Saturday, August 3, 2013

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.

3 comments:

  1. Wow. Well done And true. Some people are already in heartbreaking situations, we don't need to add to it.

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  2. As someone who has had to make the heartbreaking choice to rehome their diabetic, I agree so much with this thought. Often there is a lot more to it than anyone else can try to understand.

    However... looking at some of the recent cats' writeups, I can't help but wonder if sometimes they are what sparks the flame.

    Looking at Sandy's recent post-
    "Sandy's original family didn't want her because she turned diabetic (induced by steroids given for an ear inflammation) and Sandy's diabetes needed more attention than they cared to give because they had a new baby."

    and on one for Bear-
    "DCIN brought Bear into foster care when his family, a family with a diabetic child and two new "care-free" kittens, intended to destroy him for being diabetic."

    While that may be the cold hard truth, I really think those kinds of posts set the tone and encourage people to reply negatively towards their previous owners. Those negative comments made me VERY scared to come forward and try to rehome my cat out of fear of judgement (not just from DCIN's followers, but the diabetic cat community in general) and it STILL scares me writing this. I would hate for that fear to lead to people opting to take their cat to a shelter or have them euthanized instead.

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  3. Quite frankly as a person who operates a fanpage myself, it is the moderator's prerogative to MODERATE! And if that means taking down the heartless comments on people who are looking to rehome their pets, rather than kill them...THEN TAKE THE INAPPROPRIATE POSTS DOWN. As the fanpage owner and moderator it is your responsibility to stop the drama. Instead of lecturing your audience and hoping the people know which shoe fits....manage the fanpage. A few deleted comments will straighten up the 'tone' of the entire place.

    ReplyDelete