The most obvious error is the failure to account for $ 874,952,500 in savings, which is a full half of the savings the report claims TNR provides.

The report lists 4 cost factors: trap/enforcement, neuter/spay, physical exams, and vaccinations.  The cost summation for these four elements is $14,874,192,500; but the report erroneously lists this as $13,999,240,000 which is nearly $875 million underreported.

There is no excuse for such a blatant error.

Now, before you get the mistaken impression that the cost figures in this study are highly accurate because of the many non-zero digits, the authors of the report are disguising how much rounding they have done by not obeying the convention of significant figures.  The budget numbers show superfluous precision.  The numbers reported imply a specificity of measurement that is much higher than the actual data gives.  You might assume that this error is introduced by multiplying a very specific cost per cat (say $148.74) by a very large but imprecise number of cats (say 100,000,000).  This is not the case. The creator of this report is using a very imprecise number for the cost per cat ($180) multiplied by an overly precise number for the feral cat population (87,495,250).  It’s unlikely that such a number can be estimated to within a million cats, let alone tens of cats as the report suggests.

So, let’s look at the data in a way that’s easier to comprehend.  Here, I simply divided the listed costs by the listed number of feral cats, and behold: the costs per cat are all perfectly even numbers rounded to the nearest $10!  This is not the work of a scientist or a statistician or even an accountant. The cost per cat for these various procedures is the one bit of data in this study that could reasonably be estimated down to the penny from empirical data. Yet it’s not.  This is sloppy math and reeks of a PR firm hired to cook up some data instead of a legit study that was commissioned by a neutral and independent source aimed at doing real analysis.

This isn’t a real study as it relies on no original research and fails to cite the most important numerical assumptions used in the formulation of its conclusion, specifically the per cat costs of the options listed, e.g. vaccinations, physical examinations, etc.  This would be the raison d’etre of such a study if it were authentic: to compare costs.  Instead, this report throws in useless citations that don’t actually provide useful data. The one citation that portends to corroborate the $15.7 billion calculation points to the HSUS website with a note that they estimate the cost of animal control at over $18.7 billion.  Not only could I not find this data at the site given, we are given no reason to believe that this HSUS number (which is the size of the NASA budget or the yearly profits of Chevron) speaks to the same costs that are listed in this report.

And let’s look at the numbers given in the report. Do they even pass the sniff test? NO!

The estimate of the number of feral cats is suspicious and unsourced.  This report lists 87.5 million but does not provide any real details on the calculation, just a lot of mumbo-jumo that was obviously stolen from another report.  For instance, why would the number of feral cats be dependent on the “unemployment rate” and if these costs are so carefully adjusted for regional variations why are such crude estimates used?  The HSUS which is sited as a source estimates “as many as 50 million feral cats in the United States,” which is a far cry from 87.5 million.  Since this report is focusing on the difference in total cost and not the much more modest difference in per cat cost, the motive here is clear: make the difference number as large as possible by reporting as many feral cats as possible.

There’s also no reason to find the total number of feral cats in the United States in such a complicated matter if the goal of the study is to do a cost comparison between three alternatives and you’re using the exact same price values for every cat in the country.  Any policy maker can choose which option on the cost per cat basis.  Saying $170 per cat versus $180 per cat just isn’t as sexy as “nearly TWO BILLION in savings!” (well nearly $875 million, but who is counting anyway?).

Let’s look at the per cat costs that this report implies. We have the trap cost of $50 per cat; since this is common among all the plans, we can ignore it for any error here effects all plans equally.

Next, we have a sheltering cost of $40 per cat, a food cost of $40 and laboratory costs of $10.  Why are we sheltering, feeding and testing cats that that are to be euthanized?  The report states that these costs are mandated in many states, yet there are no sheltering or feeding or laboratory costs worked into the TNR numbers.

These numbers are based on the inane assumption that euthanizing every feral cat will require treating every single one of them as a stray, and TNRing every cat will treat none of them as stray.

Equally preposterous is the cost basis of eradication/euthanization vs. the neuter/spay procedure.  Both are estimated to cost $40 per cat. This is preposterous.  There is not a veterinarian on the planet who could perform a spay/neuter operation for the same cost as a euthanasia. A spay is a delicate surgery requiring expensive and specialized equipment, one time use materials, and a surgeon’s skill.  Even a layperson can perform a successful euthanasia with a modicum of training.

