Excerpt

Introduction

It's there every time I enter the barn: a love so palpable that I often feel my heart will explode. My partner and I founded Catskill Animal Sanctuary, a haven for abused and abandoned farm animals, in 2001, and what surprises me most six years into the work is not what callous people do to animals, not the long, hard days, not the many uncertainties inherent in rescue work. A volunteer once commented to me, “There's so much love here it's even in the dirt, ” and yes, she was right. CAS breathes love. That is the biggest surprise. That is my greatest source of pride.

I spent my childhood surrounded by animals on the rolling hills of a Virginia horse farm. At the height of his success, my father had close to 150 horses at a given time: mares with their foals frolicking in two enormous pastures, yearlings awaiting training, older horses either in training or rehabilitating from injuries, and big, flashy stallions in whose shiny coats I could virtually see my reflection. Two hundred acres and five barns filled with hay and horses and people caring for them made for a wondrous childhood. Add to that a collection of family dogs, goats given to us as Easter gifts, a sheep named Babbette who wore diapers in the house, a burro named Linda, an assortment of barn cats, George the mynah bird, and my own series of show ponies and horses, and you've got a sense of the magical menagerie that, on some level, I took for granted.

But lordie, lordie, how I loved each and every critter.

It would have been enough to have a childhood in which every day was an adventure, in which “playing” meant watching minnows dart at the river's edge, or rolling in the grass with the dogs, or hiding in the hayloft as dozens of horses napped beneath me. But in addition, I was loved, smart, and popular. Such a scenario will do a number on a sensitive child who realizes she's done nothing to earn it! From a very young age, wanting the same happiness for others that I've experienced has driven many of my decisions both large and small. I've always, for instance, stood up for the underdog. Sad for the one who felt excluded, I befriended the special needs child, or the shy child, or the child with Downs Syndrome. Even as a little girl, I had a knee-jerk intolerance for prejudice of any sort—particularly racism—and chided anyone , child or adult, who made racist remarks—even if they were made in privately. “Speak your truth,” I would instruct my students years later. It's something I've always done. After all, if by virtue of birth I was given so very many gifts, then even as a pipsqueak I was going to make sure that those less lucky than I were at least respected.

I left the South in the 1983 and entered graduate school at Boston 's Tufts University the following year. After two years in a public policy program (my focus, naturally, was civil rights), the idea of “making a difference” from behind a desk was utterly unappealing. Much to my own amazement, I wanted to teach. I wanted to impact young people's lives through working directly with them. So I added a third year of graduate school and took my first English teaching job just north of Boston in 1987.

If the evaluations and awards and invitations to teach teachers were legitimate measures, I was a good teacher for eleven years. If nothing else, my students were better writers and thinkers when they left each June than they had been the previous September. But I always hoped for grander successes. I hoped that they had learned to believe in themselves, and in their ability to direct their own lives. I hoped that they were happier people. I suppose I was nothing if not predictable.

After a decade in the classroom, I was offered the principalship of a brand new high school opening in Boston . Why didn't I leap at the opportunity? Though I never tired of my students, schools and their struggles had become tiresome. As much as I had enjoyed and grown from my years in the classroom, as much as I'd always envisioned myself heading a school, I felt ready for an entirely new challenge: So one warm June day, I made my final end the year speech to my final group of graduating seniors, encouraging them to be bold, to have courage, to write their own stories. But what, I wondered, would be mine?

“What do you love? What do you believe in, Kathy? What do you do best? How do you want to spend your day?” I took my time with this decision: I wanted it to count . So, I wrote. I talked with friends. I cashed in my teacher's retirement to live on while I waited for answers to come. Mostly, I took epic hikes through the woods with my yellow lab and best pal Murphy.

Murphy, unfortunately, was no help at all. Whenever I asked him what I should do with the rest of my life, he grabbed a stick and crouched down into play stance.

“So that's it...play with you for the rest of my life?”

“Ruff!!” he barked enthusiastically.

Three insights guided me through this important period of reflection:

1. I detested suffering and felt compelled to address it...in some fashion.

2. I loved teaching, and suspected I would miss the experience if it were excluded altogether from whatever came next.

3. I loved and missed having animals in my life.

I considered vet school, but knew that as a vet, I'd miss the classroom. I considered charter schools whose missions were in sync with my educational philosophy, but this scenario lacked animals.

One spring morning, I woke up not to singing goldfinches and bluebirds, but to the faintest voice whispering in my ear: “Find a way to combine them.”

“What does that mean: teach children about animal suffering? connect suffering children with happy animals?” I snapped back. Patience is not my long suit.

“You're getting warmer,” the voice encouraged.

“Who are you talking to?” my partner Jesse, awakened from his reverie, asked me.

“My invisible friend.”

I turned to the Internet and discovered animal sanctuaries: non-profit havens for discarded and abused animals of all sorts: dogs, iguanas, birds, turtles, tigers, cats, horses, pigs. It was also on the web that I first learned how we raise our food animals, and recoiled in horror and disbelief. Billions of animals each year raised in misery and terror. Chickens, pigs, ducks, and turkeys raised inside ammonia-filled buildings. Young male chicks gassed, crushed, or suffocated because the egg industry can't profit from them. Veal calves taken from their mothers right after birth, raised in boxes so tiny that they are unable to turn around. Horror upon horror heaped upon billions of animals treated as nothing more than units of production by mega-companies concerned only about maximizing profit. Cows, so docile and kind by nature. Quirky, inquisitive chickens and turkeys. Pigs: such sensitive, smart, emotional animals! Their suffering was too much for me to bear. How could I not know about this? Why don't people know about this? The answer was obvious: the meat industry, egg, and dairy industries—big, big businesses backed by powerful lobbyists and plenty of friends in Congress—don't want us to know.

