Crash, Who Lived Through Being Run Down and Left for Dead by a Hit-and-Run Motorist, Has Now Been Reduced to Impersonating a Rabbit and Shilling for Cadbury's Creme Eggs
 |
| A Motorist Thirsty for Feline Blood Robbed Crash of His Right Eye |
"We are over the moon that Crash is the next Cadbury Bunny and has gone from being hit by a car to a TV star."
-- Maddie Corey of Simply Cats
Are there any human beings who are capable of loving and cherishing a cat for his own sake without exploiting him for their own ulterior financial and professional reasons? Perhaps, but such altruistic individuals are about as rare as hens' teeth.
In that regard, the life, times, and travails of a long suffering and severely put upon eight-year-old orange and white male named Crash from Boise make for an interesting case study. Absolutely nothing has been divulged about the first three years of his life and accordingly for all intents and purposes his story begins in 2018 when he was run down and left for dead by a hit-and-run motorist.
Luckily for him, he was rescued and his life saved by Patty Cutler who operates a cageless and supposedly no-kill shelter called Simply Cats in Boise. His assailant never was either identified, apprehended, or punished and it accordingly is a sure bet that he (almost all cat abusers are men) is still on the road maiming and killing other cats.
As for Crash, he only escaped with his life by the skin of his teeth. In particular, his attacker broke his left front leg, fractured his jaw in multiple places, and knocked his right eye out of its socket.
Simply Cats was able to have repaired his broken leg fairly easily but it took six or seven surgeries on his jaw in order to put it back together. Sadly, there was not anything that it could do about restoring the sight in his right eye. It was gone for forever. (See video at WTVB-TV of Boise, April 5, 2022, "Meet Crash: One-Eyed Cat from Idaho Wins Cadbury Bunny Competition.")
Although Crash was able to have made a stunning recovery from such a violent attack, Simply Cats elected to hang on to him rather than to place him in a home of his own. Consequently, five years later on he is still confined to its shelter where he is cared for by Maddie Corey.
Since the shelter is only open to the public between the hours of noon and 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, he is presumably forced to spend the remaining one-hundred-forty-three hours of the week without the benefit of human companionship. Of course, it is always conceivable that some staffers are on the premises during the morning hours in order to attend to the care of the thirty or so other felines that temporarily reside there while awaiting homes themselves. Since none of them are caged, Crash at least has the benefit of their company so his plight may not be quite as dreadful as it would appear to be at first glance.
Nevertheless, since he is described as a very sociable and highly people-oriented feline his evenings, nights, Sundays and Mondays, and holidays that the shelter is closed must be rather lonely and boring for him. On top of that, leaving any cat unattended at a shelter, veterinarian's office, a breeder's, or a pet shop is a dangerous proposition unless there is a diligent nightwatchman on the premises at all times.
For starters, the spread of infectious diseases is always a concern at such facilities. Secondly, break-ins do occur and cats sometimes are either stolen or turned loose in the street.
Conflagrations are an even bigger concern and that is especially the case with conventional shelters where staffers seldom fail to get their dogs out in the nick of time but think absolutely nothing of abandoning their cats to be roasted alive by the flames. Mercifully, Simply Cats is not a conventional shelter and therefore does not have any canine inmates in order to favor at the expense of its cats. (See Cat Defender posts of March 15, 2016 and April 3, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Freckles Is Alive and Well More Than Two Years after Having Been Left for Dead in the Rubble of the Burned Out Knox-Whitney Animal Shelter" and "Fires at Private Shelters Claim the Lives of More Than Two Dozen Cats in Connecticut.")
In addition to being neglected, cats that are condemned to spend their lives at shelters are quite often nakedly exploited. As far as Crash is concerned, all that Simply Cat has made public so far about his life is that he is expected to greet and charm not only staffers and volunteers but also visitors as well. In furtherance of that objective, he has been taught to perform high-fives and possibly other tricks.
It also is entirely conceivable that the shelter expects him to take care of some of the kittens and to help socialize other cats for eventual adoption. The biggest fear, however, is that Simply Cats could be holding him hostage as a blood donor.
That was the terrible Schicksal that befell a four to five year-old orange and white male named Christopher who wound up at the Nine Lives Foundation's Feline Well-Care Clinic in Redwood City, California, after he, too, was run down and left for dead by another hit-and-run motorist. In his case, however, he was rescued by kindhearted bicyclists Elizabeth Benishin and Wayne Smith who not only delivered him to the surgery but also generously footed the bill for mending his broken pelvis. (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.")