Dr. Khuly charges the following retail prices to euthanize a dog at her Florida vet practice:

Catheter: $25
IV Sedation: $20
IV Euthanasia solution: $20

Not only is this the deluxe treatment with catheter and sedation, it’s also the price for a dog. In the comments, numerous people affirmed that the cost to euthanize a cat was significantly less than the cost for a dog given their smaller size.  The lowest prices quoted in the comments were $10 and $16 to euthanize a cat.

She also estimates that vets charge between $75 and $350 to desex a cat (again, much less than the cost for a dog):

Cat spays are priced more uniformly, since there’s not a big divide between the smallest and largest patients. Most are spayed quite young, too, which helps support this uniformity: $75 to $350 is typical.  Cat neuters adhere to an even smaller range: $50 to $150, typically.

So it’s clear that in the retail market the cost to desex a cat is significantly more than euthanasia, perhaps twice or three times the cost.

If we are really committed to euthanizing feral cat colonies instead of running them all through our shelters like lost pets, there are humane methods that can be accomplished in the field for much less than $1 per cat with no need for expensive poisons or a specially trained veterinarian or food costs or boarding costs or any of that.

The most preposterous element of this report is the “supported” package TNR cost, at just $30 per animal.  This figure supposedly relies on the assumption that all the rest of the costs will be donated.  This assumes $7.8 Billion in charity. That’s the entire peace keeping budget of the UN, that’s how much money the US Postal Service is projected to lose in 2010, and it’s also how much money Freddie Mac and CitiGroup lost in the fourth quarter of last year, and it’s the total estimated damage of the earthquake in Haiti. There is not $7.8 Billion in charity waiting for spay/neuter programs and there never will be.

There are between 40,000 and 50,000 veterinarians in the USA.  If every single one of them donated their time to spay and neuter cats, and the average procedure takes 20 minutes, and they all worked non-stop 8 hours, five days a week, it would take over 4 months to complete all the surgeries.  Good luck with that!

I’ve written kind words about TNR, No Kill, and Nathan Winograd in the past and I’m certainly willing to accept a major rethink in policy when the numbers work out.  Advocates of No-Kill do themselves no favor by using this study to bolster their cause.  Heralding such a dubious paid-to-order pseudo study as gospel in favor of No Kill opens up the entire movement to criticism and calls into question all the potential benefits of No Kill and TNR by tainting them with bogus puffery.

It’s a shame that Maddie’s Fund hired a firm to create an interactive fund raising portal instead of commissioning a legitimate study that would have illuminated the situation with good data.

So here are a few points I’d like you to consider and debate.

(1) Genetic Engineering brings to mind the Frankenstein Monster, and the irony is painful. The creature had no name, Frankenstein is the name of the doctor who created him, and he was not monstrous. He was literate and well read, not a bestial slug. He was well spoken and considerate, not a brutish lumbering mute. But idiots who never read the book distorted the creature beyond recognition.

So too do ignorants with sharpened stakes and torches alight gather to pillory Genetic Engineering as if it were akin to the Frankenstein of b-movies rather than the intelligent and sophisticated product of science giving back life from whence there was death.

(2) Technology is amoral. There is nothing inherently evil nor inherently good about Genetic Engineering, so like any tool we must assess the specifics of its use and the morality of individual applications instead of broad sweeping generalities that confound the efficacy of the technology to do what you want it to do with the degree to which it can be exploited for good or evil.

(3) There are several similar technologies and techniques that involve the intentional manipulation of genetic material. They are not to be confused because their potential for good and harm are quite different and the goals of their dispersal are different. Given that, let’s get some definitions:

* Gene Therapy is the insertion of genes into an individual’s cells and tissues to treat a disease, and hereditary diseases in which a defective mutant allele is replaced with a functional one. Although the technology is still in its infancy, it has been used with some success.

It is important to stress that this is a THERAPY, not a cure. Gene Therapy is the treatment of an individual specimen, and most often a subset of tissues of that individual and not every cell in that individual and certainly not an entire population.

Specifically, the change brought about by Gene Therapy are often localized to a single organ or tissue and are not passed along to the subject’s offspring. This limitation is called the Weismann barrier.

