Jeany Finally Finds the Lasting Home and Compassionate Care Denied Her by Her Irresponsible and Grossly Negligent Owner at -- of All Places! -- a Shelter in Hemmingen

Jeany Has Lived at a Shelter for the Past Eight Years

"Tiere wie Jeany haben ihre 'Macken' ihrem Halter zu verdanken."
-- Hände für Pfoten

Jeany has had a hard life and from all indications it would appear that her troubles began as soon as she entered this world. Since absolutely nothing has been publicly divulged about the circumstances surrounding her birth it is not possible, however, to arrive at any firm conclusions regarding her pedigree, mother, and siblings.

Nevertheless, given that she was adopted in 2006 while still a kitten by an unidentified elderly woman, that lends itself to speculation that she very well could have been either abandoned for one reason or another or dumped at a shelter. She also could have been born in the wild and then orphaned.

Regardless of the circumstances, she in all probability was taken away from her mother at far too early an age. Ideally, kittens should spend at least six months or longer with their mothers because only they are able to provide them with the nourishment, constant grooming, and protection that they need and require. Later on when they are a bit older, they supervise their explorations of their environment, their playing, and even sometimes discipline them whenever they become too aggressive.

Siblings also play a huge role in each other's development. In particular, they not only provide constant companionship and amusement for each other but it is through being part of such a family that they acquire the social skills that they are going to need in order to successfully get along with all the other felines that are destined to walk in and out of their lives over the years.

In Jeany's case she was, figuratively speaking, thrown from the frying pan into the fire in that her guardian was unwilling to properly care for her. Even the woman's motives in adopting her were suspect in that she appears to have been almost exclusively preoccupied with what the brownish and gray female could do for her as opposed to fulfilling her custodial duties to the young kitten.

C'est-à-dire, she adopted Jeany so as to ease the pangs of her loneliness. As is the case with hoarding, it often is difficult under such circumstances to determine exactly where love leaves off and need takes over, but regardless of where that line is drawn the determining factor is always whether or not the needs of the cat have been met and with Jeany that most definitely was not the case.

First of all, whether through neglect or a lack of money, the woman failed to provide her with veterinary care and as a result she never was either vaccinated or spayed. The woman also never taught her how to properly use a litter box and that in turn led to the development of unsanitary conditions as well as an infestation of fleas.

Since the woman apparently resided alone, Jeany also never was afforded an opportunity to lose her ingrained fear of humans. That deplorable situation went unrectified for four long years until finally in 2010 the woman belatedly telephoned Hände für Pfoten (HfP) in the Arnum section of Hemmingen, six kilometers south of Hannover in Niedersachsen, and asked the charity to come and take her away.

Those who work with cats on a regular basis can sometimes be lulled into thinking that they have seen it all but HfP was hardly prepared for the dreadful conditions that it found in the woman's home. "Der Anblick und der Geruch der Wohnung war ubeschreiblich," the organization was later to swear November 21, 2017 on its web site.  (See "Jeany: bei uns zu Hause" under Aktuelles.)

As horrendous as it was, the condition of the woman's dwelling paled in comparison to what had been done to Jeany. Having been cruelly sentenced to spend the first four years of her life under unhygienic conditions where she was systematically deprived of the society of other cats and humans had led to such a build-up of accumulated sexual frustration and aggression that she was now a "durch den Wind."

About the only thing positive that could be said for her is that she nevertheless had somehow managed to stay alive for all those years and that in turn strongly implies that her derelict owner surely must have been providing her with some sort of sustenance. How much and of what quality is pretty much anyone's guess.

The quick, easy, and cheap solution would have been to have liquidated her on the spot but, just as it was later destined to do with another abused and emotionally damaged cat named Tinka, that never was an option as far as HfP was concerned. (See Cat Defender post of May 25, 2018 entitled "Emotionally Scarred and No Longer Young but Still Every Bit as Beautiful as Ever, Tinka Is Seeking the Permanent Home That Has Eluded Her Throughout Her Turbulent Life.")

Jeany Is Making the Best of Her Troubled Life

At HfP's shelter, Jeany was immediately sterilized, vaccinated, and medicated. Although the nature of the treatment that she received has not been disclosed, it nevertheless is safe to assume that she was, at the very least, dusted for fleas and other parasites as well as dewormed. Blood, urinary, and fecal samples also may have been taken and analyzed in a search for less obvious maladies.

Leider, by that time the psychological damage inflicted upon her by her previous owner looked to be irreversible. In particular, her fear of humans had become so ingrained that she would only allow the charity's Kerstin Küster to touch her and that made placing her in another home a very risky proposition.

With time, work, and the right caretaker the psychological damage done to Jeany possibly could have been undone but HfP instead elected to allow her to live out her remaining years at its shelter. That decision most likely was predicated upon the absence of anyone willing to invest the enormous amount of time and effort that socializing her would have entailed.

