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The 50 Shades of Grey movie is likely to spur the next baby boom, as the release of the book that preceded the major motion picture is jokingly credited to have done. This, of course, got us thinking about the perpetual baby boom of stray animals. Hey, you think of red playrooms and grey ties, we’re gonna tangent off toward pet homelessness. It’s a thing we do.
Welcome to my red room…I’m taking everyone’s word for it that’s it’s red, I actually don’t see color.
You see, there are 70 million homeless animals in the United States today with only six to eight million of them ever making it to the shelter system. That’s an astronomical number! When you consider that of that out of those six to eight million animals, only three to four million are adopted annually, the picture begins to looks darker than Christian Grey…and master is dark.
I’m 50 shades baby…you don’t wanna get mixed up with me.
Roughly 10 percent of those animals that make it to the shelters are spayed or neutered. This means that, in the time that they were out galavanting around ostensibly taking glider rides, touring Seattle in Charlie Tango the helicopter and making sure that they ate semi-constantly, they were probably also throwing on a little Thomas Tallis and getting bus-ay.
You impressed by my helicopter, baby? Does it matter that I have no idea what’s going on up here?
It only takes one un-spayed cat to produce 420,000 more over the course of 7 years between her and all of her offspring. For a single un-spayed dog-67,000 more pups. No wonder there’s a pet overpopulation problem! Add to it the fact that puppy and kitten mills still exist with the sole purpose of pumping out as many pets for profit as they can for sale, and you have a situation that isn’t going to get any better without some major action.
I hear grey ties are all the rage with the ladies right now.
Fortunately, that major action is well within our ability to take. Step one is to make sure that our pets are spayed and neutered. With the millions of animals out there that need good homes, there is no reason to be actively breeding more (or accidentally, since sometimes a cat’s gonna escape the house and go out to a masked ball or two).
Am I doing this masquerade thing right? Am I sexy and mysterious?
Step two is to only Support your local shelter. Rescuing a healthy animal in need will stop making the pet breeding business profitable. These industries are not in operation out of the goodness of their hearts. Without a customer, puppy mills and kitten mills will be forced to shut down. Always adopt. Never shop.
The lipstick areas are off limits. I realize that is a lot of area.
If we all do our part to spay and neuter our pets and Support our local shelters instead of pet stores, we can say “later, baby” to pet overpopulation.
Lead Image Credit: Only Free Wallpaper
Dogs CAN see color!