Best friends forever - Kansas Citians band together in their passion to save and protect homeless dogs and cats
FEBRUARY 15th, 2004
Kansas City Star
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI - Jessica “JeJe” Kirby has been taking in animals since she was a little girl. Stray dogs. Sick cats. Motherless puppies.

So it was hardly out of character when Kirby volunteered to drive a sick cat named Oreo to Utah just before Christmas.

Kirby is deaf, and her years of struggling to be understood have left her with a strong empathy for animals. “The animals and I have this kinship that few experience,” she said.

In Oreo's case, finding a home for the black-and-white tuxedo cat had been difficult, because Oreo has a bowel disease. “Not his fault,” Kirby said. “Just the way his body was made.”

When Best Friends, a renowned animal sanctuary in Utah, opened up a spot for Oreo, Kirby agreed to drive the cat to its new home.

She was already the “foster parent” for a black lab named Amica. And this past month, she worked night and day to bottle-feed yet another litter of orphaned puppies.

Across the country, thousands of animal lovers like Kirby are finding each other and pulling together with the help of the Internet and the powerful example set by Best Friends.

And last year, local animal lovers created No More Homeless Pets in Kansas City, a group affiliated with Best Friends. The group's mission: to end the overpopulation of cats and dogs through spay-and-neuter projects and adoptions to “forever homes.”

Members are people with an eye for the stray dog or cat, who devote hours to caring for abandoned animals. They are Humane Society volunteers, veterinarians, rescue groups, shelter workers and animal control officers.

Most of all, they are people heartbroken by the thousands of beautiful animals that are euthanized at area shelters, which have long been overwhelmed with the number of abandoned and stray animals.

Now e-mails fly back and forth, and sometimes people find homes for dogs and cats that might be miles or even several states away.

Through a modern-day “underground railroad,” people volunteer to drive a leg of the trip, pass the animal on to the next transporter and eventually get the pet to its new home.

As for Kirby and Oreo, they set out across the Kansas plains and drove to Denver, where a fellow animal lover joined them for the drive into the remote canyons of southern Utah.

They got Oreo settled at the sanctuary, toured Best Friends, then started on their way home. Driving at night up a treacherous road, a double-loaded truck slammed into Kirby's Corolla, then sped on, sending the women to the edge of a cliff.

Shaken, but not hurt, Kirby and her Denver friend were stranded without a car. Word spread quickly in cyberspace, and people pulled together, making calls and wiring money to get them home by Christmas Eve. When Kirby finally arrived home, there were 700 e-mails waiting for her from kindred spirits around the country who asked, are you OK?

It was a traumatic adventure. But she would do it again.

“I have no regrets taking Oreo to Best Friends,” she wrote in an e-mail interview. “He's out where he belongs with people who accept him and love him for his personality and beautiful eyes.

“He's where he is finally cage-free and can easily claim a shelf or spot by the sun or go outside and play on the cat walk.”

No-kill sanctuary

Dorothy Ring and her husband have donated to Best Friends for years. So last year when she saw that representatives would be in Kansas City to create a chapter of No More Homeless Pets, she called immediately.

“I was so excited about it,” she said. “I just have had Best Friends on such a pedestal. Anything that had to do with them, I wanted to be part of it.”

Best Friends had its beginnings in the 1970s, when the founders visited shelters in western states and took home as many animals as possible. They dreamed of someday having land where they could build a no-kill animal sanctuary.

Now, years later, the group operates the nation's largest sanctuary for abused and abandoned animals on an astonishing 33,000-acre ranch in the red-rock canyons of Kanab, Utah.

Of the 1,500 animals there, about 1,200 are dogs and cats. But others include horses, burros, birds, rabbits, goats and farm animals. About three out of four animals are eventually adopted, but others are too old, crippled or ill to ever leave the sanctuary.

Best Friends is known nationally as the model for a no-kill approach to caring for animals, and Dorothy Ring and others from the Kansas City area knew its reputation well.

She is a mental health counselor by profession, but also an animal lover. She is good at organization, at keeping things moving, and she is now president of the No More Homeless Pets of Kansas City, which was incorporated in May of last year.

The strength of the group, she says, is that it is a coalition of diverse people, and that means members must work together. No pot shots. No animosity.

“That is one of the agreements, that we will not be negative about other agencies, groups or animal rescuers, because a coalition is only as strong as the people who are willing to support each other,” she said.

“It is so easy to be negative in this, because there are so many tragic situations,” she said. “People who work with this all the time can get so frustrated.”

They see animals abandoned when their owners move, or people who don't take time to solve behavior problems with dogs and cats and end up bringing them to shelters. They see puppy mills breeding more and more dogs and people buying animals at pet stores, when there are thousands of healthy pets desperate to be adopted throughout the city.

“There is way too much abuse,” Ring said, “way too many people not taking care of animals, and there's way too much euthanasia.”

Years ago, about 12 million dogs and cats were euthanized each year in this country. Now the national rate is about 4 million.

Members of No More Homeless Pets come from many arenas in the animal world. Some are independent rescuers, such as JeJe Kirby, or rescuers who focus on a particular breed, such as golden retrievers or basset hounds.

Most have devoted years to caring for animals. Some examples:

• There's Vicky Viner, secretary of the group, who cares for cats with leukemia on the “hospice” level of her home and bottle-feeds kittens on another level.