The risk of traumatizing her even further by subjecting her to a series of failed adoptions also likely factored into HfP's decision. That, for example, is precisely the cruel fate that has befallen an elderly tom named Harvey from Keighley in West Yorkshire. (See Cat Defender posts of August 31, 2017 and March 12, 2018 entitled, respectively, "With His Previous Owner Long Dead and Nobody Seemingly Willing to Give Him a Second Chance at Life, Old and Ailing Harvey Has Been Sentenced to Rot at a Shelter in Yorkshire" and "Much Like a Nightmare That Stubbornly Refuses to End, Harvey Continues to Be Shuttled from One Home to Another at the Expense of His Health and Well-Being.")

Not a great deal has been revealed concerning Jeany's new life other than that she has access to the shelter's garden as well as her own sleeping place in the business office. Somewhat surprisingly considering her rather cloistered background, she is said to get along well with the charity's other cats and dogs.

"Heute geht es ihr gut!" HfP declared in the November 21, 2017 article cited supra. Given that she has spent the last eight years of her life there and is now twelve years old, the shelter would appear to be all that he is destined to ever see and know of this world.

That in itself is sad but she is unquestionably far better off at HfP than she was in her previous home. Moreover, she is far from being an isolated case in that numerous cats, such as Tilly of Wednesbury in the West Midlands, have lived just about all of their lives at either sanctuaries or shelters. (See Cat Defender post of May 27, 2016 entitled "Snubbed by an Ignorant, Tasteless, and Uncaring Public for the Past Twenty-One Years, Tilly Has Forged an Alternative Existence of Relative Contentment at a Sanctuary in the Black Country.")

The amount of time that she is caged is a concern but since she has access to the garden and the business office that is a pretty good indication that HfP is limiting her time behind bars to a minimum. Another concern is that the charity possibly could be exploiting her as a blood donor.

For example, Nine Lives Foundation's Feline Well-Care Clinic in Redwood City, California, has unjustly incarcerated an orange and white male named Christopher and steadfastly refuses to place him in a new home for that very reason. Although he does not suffer from any known behavioral and psychological idiosyncrasies, he does have Type B blood flowing in his veins and since it is only found in five per cent of all cats that makes him far too valuable to be adopted out.

Due to multiple sedations, the constant shaving away of fur in order to locate veins, and the bruising and inflammation that occurs at such sites, it is risky and painful for cats to donate blood. Even more alarming, both blood pressure and heart rates drop precipitately during such procedures thereby necessitating the administration of intravenous fluids afterwards.

Cats repeatedly robbed of their blood also are prone to developing chronic anemia. (See Cat Defender post of November 13, 2010 entitled "Christopher, Who Has Persevered Through Tragedy and Given Back So Much, Is Now Being Held Captive for His Valuable Blood.")

Although such naked exploitation of cats is more commonly associated with veterinary clinics, wildlife refuges, and zoos, it is not unheard of for shelters to engage in it as well. The one thing that Jeany has going for herself in that regard is that the ranks of donors are usually restricted to cats between the ages of one and eight. That does not preclude the possibility, however, that she may been used as a donor earlier during her stay at HfP.

In addition to sparing Jeany's life and providing her with a place to live, the world is in HfP's debt for setting the record straight in regard to exactly who is responsible for the tragic plight of cats like her. "Lebensumstände bedingen Eigenschaften," the charity declares in the November 21, 2017 article cited supra. "Je älter ein Wesen ist, desto ausgeprägter sind seine Eigenschaften."

Jeany Is Not Looking Back, Only Forward and Upward

To put the matter succinctly, "Eigenschaften wie die von Jeany, sind von Menschen gemacht," HfP sums up. "Tiere wie Jeany haben ihre 'Macken' (personality and behavioral issues) ihrem Halter zu verdanken."

These so-called "Macken" can include most anything under the sun. For instance, they can be real and more or less permanent conditions such as those afflicting Jeany, Tinka, Harvey, and Tilly.

They can range from such totally understandable behavior as an ingrained fear of humans and dogs to a dislike for other cats. They accordingly can be accompanied by such common defense mechanisms as vocalizing, hissing, scratching, and biting.

They also can be totally frivolous and fanciful due to owing their genesis to either their owners' abysmal ignorance of cats or their insane attempts to mold them into something other than what nature has decreed. Included in this category can be such preeminently feline behavior as the marking of territory, the sharpening of claws on furniture and books, and eliminating outside the litter box.

Even sporadic displays of independence and a lack of servility toward their human overlords have been interpreted by some as sure signs of ingrained psychological and behavioral problems. So, too, can a cat's failure to be either sufficiently cuddly or a lap-sitter.