Overnight, I had my answer. Everything that spoke to the deepest and truest parts of myself—alleviating the suffering of others, speaking my truth toward that end, teaching, and surrounding myself with animals—would be represented in an organization that I, with lots of help, would create. I would create a “teaching sanctuary”— a haven for abused animals that would also help people understand what we're doing to the cows, chickens, pigs and others that share our planet, and how that treatment impacts all of us and the planet we share. It was time to get to work.

A few months later, Jesse and I pulled to a stop at the end of a rutted dirt driveway. We were met by a square, weathered woman who greeted us not with a hello, but with the words, “Gotta warn ya...it's not easy.” Her name was Gail, and she ran a small Virginia sanctuary called Happy Acres. Her place was our first stop on a tour of East Coast sanctuaries. What better way to learn than from those who were doing the work?

Within three minutes of our arrival, Jesse and I were backing toward the car. The “happy acres” described on Gail's website numbered no more than six to eight, yet housed over 300 animals. Sickly cows inhabited a garage-sized pen, and next to them were the filthiest chickens I'd ever seen. As I bent to say hello, a limping goose hissed behind me. Where were the “acres and acres” of grazing that her website described?

“Out there,” she motioned, pointing to a three-acre field. But there were no animals in the pasture!! “Yeah...we bring them all in close to the barn in cold weather. Saves us walking farther than we need to,” was Gail's explanation. It was eighty degrees, Gail kept spitting, and the animals at Happy Acres didn't seem so happy. It was time to leave.

We had been told by Terri Cummings, co-founder of Maryland 's Poplar Springs Animal Sanctuary, that the entrance was easy to miss. Five hours after leaving Happy Acres, Jesse said, “I think we just passed it.” I knew this would be a very different experience. In numerous phone conversations, Terri had been sharp, savvy, and helpful, and I was sure her sanctuary would be a wonderful haven.

It was. Terri and her partner David had clearly done their homework: their vision was clear, they had attracted passionate volunteers; they knew the importance of good PR. Most importantly, their animals, snug in their cozy shelters or grazing in enormous pastures, were healthy and happy. We spent a long day at Poplar Springs, and are still grateful to Terri for her invaluable insights.

Four weeks from the day we set out, Jesse and I had seen more filth, neglect, and overcrowding at “sanctuaries” than we'd ever have believed. Most of the places we visited seemed marginal; a few, including Happy Acres, should have been closed for cruelty. But the good ones were wonderful , and we came home with a few gems of advice that informed everything we did until we hung out our shingle six months later.

A lovely young attorney named Michael Graff held our hands through the legal preliminaries: writing by-laws and articles of incorporation, registering with the state and federal governments as a non-profit, applying for tax-exempt status. We e-mailed a press release to regional papers, and over sixty people attended an informational session at which we introduced ourselves and our mission and announced that we were seeking land and volunteers. The animals, we knew, would come.

We had been advised by nearly all sanctuaries we visited that, as a start-up organization, we should get the use of land donated. That very night, a woman who lived on the same road we did offered the temporary use of her fifty acres, and over twenty people signed on as volunteers. Our website was up, our legal ducks were in a row, and a ready-made farm was a mile from our home. CAS was officially born.

Six years after we took in our first animal, Catskill Animal Sanctuary has saved the lives of over 1,100 farm animals—nearly all of them victims of unspeakable suffering. We have accepted animals seized by police from failed or fraudulent sanctuaries, and from one sanctuary whose directors simply gave out of gas. We have worked closely with State Police and the New York State Humane Association to prosecute serial abusers who keep scores or hundreds in filth and confinement. (Sadly, we generally don't learn of these situations until many animals have died of starvation.) On weekends, visitors come to meet our remarkable residents. How they laugh when Rambo the sheep demands to have his rear end scratched, and when Franklin , our young orphaned pig, trots up and says, “Glad you're here!!! Have some lunch for me??!” And most guests are dead silent, as I was, when they learn what we do to the animals we eat.

Without question, the work is always challenging, sometimes exceptionally difficult. We certainly have our share of profoundly sad days. But CAS is a joy-driven place, a place where laughter and delight are routine. Right—that happiness theme again. It's the underpinning of everything we do here, and it's contagious. More than that, though, I think it actually heals.

In this little book, there is some, but not much, discussion of the terror and suffering endured by countless animals raised for food—animals who are raised without any regard for their physical or psychological well-being. Many with far more expertise than I have written about agribusiness and its consequences for animals, humans, and the planet we share I've listed some of their books in “Bookshelf” at the end of this book.

The purpose of this book is to show you who these delightful creatures are, with the hope that you, too, will fall in love with animals you have probably never considered. If, at the end of it, you're ready to learn the truth about what we do to them, how it's destroying the earth, and what you can do to help, then the critters of CAS have done their job.

For now, welcome to Catskill Animal Sanctuary.