* The Weismann Barrier is the principle that hereditary information moves only from genes to body cells, and never in reverse. In more precise terminology hereditary information moves only from germline cells to somatic cells (that is, soma to germline feedback is impossible).

So Gene Therapy doesn’t uncook the cake and change the recipe, it is simply a means by which we can combat genetic disease expression in an individual. Think of it like an organ transplant. If your family has poor livers and you get a transplant, your future children will be no different after your transplant than before, and they’ll still be at risk.

Gene Therapy has been successfully used to restore vision to dogs blinded by an inherited disease.

So, Gene Therapy is of great interest to those with disease, but it is of little application to dog breeders.

* Genetic Engineering can be used to cure genetic disease, but there is a difference between treating the disease in an individual and in changing the genome that gets passed down to descendants. The greater field of Genetic Engineering has the ability to change what genes are passed on to all future descendants.

This has the potential to permanently eradicate inherited diseases like haemophilia, cystic fibrosis, and Huntington’s disease. This approach also has the ability to target and swap out risk factor genes that lead to complex diseases like heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and many cancers.

Beyond disease, GE opens the door to modify alleles for genes that aren’t defective. Swap out blue eyes for brown, olive skin for pale skin, smooth coat for ruff coat, long limbs for short limbs, etc.

(4) GE also has the potential to make radical changes. To add additional genes, not just swap out alleles for existing genes, to attach alien (from another species) DNA to existing genes to serve as markers, and even to cut out genes.

This radical tool is what brings the most controversy into the discussion. The ability to add naturally occurring DNA from one organism into another organism where it would never n
aturally occur.

Examples of adding new genes that are already being used by science and industry are glow in the dark cats that are a proof of concept for marking certain tissues with a fluorescent compound that glows. If you can bind the fluorescent marker to cancer cells, you’d have a highly visible “cut here” map, or if you bound it to another gene you wanted to insert, you’d be able to see where the otherwise invisible genes ended up.

Another example is genetically engineered corn that has been infused with a natural pesticide found in a soil bacterium that is lethal to moths but not to other insects or humans. Instead of having to spray on broad spectrum pesticide toxins that aren’t safe for human consumption, contaminate the soil, and work their way into the oceans and the water supply, GE pesticides are made by the plant itself and don’t need to be sprayed on or washed off.

The different strategies that employ genetic engineering need to be considered individually when assessing their potential for benefit versus potential for harm and their accordance with current cultural feelings toward medical and scientific ethics.

I love the concept of “war kittens.” I mean, just sit and think about it for a while. W-a-r K-i-t-t-e-n-s. Ahhhhh.

And on this middle of the week Wednesday, the hump day, the I don’t want to get any work done day, what could be more fun than thinking about armed and ballistic kittens? Well, getting to be one, of course. You aren’t going to get any work done after you play this awesome and addicting war kitten flash game:

Yes, that’s right, you are the deadly ballistic kitten, armed with (and tied to) your Rambo bow of death, unleashed on a gravity challenged 18 hole golf course. Loose your arrow and watch as the kitteh is flung across the screen in tow. Cat lovers will relish the notion of a well armed cat militia, and us cat haters can glory in the quasi-mock-torture of watching a cat being flung around the screen behind a speeding arrow.

I dare you to beat my all time best score of -50.

Some tips:
- Many holes can be cleared with a hole-in-one with a little practice.
- A fired arrow doesn’t have to land before you can fire another one. You can propel yourself all the way across the screen with nothing but arrows and air.
- Pulling back a second arrow while flying slows the cat down, defying gravity and allowing you to aim carefully for the next shot.
- If you overshoot the target, immediately draw the bow again to slow you down and prevent you from falling off the edge.
- You can lodge an arrow in to the very top or side of the arena, even if there isn’t ground there.
- I’ve gotten a -7 on the final hole, a Par 9. You can go over the top of the mountain even though it goes above the upper boundary of the field. Fire one arrow up at an angle with full power, it will lodge in the moving red block. Let your kitteh fly past the boundary and the block will disappear. Quickly draw the bow and fire again with enough angle to get you over the hill but not too much power that you’ll overshoot the landing. If you’re lucky, you’ll hit the target. If not, you still get a -6.