"Sie entstehen durch Selbstüberschätzung der Halter, mangelde Kentnisse von Katzenhaltung und --Erziehung," HfP concludes. Yet, in spite of that owners are seldom punished for the ignorance, neglect, and the abuse that they dish out so profusely; im Gegenteil, it is invariably cats like Jeany who end up paying the price for their derelict owners' crimes and they do so until the very day that they die.

At what might be called the more lenient end of the spectrum, they are divested of their reproductive organs and claws and doped up by unscrupulous veterinarians. At the other extreme, their owners either abandon them to fend for themselves in a hostile world or fob them off on shelters and veterinarians to kill.

The one glaring omission in HfP's otherwise sound analysis is its failure to acknowledge that members of the public also can be responsible for both falsely accusing cats of suffering from Macken as well as causing them to develop those types of issues. They do so by, inter alia, foolishly intervening in standoffs between their cats and other felines, siccing their dogs on them, and idiotically chasing, harassing, and cornering cats that they encounter on the street.

When these frightened and victimized cats respond by defending themselves and their territories they are branded as being violent, unsocialized, feral, and crazy. Legal action is sometimes taken against them and their owners for any scratches and bites that they inflict upon their attackers.

In extreme cases, they are sometimes confiscated and executed by the authorities. (See Cat Defender posts of April 3, 2006, June 26, 2006, October 17, 2009, October 18, 2009, October 23, 2009, and August 24, 2011, entitled, respectively, "Free Lewis Now! Connecticut Tomcat, Victimized by a Bum Rap, Is Placed Under House Arrest,"  "Lewis the Cat Cheats the Hangman but Is Placed Under House Arrest for the Remainder of His Life," "Bingo Is Placed Under House Arrest for Defending Himself Against a Neighbor Who Foolishly Intervened in a Cat Fight," "Minneapolis Is Working Overtime Trying to Kill an Octogenarian's Cat Named Hoppy for Defending His Turf Against Canine Intruders," "An Essex Welfare Bum Who Sicced His Dog on Cats and Beat Them with His Cane Is Now Pretending to Be the Victim of an Assault," and "Self-Defense Is Against the Law in Australia after a Woman Who Attacked a Cat Gets Away with Her Crime Whereas Her Victim Is Trapped and Executed.")

Even so much as trespassing on private property has led to some cats being declared dangerous and anti-social as well as being placed under house arrest. (See Cat Defender post of May 27, 2011 entitled "Odin Is Placed Under House Arrest by the Authorities in Weißenstein for Straying into the Garden of a Virulent Cat Hater" plus The Mirror of London, July 25, 2014, "Meet Rocky the Cat. Slapped with an 'Animal Anti-Social Behavior Order' for Terrorizing Neighbors" and The Telegraph of London, July 3, 2014, "RSPCA Refuses to Remove Feral Cat Destroying Couple's Home.")

Closely related to that long laundry list of trumped up slanders and libels directed at cats for simply behaving as they are prone to do are the outright lies spewed so profusely by despisers of the species. Chiefly among them are such totally bogus claims as that they are rabid, dirty, mangy, sickly, near death, and aggressive.

In the United States, these anti-cat individuals and organizations have found a reliable ally in the form of the nation's fascist police to carry out their machinations, intrigues, and crimes against the species. (See Cat Defender posts of March 31, 2008, September 16, 2009, September 22, 2011, September 27, 2014, and September 1, 2016 entitled, respectively, "A Cecil, Pennsylvania, Police Officer Summarily Executes a Family's Beloved Ten-Year-Old Persian, Elmo," "Acting Solely Upon the Lies of a Cat-Hater, the Raymore Police Pump Two Shotgun Blasts into the Head of Nineteen-Year-Old Declawed and Deaf Tobey," "The Neanderthaloid Politicians in Lebanon, Ohio, Wholeheartedly Sanction the Illegal and Cold-Blooded Murder of Haze by a Trigger-Happy Cop," "Falsely Branded as Being Rabid by a Cat-Hater, an Animal Control Officer, and the Gorham Police Department, Clark Is Hounded Down and Blasted with a Shotgun," and "The Legal and Political Establishment in a Small Pennsylvania Backwater Closes Ranks and Pulls Out All the Stops in Order to Save the Job and Liberty of the Bloodthirsty Cop Who Murdered Sugar.")

It thus seems indisputable that society as a whole, as well as individual owners, is responsible for the verbal, psychological, and physical abuse that is meted out to cats. It additionally does not make any real difference whether that abuse is lumped under the rubric of Macken or simply recognized as defamations and outright lies. At the end of the day, abuse is still abuse, false accusations are still lies, and injustice is still injustice.

Photos: Hände für Pfoten.