Since as far as it is known no one ever come forward to either reclaim him or to pick up his veterinary tab, it is entirely conceivably that Simply Cat has consigned Crash to a lifetime of indentured servitude whereby he is being forced to sing for his supper and to do silly tricks for the high-muck-a-mucks until the day that he drops. After all, altruism is almost unheard of in the land of the dollar bill and that is especially the case with all elites who, instead of serving the animals and humanity, are only in the game for whatever they can get out of it.
Not surprisingly, it is precisely those professionals who hold in their grasping little paws the power to determine which animals and individuals are going to be allowed to go on living who exhibit the greatest contempt for the sanctity of all life. "Et comment le puis-je, dit Pangloss?" in Voltaire's 1759 masterpiece, Candide. "Je n'ai pas le sou, mon ami, et dans toute l'entendue de ce globe on ne peut ni se faire saigner, ni prendre un lavement sans payer, ou sans qu'il y ait quelque' un qui paie pour nous."
Access to medical, dental, and veterinary care has not improved much, if at all, over the course of the past three-hundred years and that holds true for all animals as well as for many individuals. In fact, conditions have only gotten far worse in the corrupt-as-hell United States and that is especially the case for those cats and individuals who are not either made of money, governmental employees, or illegal aliens favored by Joe Biden. (See the New York Post, April 30, 2023, "Congress's Unconstitutional Pay Scam Gets Members $34K Raises," The New York Times, December 22, 2022, "$32,000 Raises: What Brought New York Lawmakers Back to Albany in December," and The New York Times, April 13, 2023, "Biden Will Expand Health Care Access for DACA Immigrants.")
Some cats, such as Jeany and Tilly, have lived for a long time in shelters and sanctuaries but it is nearly impossible to judge their happiness and the quality of care that they have received without being an insider. (See Cat Defender posts of June 15, 2018 and May 27, 2016 entitled, respectively, "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" and "Snubbed by an Ignorant, Tasteless, and Uncaring Public for the Past Twenty Years, Tilly Has Forged an Alternative Existence of Relative Contentment at a Sanctuary in the Black Country.")
 |
| Crash Was Forced to Wear Bunny Ears and to Imitate a Rabbit... |
That is an even more difficult task in regard to those felines that are fobbed off on farms, museums, and other concerns as working cats. It nevertheless is known that many of them wind up as objects of naked exploitation, abject neglect, and ultimately come to horrific ends. (See Cat Defender post of April 30, 2022 entitled "Relegated to the Dustbin of History and All But Forgotten by the Grossly Negligent Annapolis Maritime Museum, Miss Pearl's Beautiful Soul Continues to Cry Out from the Grave for Justice.")
In the final analysis, there is not any true substitute for providing a cat with its own home and a guardian who loves and reveres it to bits. Nobody has perhaps more eloquently stated the paramount importance of having a home of one's own that did George Seldon in his 1983 book, Chester Cricket's New Home, wherein he wrote the following:
"Home...You will always know it. It may be a mansion on a grand avenue. Or a little bit of a shivering nest, where a hummingbird can relax at last. A two-family house -- or a two-owl barn. An apartment above a busy street. Or a niche for an insect -- just a cell in the bark, and so tiny the tree doesn't know it has guests -- but oh how it overlooks life, teeming there in the grass!
"Whatever the nook, niche, or hole may be, the creature that lives there -- owl, mouse, or man -- will instantly know it: like your fur or your feathers or your own close skin, a home feels only like itself."
The feeling is the same for both kittens and orphaned little boys. "There was his kitten sleeping in the sun. Yes, it was a day of miracles," Astrid Lindgren wrote in her 1956 jewel, Rasmus and the Vagabond. "He (Rasmus) had a lake and a cat, and a father and a mother. He had a home."
As far as it has been reported, Crash's turbulent life quieted down following his miraculous recovery and it was pretty much uneventful the last five years. Best of all, Simply Cat did a superlative job of protecting him form the legions of cat-killing motorists who ply the highways and back roads of every country in search of additional feline victims.
All that changed forever in February when the charity decided to enter him in the fifth annual Cadbury Bunny Tryouts. Founded in Birmingham in 1824 by a Quaker, John Cadbury, the confectioner in 1988 sold the rights to its chocolate products, most notably Creme Eggs, to the Hershey Company located in the Pennsylvania town of the same name. It is believed, however, that its Creme Eggs are manufactured today at its branch in Parsippany, New Jersey. The competition therefore would be more accurately denoted as the Hershey Bunny Tryouts.
