. Let’s first give Marjorie and Betsy a chance to do the right thing before taking the next step.
Letters to PLEASE REINSTATE NY413 and CT231 IMMEDIATELY
should be addressed To Betsy Saul, PR and Founder of Petfinder and her boss Marjorie Kaplan, CEO of Animal Planet:
Marjorie_Kaplan@discovery.com,
betsy@petfinder.com
and “CC”
John_Hendricks@discovery.com,
David_Zaslav@discovery.com,
Joe_Abruzzese@discovery.com,
Bill_Goodwyn@discovery.com,
Adoptapet@optonline.net,
nplhinct@aol.com,
MichaelScarpati@aol.com,
Thank you all so much!
Barbra and all of us at Here Kitty Kitty NY413 |  |  | |  |
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I also just crossed over to the Bridge on the 8th. I want to thank my mommy for the 11 months that I was taken care of on this earth. She loved,care,fed,played with me and loved me.
