Waltonpets Furtography Session: TNR Poster Boy Blackie

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Shelter TNR cat Blackie. Need stock pet photos? Support my animal shelter work by purchasing at www.dreamstime.com. 100% of funds support waltonpets adoption photography.

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​Wednesday, 11:22 AM – Feral cats... this time of year can get quite depressing.  In June/July each year the intake of cats and kittens spikes at Walton County Animal Control, and probably in every shelter across the nation as well.
 
Throughout the day, citizens make trips to the shelter with feral cats in traps, boxes of kittens with goopy eyes, newborn kittens “abandoned” by their mothers. What is so sad is that there is no outlet for these wild cats. It is hard enough to get a spayed/neutered house cats re-homed, much less the untamed strays. And there are only so many barns needing a mouser.

One lucky cat was “Blackie”. He was dumped outside the shelter a few years ago. After a neuter and rabies vaccine, he has become the shelter’s TNR poster boy. Now, if he isn’t busy hunting rats in the drainage ditch, he greets most every visitor to the shelter’s admin office.
 
I am quite thankful for the local groups that are doing what they can to address the cat issue through TNR and low-cost spay/neuter. Although it seems like it is only picking up a few starfish off an entire seashore, perhaps one day we’ll catch up.  Until then, every summer day repeats the heartbreaking scenario for the shelter worker: euthanizing cat after cat. But “Blackie” is one of those lucky starfish. 

​Once upon a time, there was an old man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach every morning before he began his work. Early one morning, he was walking along the shore after a big storm had passed and found the vast beach littered with starfish as far as the eye could see, stretching in both directions.
 
Off in the distance, the old man noticed a small boy approaching.  As the boy walked, he paused every so often and as he grew closer, the man could see that he was occasionally bending down to pick up an object and throw it into the sea.  The boy came closer still and the man called out, “Good morning!  May I ask what it is that you are doing?”
 
The young boy paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean. The tide has washed them up onto the beach and they can’t return to the sea by themselves,” the youth replied. “When the sun gets high, they will die, unless I throw them back into the water.”
 
The old man replied, “But there must be tens of thousands of starfish on this beach. I’m afraid you won’t really be able to make much of a difference.”
 
The boy bent down, picked up yet another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the ocean. Then he turned, smiled and said, “It made a difference to that one!”
 
adapted from The Star Thrower, by Loren Eiseley (1907 – 1977)