Last year, she bottle-fed about 50 kittens. She loves the work, but she's usually exhausted by the end of her busy season in the summer.

• There's Eric Thompson, community service officer with the Shawnee Police Department, who is also president of the Kansas Animal Control Association. He sees firsthand the overpopulation of stray dogs and colonies of feral cats.

“It's a never-ending battle, and that's why this coalition has been so great,” he said. “It's hard to keep people motivated when it's such an uphill struggle.”

• There's Kim Staton, vice president of operations for Wayside Waifs, who has been involved in animal welfare for 28 years. She is greatly encouraged by the coalition's commitment to reducing euthanasia of animals.

Wayside Waifs took in 11,756 animals in 2003, she said. About half of those were strays, and the other half were brought by owners who turned them over to the shelter.

Last year, the adoption rate was 24 percent.

“That still leaves 70 percent of the animals that were euthanized, and that's a very grim statistic,” she said. “We don't turn animals away, and we get animals that are not highly adoptable.”

But Staton has helped revamp Wayside Waifs' approach to adoption, and she hopes to significantly change the numbers. One piece of happy news was that 358 animals were adopted in January. That's a high number for any month, let alone January.

• Another longtime animal activist is Glenda Burns, executive director of the Humane Society of Greater Kansas City. The private shelter she operates is in Kansas City, Kan., in a new $2 million building where some animals are permanent residents. Others are sheltered until they are adopted, and many come for medical treatment at the low-cost clinic.

Last year, 3,000 animals were spayed or neutered, and the shelter took in about 600 animals. About half were adopted; others live at the shelter.

Burns' passion for animals started in 1971, she says, when she and her husband walked into their new home and he made a fateful statement:

“Oh my gosh. A Great Dane would look so great in front of that fireplace.”

Burns gave him a Great Dane for his birthday. And thus began her 20 years of work to rescue the breed she calls the “house horse.”

Not long ago she retired from Hallmark in order to take over as executive director of the Humane Society, and she also devotes hours to the No More Homeless Pets coalition.

Fate steps in

JeJe Kirby dreams of the day when she can have some land, when she and her animals can have room to live comfortably. It's a common dream among animal lovers.

Dana Apple, a coalition member, turned the dream into reality a few years ago.

She had lived in a stone house in an idyllic neighborhood in Independence, and because of her big heart, she had accumulated six dogs.

One day in March 1999, an animal control officer came to her door and told her she had 60 days to reduce the number of dogs to the city maximum, which was two.

“I can't do that,” she told the officer. “These are my babies. We'll sell the house and we'll move.”

When she shut the door, she just laughed. Finally, the day had come when she was forced to do what she'd always wanted to do.

Within a matter of weeks, she had found a place in the country, “a mile north of nowhere,” where she had seven acres, a house and a barn. Sometimes, she says, you can just hear your life clicking into place.

Actually, her home is southeast of Odessa, Mo., and she moved her law practice from an office in Independence to a study in her country house.

Now her menagerie has grown to 10 large dogs, eight cats and a horse. The horse was her neighbor's, but she spoiled it with so much attention that the neighbor finally just gave it to her.

As an attorney, Apple has concentrated on labor and employment law, but now she is finding a new niche with animal law. Recently the Missouri Bar Association appointed her as chairman of the Animal Law Committee.

On a typical day at her home, large dogs are draped across the living room sofas, across the top of the sofas, on the rug, or lying at her feet as she works. It is the picture of contentment.

Most of the dogs were strays that Apple came across, such as Prudence, who was kicked out of a truck at a busy intersection.

The cats have their own multi-story condominium that Apple made herself. The horse, Beau Soleil, was named for the Cajun band that Apple likes. But Beau Soleil doesn't much care for that kind of music, so she plays softer music for him on the barn boom box.

“He prefers slow music by female artists,” she said.

Her life in the country, surrounded by her rescued animals, is one of order and routine.

“Somebody asked me, ‘Does it bother you living alone way out here?' ”

She was taken aback by the question. Because she's anything but alone.

“We're a family,” she said, gesturing toward the napping dogs sprawled across her home. “This is our life.” - Toni Wood

Members of No More Homeless Pets in Kansas City are encouraging people of all income levels to spay and neuter dogs and cats at area low-cost clinics.

The effort is in conjunction with the 10th annual national Spay Day USA set for Feb. 24, led by the Doris Day Animal Foundation.

The cost for surgeries is low at certain clinics in the metropolitan area. Or it's free for clients who qualify for assistance from area humane groups.

For a complete list, check the No More Homeless Pets Web site at www.kcpets.org, under the “Fix KC” category.

Spaying and neutering dogs and cats reduces the area's overpopulation, and it also helps pets live longer. The Web site says pets will be less likely to roam and mark territory and less likely to have behavior problems.

Check the Doris Day Web site, www.ddaf.org, to see some startling statistics:

Two unaltered cats and all their descendants can number as many as 420,000 in just seven years.

Two unaltered dogs and their descendants can number 67,000 in six years.

No More Homeless Pets in Kansas City

P.O. Box 140202

Kansas City, Mo. 64114-0202

(816) 333-PETS (7387)

www.kcpets.org

Best Friends Animal Sanctuary

5001 Angel Canyon Road

Kanab, Utah 84741-5000

(435) 644-2001

www.bestfriends.org

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