The most popular Christmas meme was “Don’t buy Christmas Puppies!” Pet Connection ran a slew of posts on the topic: Holiday shopping season begins, and the puppy-millers are ready!, A pet is not a toy. A pet is not a toy. Rinse. Repeat., As another storm moves in, remember the puppy-mill dogs …, Christmas puppies: Testing my own advice, How to ‘save’ puppy-mill dogs: Don’t buy them, Christmas adoption bans; followed closely by Lassie Get Help: A dog is not a toy. Also: puppy mills suck.; Champlain Valley Pug Rescue tells us Why puppies should not be given as Christmas presents.; Lexiann at Favorite Pets questioned Puppies as Christmas Presents; The Bark Magazine blog agreed: Santa says: Adopt, Don’t Buy; and Johann the Dog kicked the trend off early: How much is that doggie in the window? And who could forget PeTA and their “Adopt, Never Buy” campaign.

That’s a lot of attention given to Christmas Puppies. Keeping that in mind, take a stab at the following questions:

• There are more {Dogs or Cats} as pets in America
• More households have {Dogs or Cats} as pets
• Pets given as gifts are {More or Less} likely to end up in a shelter
• Dogs purchased at pet stores are {More or Less} likely to end up in a shelter
• Dogs born in the owner’s home are {More or Less} likely to end up in a shelter
• Dogs adopted from a shelter are {More or Less} likely to end up back in a shelter
• Dogs acquired for under $30 are {More or Less} likely to end up in a shelter
• Dogs acquired for over $100 are {More or Less} likely to end up in a shelter

Rank the following sources of pets from where you believe most pets come from to the fewest number of pets come from:

Animal Shelter
Breeder
Friend/Family
Gift
Newspaper/Private Party
Pet Store
Puppy/Kitten from Own Pet
Stray
Veterinarian
Other

Now what do you suppose the facts on the ground would be to justify the “No Christmas Puppies,” “Adopt, Don’t Buy,” and “Don’t give an animal as a gift” messages?

It would be logical to assume that (1) Puppies are a larger problem than Kittens (both in numbers and in propensity to buy on a whim), as you don’t hear much at all about “No Christmas Kittens.” It would be logical to assume that (2) Giving a pet as a gift makes that pet more likely to be relinquished to a shelter. It would be logical to assume that (3) Pet store puppies are more likely to end up in shelters. It would be logical to assume that (4) a large percentage of people buy pets at Pet Stores. It would be logical to assume that (5) people who buy pets for money do more harm than good. It would be logical to assume that (6) people who buy pets from breeders or private parties are more likely to relinquish their pets than people who adopted them from shelters.

It would also be logical to assume that Gifts and Pet Stores are popular means of acquiring puppies.

All those assumptions are wrong. Just like you were once duped into thinking that there were flying reindeer–at least one with a radioactive glowing nose, an immortal fat old philanthropist, and the birthday of Jesus, if you believed any one of those assumptions above, you’ve been just as duped.

There are more Cats as pets in America. In 2001 there were an estimated 68.9 million cats and 61.6 million dogs as pets. Cats are also more likely to be acquired on a whim than dogs (more on that later).

Although, more households have Dogs as pets. In the same survey, 36.1% of US households had at least one dog (1.6 average) and 31.6% of housholds had at least one cat (2.1 average); another survey found that in 2000, 39% of homes had dogs and 34% had cats. AVMA Survey, 1997, 2002; APPMA Survey 2002.

Pets given as gifts are Less likely to end up in a shelter.

Dogs purchased at pet stores are Less likely to end up in a shelter.

Dogs born in the owner’s home are More likely to end up in a shelter.

Dogs adopted from a shelter are More likely to end up back in a shelter.

Dogs acquired for under $30 are More likely to end up in a shelter.

Dogs acquired for over $100 are Less likely to end up in a shelter.

Pets given as Gifts account for only 7% of acquired dogs and only 8% of dogs are bought at Pet Stores. The most common source of dogs is from Friends and Family at 34%.

As Table 10a shows, the data collected by Patronek et al (1996a) refute at least one cherished belief (that dogs received as gifts or from pet stores are more likely to be given up) and confirm a number of others (that age is an important factor in relinquishment of dogs).

The shelter community needs to be concerned that dogs acquired from their facilities are more likely to be relinquished and should emphasize the importance of pet care-givers establishing strong relationships with a veterinarian (their “other family doctor”).