The competition is open to pets of most species residing in the fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Entrants are required to submit a photo of their pet wearing rabbit ears as well as a video of it, also wearing bunny ears, that can be up to three minutes in length so long as the first fifteen seconds of it shows the animal looking directly into the camera.
Crash's video showed him working at a computer, high-fiving, walking through hoops, standing on his back paws, running on a treadmill, and navigating an obstacle course. Like all other contestants, he also had to wear rabbit ears and to look at the camera without turning away.
Entrants additionally had to submit an essay of not more than two-hundred-eighty characters stating why their pet should be on television. Also, for the first time in the history of the competition entrants' pets not only had to be rescue animals but their owners were required to prove it as well.
In past years most winners have been dogs. For example, Henri, an English Bulldog, won in 2019, Lieutenant Dan, the Treeing Walker Coonhound, in 2020, and Annie Rose, a therapy dog, in 2022. The only non-canine to have taken home top honors was Betty, a frog, in 2021. Surprisingly, no rabbit ever has been so honored.
The winner appears as Cadbury's Clucking Bunny in a Creme Egg commercial for television, YouTube, and TikTok as well as serving as spokesbunny for the confectioner for a year. He or she additionally is automatically inducted into the Cadbury Hall of Fame.
Officials from Cadbury evaluated the photos and videos on February 24th and the public weighed in between March 6th and March 14th. A winner was chosen on March 15th but not announced until March 21st and, lo and behold, that turned out to have been Crash!
In taking home the top prize, he sans doute was greatly aided by his work at the shelter. "Well, one of the things they had to do was they had to look at the camera for a certain number of seconds. I think it was, like, I don't know, thirty seconds or something," Cutler explained to National Public Radio (NPR) on April 8th. (See "Crash, the One-Eyed Cat, Won Cadbury Chocolate's 2023 Bunny Tryout.") "And they had to keep looking at the camera, which for an animal is a long time to have them sit there and do that. But he did."
His sparkling personality and friendly demeanor also were big pluses. "He really doesn't meet a person he doesn't like," she added "He's just a very outgoing cat, which, if you know cats, is not typical."
No one was more elated by Crash's triumph than Corey. "We are over the moon that Crash is the next Cadbury Bunny and has gone from being hit by a car to a TV star," she gushed to KLEW-TV of Boise on March 22nd. (See "Boise Cat Is the New Cadbury Bunny, Wins $5,000 for Its Rescue.") "He's the perfect pet to represent the resilience of rescue pets, and he is a natural in the spotlight."
 |
| ...but He Pulled It Off and Won the Cadbury Bunny Tryouts |
She therefore was not the least bit surprised that he had prevailed over such stiff competition. "...he is always the center of attention in any room," she earlier told People magazine on March 21st. (See "Crash the One-Eyed Rescue Cat Becomes the First Feline to Win the Cadbury Bunny Tryouts.") "We can't wait to see Crash take center stage for this year's Cadbury Clucking Bunny commercial and to share his story with the world."
Even in victory, she was mindful that Crash could not have done it through his own efforts alone. "He's been through so much over the past few years, and we appreciate the love his friends, family, and cat enthusiasts across the country have shown," she added to People.
The only thing that she got wrong was to declare that he was hit by a car. Automobiles do not maim and kill cats anymore than do guns; on the contrary, it is motorists that maim and kill cats and they not only do so with malice aforethought but they always get away scot-free with their despicable crimes.
Moreover, it is simply reprehensible that shelters, who most certainly know better, continue to defend these monsters at the expense of the cats that they are supposed to be protecting. (See Cat Defender post of August 14, 2019 entitled "No Respect for Life: Early Graves and Crippling Injuries Are All That Cats Who Dare to Set Foot in the Street Can Expect from the Bloodthirsty Motoring Public.")
Cam Bogie, Jr., of Cadbury expressed both surprise and elation that Crash ultimately had prevailed. "We've been on the edge of our seats waiting to see who America would choose as the 2023 Cadbury Bunny and after an impressive number of votes, we couldn't be more excited to see Crash take home the coveted bunny ears," he said in Hershey's press release of March 21st. (See "For the First Time Ever, Cadbury Spotlights a Cat as the Winner of the Fifth Annual Bunny Tryouts.") "(A) big thank you to all the pets that entered this year's special rescue tryouts, and congratulations to our winner Crash."
As best it could be determined, Crash has so far made only one commercial for Cadbury and it was a brief fifteen-second affair. In it he is shown sporting two different sets of rabbit ears while swatting in the air with his right paw one moment and reclining on the carpeting the next.
A lion, a pig, and a rabbit receive significantly more camera time than he is allotted and a chicken can be heard clucking loudly in the background. To say that the commercial is underwhelming would be a gross understatement, especially considering all the time and effort that making it and winning the contest exacted from Crash.
Nobody at Simply Cats is complaining, however; on the contrary, Cutler and Corey are doing some clucking themselves and it is all the way to the bank. For instance, Cadbury has awarded the shelter US$5,000 outright while an additional US$5,000 has gone to Corey who in turn has pledged to donate it to her employer.
In addition to all of that, Simply Cats has been charging members of the public US$15 in order to stop by and meet Crash as well as to receive his pawgraph. It will sans doute come up with other means of cashing in on his newfound fame.
All of that is small potatoes, however, when compared to the US$20,000 that Cadbury has awarded the Manhattan-based ASPCA. "Together, Cadbury and the ASPCA are committed to raising awareness for pets in need and supporting the ASPCA's mission of providing effective means for the prevention of cruelty to animals," Hershey declared in its March 21st press release.
Such shameless gaslighting is totally inexcusable considering that Cadbury has proudly admitted to having a "longstanding partnership" with the ASPCA. Much more to the point, if anyone at Cadbury truly believes that the ASPCA is doing very much that is in any way beneficial for the animals he or she is either delusional or simply does not care.
In fact, the organization's demerits far outweigh its merits. First of all, it has a long history of stubbornly insisting upon executing animals, such as an abused female dog named Oreo, that members of the public and rescue groups had offered to save off of death row.
"And yet the ASPCA, under (Ed) Sayres proves once again that the large national organizations have no vision, no desire to truly raise the status of animals in society, and despite claiming they are setting the bar on how society should relate to animals, that they are in reality staffed by those who would rather perpetrate the violence and betrayal Oreo already experienced by killing her -- even as true animal lovers offered them a simple, life-affirming alternative, and the second chance at life Oreo so richly deserved," Nathan J. Winograd of the No Kill Advocacy Center in Canyon, California, wrote November 16, 2009 in the now defunct San Francisco Animal Shelters Examiner. (See "The Meaning of Oreo.")
Most enlightening of all, it is difficult to make the case that very many of New York City's animals are better off because of the existence of the ASPCA. It never has been empirically confirmed but it is nonetheless strongly suspected that shelters in the city's five boroughs kill more cats and dogs each year than those in any other city in America but yet the ASPCA never has been known as an advocate for no-kill.
Even more damning, apparently nobody in the Big Apple cares how many animals are hideously abused and systematically exterminated every day of the week. For instance, after becoming mayor twenty-one years ago, "Dirty Bloomers" pledged to make the city no-kill but as far as it is known he never lifted so much as a lousy finger in order to turn than pledge into a reality.
Instead, he declared war on all those felines that are being kept by restaurants, bodegas, and hotels as mousers. (See Cat Defender posts of April 20, 2006, October 16, 2010, and December 5, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Molly Is Finally Rescued After Spending Two Weeks Trapped Inside the Walls of an English Deli in Greenwich Village," "The Algonquin Undergoes Changes at the Top but Management Wisely Decides to Retain Its Most Loyal and Beloved Employee, Matilda," and "The Algonquin Cruelly Responds to Threats Made by New York City by Trussing Up Matilda III and Bombarding Her with Shock Therapy.")
The city likewise has time and time again demonstrated its antipathy for both homeless cats and TNR. (See Cat Defender posts of November 5, 2007, August 11, 2011, and December 22, 2011 entitled, respectively, "The Port Authority Gives JFK's Long-Term Resident Felines the Boot and Rescue Groups Are Too Impotent to Save Them," "Gracie's Life Is Placed in Grave Danger after the Snug Harbor Cultural Center Attempts to Drown Her and Steals Her Food Bowls," and "A Rogue TNR Practitioner and Three Unscrupulous Veterinarians Kill at Least Sixty-Two Cats with the Complicity of the Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals.")
Those diabolical monsters who abandon, torture, and kill cats and kittens seemingly never take a respite and yet it is practically unheard of for either the ASPCA or the New York Police Department to ever make an arrest in such cases. (See the New York Post, January 4, 2023, "NYC Family Forced to Put Down Beloved Cat 'Cheese' after He Was Shot with Crossbow," Queens.com, March 9, 2023, "'Truly Heartbreaking': Dead Cats Found Near A Train in Howard Beach, Two Weeks after Tortured Felines Were Rescued in Richmond Hill," and Cat Defender posts of March 7, 2006 and August 17, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Little Dickie Loses an Eye in a Pet Rage Fracas That Culminates in His Owner's Murder by the Police on Staten Island" and "Brave Little Fred the Undercover Cat Has His Short, Tragic Life Snuffed Out by a Hit-and-Run Driver in Queens")
 |
| Crash Needs to Be Careful When High-Fiving Strangers |
Besides turning its back on Gotham's long-suffering cats and dogs, the ASPCA never has done anything beneficial for the carriage horses that ply the streets inside and outside of Central Park. Half-dead and forced to toil in all sorts of inclement weather, they are often run down by motorists, abused by their drivers, and sometimes even collapse in the street due to old age and fatigue. These long suffering horses need to be purchased by the city and sent into retirement at a sanctuary.
The ASPCA likewise never has done anything to stop the Jews from slitting the throats of thousands of defenseless chickens each Yom Kippur in a ceremony known as Kaparot. Afterwards, they casually toss the remains of these sacrificial birds into the trash.
Some Jews also cruelly and inexcusably get rid of their cats and dogs by observing chametz each year at Passover. Yet the ASPCA never would even contemplate compelling them to comply with the anti-cruelty statutes. (See Newsweek, April 5, 2023, "Why Some Jewish People 'Sell' Their Pets for Passover.")
Considering that the ASPCA is doing so precious little for the animals, it is by no means surprising that it is pocketing a disproportionate amount of the donations that it receives from Cadbury and the public. For starters, in 2019 it took in US$280 million and while it initially claimed that seventy-seven per cent of that staggering total went to the animals, a later investigation pegged that amount at a considerably more minuscule forty per cent.
Secondly and contrary to a popular misconception, the ASPCA is an independent organization and is not affiliated with any of the slew of smaller SPCAs that are to be found in just about every community across the United States. Moreover, of the more than US$2 billion that the organization took in between 2008 and 2019 it gave only seven per cent of that amount to other SPCAs while spending a whopping nineteen per cent of it on fundraising.
Thirdly, in 2019 it paid its chief executive officer an whopping US$840,000 while all sorts of animals were dying and starving across Gotham. Just imagine how many of them that it could have saved if it had been willing to have scaled back that greedy blighter's salary to a much more modest US$50,000. (See the CBS Evening News, August 2, 2021, "ASPCA Faces Criticism from Local Animal Welfare Groups.")
Another one of the charity's partners is Scholastic Press in Manhattan and in Ben M. Baglio's 1994 children's book, Kittens in the Kitchen, it has a two-page advertisement blowing its own horn and pitching membership in its ASPCA Animaland Club for young adults. The notice does not specify one way or the other, but it would have been out of character if it had been giving away those memberships.
Hitting upon small children for money is a trifling matter, however, when compared to Baglio's and the ASPCA's indoctrinating them that all homeless and orphaned kittens do not have any right to live and instead should be promptly rubbed out. For example, the book contains the following revealing passage:
"But they (Mandy's grandparents) say the same thing as you," Mandy argued. "They say I have to find a home for Patch (a kitten). Otherwise it's cruel to keep him alive."
Worst of all is for Cadbury to be knowingly bankrolling the ASPCA in the spread of its outrageous anti-cat propaganda. Doing so is every bit as reprehensible as for the Kiwis to be not only exhorting but paying as well children under the age of fourteen to gun down cats, brushtail possums (Trichosurus vulpecula), rabbits, and pigs. (See the New York Post, April 19, 2023, "Children's Cat-Killing Competition in New Zealand Scrapped after Backlash.")
In doing so, the New Zealanders have conclusively demonstrated once again that they, along with the diabolical Australians, are sans doute the most dangerous, reprehensible, and morally bankrupt rotters on the planet. Both countries also have demonstrated, along with the help of the Sierra Club, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the USDA's Wildlife Services, and a host of other animal-exterminating branches of the United States government, that besides promoting a myriad of totally unworkable greenhouse gas reduction scams, telling lies, public posturing, and engaging in greenwashing run riot, that the phony-baloney environmental movement is the most ruthless form of fascism and totalitarianism to have ever reared its ugly head in world politics.
As far as those monsters are concerned, only a few favored species are worthy of being saved and even of those only a precious few; the remainder are curtly dismissed as being unworthy of even the status of collateral damage. (See Cat Defender post of November 18, 2016 entitled "A Clever Devil at the University of Adelaide Boasts That He Has Discovered the Achilles' Heel of Cats with His Invention of Robotic Grooming Traps as the Thoroughly Evil Australians' All-Out War Against the Species Enters Its Final Stages.")
Yet, in spite of a mountain of evidence that the ASPCA is a fraud, Cadbury continues to sing an entirely different tune. "He (Crash) reminds us that every cat is worth saving," the confectioner declared in an undated article posted on its web site. (See "Crash Is Our 2023 Cadbury Bunny Tryouts Winner.")
So, it thus seems perfectly fair to ask where exactly does it stand on the all-important issue of the sanctity of all feline lives? Moreover, if it truly believes in protecting feline and canine lives, why is it so lavishly funding the kitten and dog killers at the ASPCA?
Surely it is capable of locating a far more worthy recipient for its largess. Of course, it is always possible that it could care less about the welfare of cats and has only partnered with the ASPCA in order to enhance its public image and to reap the tax credits that it receives in return for its donations.
In this deceitful old world there are very few individuals, associations, and charities that operate on the up and up and the ASPCA is far from being the only rotter in the animal welfare woodpile. For example, PETA always has cleaned up on the donations given it by morons who have claimed to have loved cats.
Yet PETA's raison d' être never has amounted to much more than to defame, steal, and kill cats. (See Cat Defender posts of January 29, 2007, February 9, 2007, and October 7, 2011 entitled, respectively, "PETA's Long History of Killing Cats and Dogs Is Finally Exposed in a North Carolina Courtroom," "The Verdict in the PETA Trial: Littering Is a Crime but Not the Mass Slaughter of Innocent Cats and Dogs," and "PETA Traps and Kills a Cat and Then Shamelessly Goes Online in Order to Brag About Its Criminal and Foul Deed," plus, The New Yorker, April 4, 2003, "The Woman Behind the Most Successful Radical Group in America.")
As far as Simply Cats is concerned, it endeared itself to fans of the species everywhere some years ago by its steadfast and compassionate care of a nine-month-old gray and brown kitten named Valentine who had been found on January 20, 2009 on Redmon Road in Caldwell, forty-five kilometers west of Boise, with an arrow through her left eye. The projectile was sticking out the back of her tiny head and had only missed her brain by three to four millimeters.
 |
| Crash Does Not Look Any Too Happy Selling Chocolates |
Amazingly, she lived but the attack cost her the sight in her left eye as well as the hearing in her left ear. Even after she had recovered, she was forced to spend thirteen months at Simply Cats before anyone would offer her a home.
An unidentified fourteen-year-old boy was arrested in the attack but the only punishment that he ever received was a court order to write letters of apology to the shelter and WestVet of Meridian, nineteen kilometers west of Boise, which saved Valentine's life. Unfortunately, it is not known if she is still alive today. (See Cat Defender posts of June 1, 2009 and March 5, 2020 republished on May 24, 2023 and entitled, respectively, "Blind and Deaf on Her Left Side as the Result of a Bow and Arrow Attack by a Juvenile Miscreant, Valentine Is Still Looking for a Permanent Home" and "Struck Down by an Archer and Shunned by an Uncaring Public for More Than a Year, Valentine Finally Finds a Home.")
Its claim to be operating a no-kill facility is a bit more difficult to substantiate. For example, in its annual report for 2022 it admits to killing five cats and to having twenty-four kittens and one adult to have died in its care. Plus, another thirty cats are grouped under the rubric of "other outcomes."
In addition to the troublesome problem of accurately interpreting the statistics released by shelters, some of them only include "adoptable cats" in their live release data and by definition that does not include cats and kittens that are designated, both correctly and incorrectly, as being unsocialized, and who consequently are killed upon arrival. Other shelters fob off the killing of their cats and kittens onto the shoulders of other organizations. (See Cat Defender posts of July 29, 2010 and October 23, 2012 entitled, respectively, "The Benicia Vallejo Humane Society Is Outsourcing the Mass Killing of Kittens and Cats All the While Masquerading as a No-Kill Shelter" and "A Supposedly No-Kill Operation in Marblehead Betrays Sally and Snuffs Out Her Life Instead of Providing Her with a Home and Veterinary Care.")
