Compassion seems to be in short supply

By Jennifer Jasensky: Director of Case Management, Diabetic Cats in Need

I love my work with DCIN but what people don't know is we are very short staffed and on balance we get about one new case a week. Some weeks it can be three, other weeks none but it averages to about four per month. Recently, those numbers are increasing and it's almost ten new clients a month at times. Add these cases to the already existing number of clients, the fundraising, the transport coordination, and the fact that we are all volunteers and have jobs and family outside of DCIN, you might be able to imagine just how overwhelmed we can be at times. Did I mention we are short staffed too?

CH kitty Lilly Grace "walking" up to her
bed because of someone else's 
compassion to build her that ramp

To address this issue we had to make some changes.  Most significantly, we had to modify how we promote cats in need of rehoming. Instead of taking the information and posting it ourselves with questions and applications coming to a case manager, we now request that people post their own kitties and from there we'll share the story. The adoption is theirs to work out.  This helps DCIN because case managers can concentrate on our extensive number of financial assistance cases and not field questions on adoptable kitties.

Yet there is a problem with this; the comments that pop up on these rehoming kitties. I get it, we all love furries and can't imagine simply giving them away, but it's not always that cut and dried. There could be so much more behind the curtain we don't see. Unless the kitty is in my home and in my life, I really can't say what's going on. Even my closest friends could be dealing with some hidden demons and since they are hidden, how would I know?

When the comments start to get nasty I wonder where the compassion is.

I'd like to blame the internet, the fact that we can post our views and never have to look into the eyes of those we discuss. But it's not just the internet. I see this at work, at home, all over. Compassion seems to be lost on some. Things can be so matter of fact all the time, that we don't see how our seemingly innocent comments might cause great distress for others.

Unless we can truly open up and let the pain others feel seep into our own conscience can we truly help the situation? There's more behind the few sentences written on a rehoming case, there's a person back there, someone who cares enough to want to try to find a home, whether we agree with the reason why is inconsequential.  Offering the best possible advice and leaving the comments to ourselves will get the job done faster and certainly in the end get it done with less heartache for all involved.