- Acquisition of Pets, The State of the Animals II: 2003

As much as these bloggers mean well and their posts do shed critical light on the abomination that is the puppy mill industry, they’re barking up the wrong tree and smearing breeders right along with puppy mills. The message about puppy mills has obviously gotten through, and there’s only 8% more of the market that needs to be taken away from them before they’ll be a memory. But it’s apparently true that puppy mills do a better job of producing pets people keep than breeders of all merit and shelters when those are lumped together.

It also is pretty damning that equal numbers of people adopt from shelters and take in strays; yet, the dogs adopted at shelters are twice as likely to end up back in the shelter than the dogs taken in as strays. And shelter dogs fare worse than any other source, even free dogs.

The slandering against the puppy mills has splashed on to all breeders. And not one of those bloggers who railed against pet stores and gift puppies acknowledged that both of those factors actually keep pets in homes MORE than any other source. It’s confusing, it’s mind blowing, but it turns out that gift pets and pet store pets are the MOST likely to stay in homes and pets adopted by people who care so much that the buy used from shelters end up going back to shelters more than any other source.

And how about this for mind blowing, if you visit a vet with your dog AT LEAST ONCE, you decrease your chance of abandoning your pet by 86%. Take your pet to the vet at least once per year and halve your remaining chance. Twice or more per year, halve that chance again!

The relinquishment rate being so high for newborn puppies speaks again to the need for expanding the spay/neuter message even though 70% of dogs are already desexed. What else than ooops! pregnancies can account for all of those relinquished puppies and kittens and the largest source of dogs being what I can only imagine are ooops! litters from friends and family.

If you are a breeder, the most important benchmark of the ethics of you being one is your ability to sell the puppies you create. If you can’t sell puppies you are not a breeder, or at best a failed one. If you have to give puppies away to free or dump them in shelters, you are a failure.

The above chart is interesting. Very interesting. Most dogs and cats are acquired for little money from friends and family. The acquisition of dogs is also more likely to be planned than on a whim, which is not true for Cats. More cats are acquired on a whim than planned:

Pet care-givers acquire dogs and cats from a variety of sources. These sources are believed to play an integral role in pet population problems. According to the APPMA National Pet Owners Survey, pets in 1998 were acquired as indicated in Table 7 (APPMA 2000, 2002). Use of those sources marked with an asterisk indicates that some forethought and planning usually went into the acquisition of the pet.

The total percentage of dogs acquired from such sources is 74 (or about 48 percent of the identified sources); the total percentage of cats acquired from these sources is 38 (or about 29 percent of the identified sources). This indicates that cats are more likely to be acquired on a whim.

Other surveys have shown similar differences between the sources of dogs and cats. Nassar, Mosier, and Williams (1984) found that in Las Vegas cats (24.5 percent) were much more likely to be acquired from the stray population than dogs (8 percent), but only 9 percent of cats were purchased compared with 26 percent of dogs. In Massachusetts 71 percent of pet care-givers had planned to acquire their dogs, going to such sources as breeders (33 percent), shelters (16 percent), and pet stores (7 percent) (MSPCA 1996).

- Acquisition of Pets, The State of the Animals II: 2003

So there you go. Data found on the HSUS website speaks volumes to myths that people believe: That shelters do a good job at keeping pets in homes with their careful selection programs and temperament tests. Turns out that random loose dogs taken in off the street are twice as likely to stay there. That buying dogs is less ethical than adopting them, turns out that buying dogs even at pet stores is more successful than adopting them or getting them free from friends and family. That puppy mill and gift pets are the most likely to be abandoned. Turns out that they’re not.

Go figure.

While you often hear of “hell hounds” and “devil dogs,” those aloof yet alluring fur balls that allow us to pretend to own them have managed to avoid any sort of association with the fiery pits of hell from whence they came. The slandering of dogs through biased media spin is just one tactic in the feline plot to carry on their nefarious deeds unnoticed.

As Verbal said in The Usual Suspects, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” And Cats have done a smack up job of convincing the world that they aren’t Satan’s minions. But it’s true, and I have proof.

Look at these cats, they’re adorable, angelic even:

But they are the SPAWN OF SATAN! Just turn out the lights and their evil shines through:

Back beasts! Back to the pit from whence you came! They might look innocent and white in the shining light of day, but the mark of the beast is on them. And don’t think that it’s just a cute little night light glow, when the kittens gain full control of their demonic powers they can consume your very soul: