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Autonomous non-profit organization
“Center for Animal Welfare Legal Protection”
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Part:
LETTERS FROM CITIZENS
THAT CONTAIN INFORMATION THAT HOMELESS (STRAY, FERAL) DOGS ARE ACTIVE EXTERMINATORS OF HOMELESS (STRAY, FERAL) CATS
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These pictures were taken near the house at Miklikho-Maklaya St. at the same place the local dwellers call “the place of execution”. From May to July of 2005, a few corpses of cats were found here. One of the cats in the picture is a pet cat. It fell out of the window, the neighbors saw it sitting in the street, and that very day its corpse was found on the lawn. The anatomicopathological examination showed that the cat had been nagged by a dog.
Letter from Dwellers of Moscow South-western Administrative District
To: Head of the Charitable Society
for the Guardianship of Homeless Animals
Mr. E.A.Ilyinsky
From the dwellers of houses
at Miklukho-Maklay St. and Profsoyuznaya St.
Nearly one year ago, there appeared a pack of stray dogs in our housing estate near houses NoNo 39-45 at Miklukho-Maklay St. and houses NoNo 100 and 98 at Profsoyuznaya St.The pack is led by a sterilized female dog by the name of Baby, besides it, there are three to five male dogs in the pack. The dogs are of a gray-brown color, looking very much like half-breeds of a shepherd dog and laika, one dog is white. All the dogs are busy exterminating cats in the district actively. According to the dwellers, and, above all, the guardians of homeless cats, the said dogs have for the last six months killed no less than thirty cats, that is near the aforesaid houses only, and those are the cases reported by the people, when mutilated cat corpses were found. One must also take into account a large number of cats that simply disappeared. We do not rule out that the cat corpses were cleared by the guardians of dogs not to “compromise” the dogs. The said guardians on more than one occasion expressed their indifference to the fact of cats being torn to pieces by the dogs and even fed those stray dogs in places, where the cats have been fed for years all the time. However, they not only object to trapping the dogs, they literally threaten the cat guardians with physical assault, in case the guardians should call the dog trappers.
Several times a day people watch the dogs hunting cats, which sometimes manage to run for life, yet all this cannot go on endlessly. There will come time, when the cats will be unable to survive. The cats live in a state of permanent stress, they can no longer go out into the street unperturbed, they become very nervous at the moment of feeding, they keep looking around, ready to flee from the dogs any time. It is not only the cats that are in a state of hysterics and fear, but the cats guardians, too. One has to search for lost cats permanently. The cats that survived one has to take to one’s place, many are unable to do this as people already keep some animals they picked up before. The dog guardians, however, are not willing to take them to their places, which is not surprising: nobody threatens dogs in the street. As for the guardians of cats, they run out of their homes day and night as they hear dog’s barking in the hope of defending yet another cat. Cat guardians are unable to live, work or rest normally..
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said on TV recently that cats must be given an opportunity to live in the basements. How can they live there, when the dogs are standing guard at the air-ducts and near the cat feeding places? Even an absolutely wild cat has to leave the basement sometimes not to die of starvation.
This summer, the said pack of dogs began to manifest its aggression towards humans. A few people were bitten. As we found out, the initiative group of House No 39 at Miklukho-Maklay St., Korpus 2, in this connection forwarded a petition to the Area Council “Kon’kovo”, requesting to trap the dogs without subsequent release. According to the dwellers, the petition was signed by over 100 residents.
You are kindly requested to contact, on our behalf, the municipal authorities with a view to taking action towards resolving the problem of homeless animals in Moscow. The people can no longer tolerate such cruelty. We also request you to submit an application for a no-release trapping of the aforesaid dogs.
Sincerely yours,
02.09.2005, 36 signatures
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Letter from a Lady-dweller of Moscow Eastern Administrative District
To: Autonomous Non-profit “Charitable Society
for the Guardianship of Homeless Animals”
I am a guardian of homeless animals. Throughout my activity, I’ve encountered all kinds of manifestations of cruel treatment of animals.
There lives one Mrs. O.Krayushkina in our courtyard at: 3-3-4, Sormovskaya St., who keeps four dachshunds and a Bordeau Dog, the creatures being absolutely unmanageable. This entire pack of dogs is walked out unleashed. The lady deliberately sets her pack of dogs at small dogs and cats. While making criticisms, she says that hers are working dogs. Two years ago, before very eyes of the courtyard, with aged people and minors present, she set her dogs on a pregnant cat. The local militia callously ignored our appeals, have said that nobody cares about any cats and there was no legal ground for holding the lady responsible. There were enough proofs and eye-witnesses for that case, but nothing happened since the authorities would not even accept our formal application.
Besides, all air-ducts in the apartment houses were closed. Many cats were walled up alive in the basements. The government does not even want to listen to us.
Many animals (cats) knocked down by vehicles lay for days or weeks on the roadsides, until the local dwellers buried them: we have no services dealing with such matters.
Thus, we lack laws. Because of this, not only animals, but people, too, are at the receiving end.
19.07.04, Signature
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Letter from a Lady-dweller of Moscow South-western Administrative District
To: Head of the Charitable Society
for the Guardianship of Homeless Animals
Mr. E.A.Ilyinsky
Dear Evgeny Anatolievich!
I am a lone pensioner, a disabled of category II; I keep 6 cats and 1 dog at my place, all the animals being picked in the street, plus I feed some 8-10 cats in the street.
I cannot pass by hapless animals (cats and dogs). As far as I can, I feed and cure my charges, have neutered 13 cats and 3 dogs. The cats often die in the street being run over by vehicles, they are also exterminated by stray dogs and fighting pet dogs, whose owners walk them unleashed and unmuzzled. I’m terrified thinking what will become of the animals, when there is no one to take care of them. Probably, it will not be bad to have more shelters for homeless animals.
July 8, 2004, Signature
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Letter from a Lady-dweller of Moscow Eastern Administrative District
To: Director of Autonomous Non-profit “Charitable Society
for the Guardianship of Homeless Animals”
Mr. E.A.Ilyinsky
Dear Evgeny Anatolievich!
I keep 6 cats in my place at present: 5 cats of my own and one that survived in the street, where packs of stray dogs commit outrages; I took this one from the street. The stray dogs tore to pieces nearly all cats living in our courtyard and have become so cheek that they come even in the day-time.
Please, petition the organization concerned, if you can, on the subject of packs of neglected dogs.
There is one other important problem.
Very often, ailing cats and kittens come themselves, or they are thrown in by someone. We have to cure the animals ourselves, as veterinary services are very expensive. Despite all our efforts too many cats die: together with them goes a tiny part of human life, the life of a person who used to nurse the ailing (now dead) animal.
Is it possible to open free veterinary stations for homeless animals in the districts or settle the issue in some other manner?
12.07.2004, Signature
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Letter from a Lady-dweller of Moscow Eastern Administrative District
To: Director of Autonomous Non-profit “Charitable Society
for the Guardianship of Homeless Animals” Mr. E.A.Ilyinsky
Dear Evgeny Anatolievich!
I am a guardian of homeless cats. The question of somebody dealing with homeless animals in Moscow is not only my headache: all Muscovites worry about it. Packs of stray dogs in the city are a sign of our time. The papers write that this is normal, that the presence of homeless animals does the city good. The animals should get food for themselves on their own and live by the law of the jungle (sheer gibberish).
Packs of stray dogs are running about the city, hunting homeless cats by night: tearing these to pieces and abandoning them, eating them.
Last month alone, six mutilated cat corpses were discovered near my house, but how many have not been found? Janitors clear the corpses in the morning, keeping silence. The cats have nowhere to hide. All holes leading to the basements are closed by the workers of communal services on a regular basis: al kinds of materials are used for the purpose: iron sheets, bricks, or plain cement. The cats cluster around the few remaining holes, and starving dogs catch up with them there.
According to the thinking of the authorities, stray dogs and homeless cats should control the population of rodents, but in fact stray dogs control the population of cats. This way, the annihilation of cats by stray dogs has been legitimized. Is this not cruelty, does it not contradict human morality? Can one watch this happening without one’s flesh creeping?!
05.06.04, Signature
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Letter from Dwellers of Moscow North-western Administrative District
To: Charitable Society for the Guardianship
of Homeless Animals
Petition
Because the position of homeless cats has become intolerable, we are forced to appeal to you. The situation is this: the basement windows keep being stopped, the cats are badgered by stray dogs. For the past year, we have sterilized a few cats, but they were exterminated by the dogs. In winter and spring, we fed cats in the basement of some other building. We give the cats canned “Kitekat” and dry fish, liver, chicken legs, milk. We are all on pension, disabled.
28.07.04, 2 signatures
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Letter from a Lady-dweller of Moscow South-western Administrative District
To: Mr. E.A.Ilyinsky
Dear Evgeny Anatolievich!
I am an ailing pensioner; for years, I’ve been taking care of homeless animals (cats and dogs), wherever I can I feed, cure , sterilize them; those particularly ailing I pick up and take to my place. Thus, at present, I keep 5 cats and 1 dog (one other dog died of a grave disease recently).
At my age, I could quit the work, yet my pension is not enough for me to engage in charity, therefore I have to work, giving up all thoughts of my holiday. The workers of communal services and wicked people take a poor view of my activity and dislike me actively. The janitors even take away cans with water, leaving other garbage untouched. House residents pour water on us, hurl abuse and invective at us, their children call us “cat-crazy”, equating us with abnormal, touched people; they even shoot at the cats. Their parents encourage this kind of behavior. House residents keep throwing in kittens and cats; the owners normally do not search for lost animals, so we have to search for the owners.
House repair and maintenance units close up the basement air-ducts all the time; therefore, to save the cats, we have to open the air-ducts ourselves. In a bid to save on thermal insulation, the said units prefer walling up a basement with the cats alive. Hungry dogs run around the house and tear the cats to pieces. The cats have nowhere to hide, as shrubs are cut out to beautify the lawns. The grass and flowers are a good thing, but imagine homeless cats sleeping on the lawn, worse still corpses on the lawn. Who can rejoice at such a sight? Please, do take action to protect homeless animals.
26.07.04, Signature
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Letter from Dwellers of Moscow North-western Administrative District
To: Head of the Charitable Society
for the Guardianship of Homeless Animals
Petition
We, the dwellers of House No… at …. St. (Municipal district “Preobrazhenskoe”) are appealing to you for help.
The thing is that for the last few years we have been struggling unsuccessfully, unfortunately, with the dog owners who live in the neighboring building (No…).
These people have a malicious and aggressive dog they keep as a pet. The dog has been trained to attack cats, therefore all our charges are subjected to a permanent threat of being torn tom to pieces. During the period in question, the aforesaid dog annihilated around 20 animals (not counting the cats from the neighboring buildings). The dog kills both homeless and pet cats that walk in the courtyard.
The dog owners ignore all our entreaties, persuasion, appeals to humanity, requests to walk the dog muzzled and on lead. The malicious beast tears the defenseless animals to pieces before the very eyes of adults and children.
The owners adamantly refuse to walk the dog muzzled.
We would be very grateful if you could help us in the struggle against this evil.
Sincerely yours,
Residents of house No …, 18 signatures,
January 30, 2003
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Letter from a Lady-dweller of Moscow North-western Administrative District
To: Autonomous Non-profit Organization
“Charitable Society for the Guardianship
of Homeless Animals”
I am 76. Roughly since 1983, after retirement, I’ve been feeding homeless dogs and cats to which I feel a very strong attachment. However, when the animals are involved in accidents, I have to bury them in our Izmailovsky Wood. There are many people like me in our housing estate, each of us acting as a guardian of animals closer to his house, yet we associate with one another and know what happens to our hapless charges: they die being run over by vehicles, torn to pieces by dogs, destroyed by people who drive them from their customary places of habitation and even not infrequently poison and butcher the cats.
I am appealing to you with a request to assist in setting up neutering stations and temporary shelters for accommodation after surgery, as not all people are prepared to take such animals home. I have kept a male cat as a pet for 13 years, and a formerly homeless cat for 2 years: the latter’s hind foot was bitten through by dogs. I live in a single-bedroom flat, and besides I have two grand-grand-children, aged 6 and 3 years, they often come to visit and stay with me, therefore, I am simply unable to take one more homeless creature; my age is also a constraint. I particularly worry about puppets and kittens that are not adapted to living in such conditions and dying due to the callousness of humans.
Please, do understand me; unless the small youngsters are given birth, the adults will find it easier to get adapted to such life; all the same, we would keep feeding the youngsters until they die.
Sincerely and hopefully,
22.08.2004, Signature
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Letter from a Lady-dweller of Moscow South-western Administrative District
To: Charitable Society
for the Guardianship of Homeless Animals
Mrs S.O.Ilyinskaya
Dear Svetlana Olegovna!
I wish to inform that, following an appeal to the South-western Administrative District, the worker of Unitary Customer Management Office No 11 Mrs. Marina Mikhailovna Tkachenko ordered making a small hole in the grating that closes an air-duct in the basement of House No … at St. ….
The order was only valid for a few days.
Result: a kitten that walked out of the basement and was unable to get adapted in the yard so quickly died. It was torn to pieces by the mongrel Chuk, guarding the garages. However, a home had been found for the kitten, and the lady-owners from St.-Petersburg had been waiting for the kitten.
At the same time, I wish to inform that the letters from the department of fauna of Moscow Mayor’s Office regarding the protection of animals against cruel treatment have been forwarded to Mr. Nemov N.S. of Unitary Customer Management Office No 11 and to Mr. Sinitsyn of Lomonosov Area Council.
As I have fallen ill briefly, please send your letter at my address.
I enclose an envelope herewith.
Sincerely,
01.09.2003, Signature
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Letter from a Lady-dweller of Moscow South-western Administrative District
To: Director of the Autonomous Non-profit Organization
Charitable Society for the Guardianship
of Homeless Animals
Dear Evgeny Anatolievich!
Because my family and I for more than 10 last years have been standing guard, as far as we can, of homeless animals (we are feeding, curing, protect from insects, control unclaimed posterity), I have gained a lot of experience in the field of struggling for survival of abandoned animals, whose prime enemy, strange as it may seem, is man himself.
Despite the existing law of animal protection, in Moscow everything is being done to annihilate animals in a slap-dash and sadist manner. Under the pretext of fighting Chechen terrorism they wall up air-ducts in the basements (on orders of house repair and maintenance departments, unitary customer management offices), the workers of sanitary-and-epidemiological stations and private enterprises thereof treat the basements with poisons that cause an inflammation of the animals’ mucose membrane, their eyes bulge out, and the animals die an agonizing death, while fleas propagate one hundred times as more intensively (does it not produce a special recurrence?).
At municipal and cooperative garages, there propagate packs of dogs that raid land-fills at night, chasing and tearing to pieces cats with whining and barking.
Taking into account such situation, I would like to make the following recommendations:
1. Indoctrinate Russians via TV on a regular basis, regarding a sober attitude to the keeping of animals.
2. Increase the animal tax in the case of large dogs, up to FIVE thousand ruble a year (Bulls, Pit-bulls, Rotweilers, German shepherd dogs).
3. Grant an absolute authority to militiamen to fine, without any delay, at the rate of up to Rbls. 500 for walking large dogs unleashed and unmuzzled.
4. Set up shelters (municipal and paid) for abandoned animals; there are lots of people willing to work, even on a voluntary basis.
5. Because homeless animals are essentially maintained by pensioners, provide any adequate assistance to them.
15 èþëÿ 2004, Signature
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Letter from a Lady-dweller of Moscow South-western Administrative District
To: Director of Autonomous Non-profit Organization
Charitable Society for the Guardianship of Homeless Animals
Mr. E.A.Ilyinsky
Dear Evgeny Anatolievich!
I wish to express my sincere gratitude for the assistance in sterilizing 6 homeless cats that inhabited our house basement.
I wish to draw your attention to the fact that for the last 2-3 years, maintenance and repair authority-40 (at present, close joint-Stock Company Remkompleks) in a bid to attain beauty closed up all basement windows at 3, Obrucheva St. (korpus 10-5), House 5, and others. As a result, the animals died, partly because they were walled up, partly from the cold in winter, outdoors.
At present, one can hardly ever encounter a cat near the house.
This has led to a situation where we have a lot of rats, the repair-and-maintenance authority (at present, CJSC Remkompleks), does not fight the rats (the cats have been annihilated, but the rats they would not like to destroy). I leave here the question of the basement not being aired, which means that dampness from the basement spreads to the residential areas.
I wish to request you, if you can, draw the attention of the higher organizations to the need to change the existing situation as far as the protection of animals is concerned (homeless cats), not to allow rats to multiply further. To oblige the housing organizations to leave the trap-doors open, when closing up the basements. A cat not only is part of the animate nature, it is a sanitarian, too.
Sincerely yours,
12.07.04, Signature
*****
Letter from a Lady-dweller of Moscow Central Administrative District
To: Charitable Society
for the Guardianship of Homeless Animals
I’m one of those people who since childhood have been fond of animals, dogs and cats, and I have always sought to help the homeless creatures as much as I could.
Now that much water has flown under the bridge (I have retired), I keep taking care of the hapless animals that became homeless through the fault of man on a permanent basis.
All the time, I’ve been encountering cats and dogs, trying to help them to the best of my ability, I’m mixing with people like me: we are feeding them, trying to accommodate the animals, etc.
I regret to say that most people with whom I have to deal manifest indifference and cruelty towards our smaller brethren.
Our authorities are doing their best to impress on our people that we are a civilized country. Yet, we still have no laws that would protect animals, the dogs keep to be shot off, cats keep to be poisoned. There are virtually no animal shelters; medical aid is only given to pet animals living at somebody’s place. What can be done in this situation?
People who are fond of animals suffer from being unable to help the hapless animals. The animals are fed, efforts are made to accommodate them, protect from cruel attitude. Many people regret that the owners of dangerous dogs usually walk them unmuzzled and unleashed.
For example, a pit-bull-terrier tore to pieces before my very eyes my favorite dog that I had picked up and groomed for about 5 years. The cats die through the fault of stray dogs and we are not in a position to protect them.
Picked up cats and dogs live amid my intimate friends and acquaintances. Many people keep as many as 4-5 dogs and up to 10-15 cats.
Of course, this is an abnormal situation, and something must be done about it. It is rumored amid the friends of animals that Moscow authorities are planning a mass shooting off of the dogs (up to 40000).
There is a need for international assistance of charity institutions; we can only hope for such assistance.
12.07.04, Signature
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Letter from Dwellers of Moscow North-western Administrative District
To: Autonomous Non-profit Organization
“Charitable Society for the Guardianship
of Homeless Animals”
We, guardians of homeless animals, living on the territory of Preobrazhensky Municipal Area, wish to draw your attention to problems we are facing as people trying to help the hapless animals.
Above all, this is a problem of basement holes being walled up; such basements are the only places that serve as shelters for homeless cats. Lots of cats have died already as they had no chance of hiding from the dogs, and the cats were torn to pieces before very eyes of children and adults. Are there really people disturbed by cats living in the basements? The animals also die from poisons laid out to poison rats. The case in point are not special chemicals, but noxious substances mixed with food that are spread in the basements.
We spend a lot of efforts, nerves, material resources to ensure decent life for the hapless animals, and we should like to see to it that our efforts produce results.
For this, we require a special elaborated state program in support of people dealing with animals.
We realize that there are many problems in the country. A country, where people witness a callous attitude towards animals, cannot be regarded successful.
14.07.04, Two signatures
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