All shelters employ so many dodges and tell so many lies that it is impossible to know what is going on behind their locked doors without there being a full-time, outside ombudsman on duty in order to verify the disposition of all arrivals. Nevertheless, for whatever it is worth Simply Cats claims to have had a ninety-seven per cent live release rate in 2022.
As far as its treatment of Crash is concerned, although forcing him to live at its shelter and to perform tricks for both staffers and the public was bad enough, inveigling him into impersonating a rabbit in order to shill for Cadbury's Creme Eggs is beyond disgraceful. "No self-respecting cat has any leanings toward a career as an artist's model," Carl Van Vechten declared in his seminal 1920 work, The Tiger in the House, and doing a commercial for chocolate candy that he cannot even eat is far more exploitative.
Furthermore, it staggers the mind that Simply Cats could have been that greedy to have gotten its hands on US$10,000 plus whatever else it has been able to have squeezed out of Crash's newfound notoriety. Selling lemonade on the corner and even panhandling would have been preferable to having so degraded Crash.
Lastly, Simply Cats has stained its once spotless reputation by going along with whatever arrangement Cadbury has cooked up with the ASPCA. A shelter's reputation and the trust that its donors and supporters have in it are of paramount importance but in its lust for money and fame Simply Cats has entered into a Faustian bargain with the devil.
The biggest loser in all of this has been, of course, long suffering Crash. All that he really needs and wants is a home of his own with a guardian who loves, protects, and reveres him.
Instead, Simply Cats has reduced him to the status of being a pitchman for Creme Eggs. Without a doubt he deserves a far better lot in life.
Most worrisome of all, because of its insatiable greed Simply Cats has unwittingly placed his welfare in jeopardy. First of all, because he is now world famous, he is at a far greater risk of being either stolen or catnapped for ransom and that makes it risky for the shelter to leave him unattended for long periods of time either on its own or Cadbury's turf.
Secondly, the damage done to him by his assailant coupled with Simply Cats' naked exploitation of him have denatured him to the point that he is no longer, as even has Cutler has admitted in one of her saner moments, a normal cat. Most notably, he has lost that natural, inbred fear of strangers that all cats possess and that is never a good development. (See Cat Defender post of July 14, 2016 entitled "Missy, Who Was Too Kindly Disposed Toward Humans for Her Own Good, Is Memorialized in Wood at the Bus Stop That She Called Her Home Away from Home for Almost a Decade.")
He additionally has lost his self-sufficiency and appears to be totally dependent upon Simply Cats for his sustenance and survival. He may even have lost the ability to think for himself given the ease with which both the shelter and Cadbury are able to manipulate him.
Such behavior is not natural for any cat. As novelist John D. MacDonald put it in his 1965 book, The House Guests, "a cat cannot abide being made to look ridiculous" but that is precisely what Simply Cats and Cadbury have done to him.
None of those developments augur well for Crash. It therefore is imperative that Simply Cats be even more vigilant in safeguarding his fragile and compromised existence. Hopefully, everything will work out for him but there cannot be any denying that he is now more vulnerable than ever.
Even high-fiving strangers could lead to his demise. For instance, someone could pick him up and spirit him away and, like those children stolen by the Pied Piper of Hamelin, he would be gone forever.
Regrettably, Simply Cats is totally incapable of loving Crash for the special cat that he is without exploiting him to hilt. Worst of all, the charity is guilty of committing the grandiose stupidity of preferring to see him on the boob tube shilling for chocolate candy rather than happy and in a home of his own.
There is not anything complicated about the proper care of a cat. Simply put, do not mistreat, abuse, exploit, abandon, denature and, above all, kill it off whenever it becomes either sickly or grows old. Individuals and rescue groups who are unwilling to abide by those rules do not have any business coming within ten miles of what Leonardo da Vinci once correctly labeled as "nature's masterpiece."
Photos: Michael Paz of The Washington Post (Crash relaxing in a basket) and Cadbury USA (Crash at the tryouts, being declared the winner, high-fiving, and selling candy).
posted by Moonraker @ 3:24 PM
