BOOKS: Is Your Cat Crazy?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Is Y our Cat Crazy?
Solutions from the Casebook of a Cat Therapist
by John C. Wright, with Judi Wright Lashnitz. MacMillan Publishing USA
(15 Columbus Circle, New York, NY 10023), 1994. 227 pages, cloth, $18.00.
Here is a book that may save
many a cat from being cast outside to live as
a quasi-feral because of undesirable,
unfathomable, and intractable indoor con-
duct. A behaviorist, not a “shrink” for ani-
mals, Dr. Wright stresses that this is not a
how-to book, because each cat is an indi-
vidual whose actions are actually reactions
to specific situations within each particular
household.

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BOOKS: The Animal Research Controversy

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

The Animal Research Controversy
Protest, Process and Public Policy. An Analysis of Strategic Issues,
by Andrew N. Rowan and Franklin M. Loew, with Joan C. Weer.
Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy (200 Westboro Road,
North Grafton, MA 01536), 1995. 210 pages, quality paperback, $30.00.
A decade after publishing the most
reliable resume of the vivisection issue to that
point, Of Mice, Models, & Men ( 1 9 8 4 ) ,
Andrew Rowan et al have done it again. The
Animal Research Controversy presents and
evaluates every significant fact and factual
claim made by either side––and like Of Mice,
Models, & Men, won’t please any of the
noisier partisans, as Rowan once more
demolishes popular fallacy.

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BOOKS: Circles of Compassion

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Circles of Compassion, edited
by Elaine Sichel. Voice & Vision
Publishing (12005 Green Valley Road,
Sebastopol, CA 95472), 1995. 226
pages, paper. $14.50.
“Know the difference between a
fairy-tale and a war story?”, asks a grunt in
Tom Suddick’s 1974 Vietnam War classic A
Few Good Men. “A fairy-tale begins,
‘Once upon a time.’ A war story begins,
‘This is no shit.’”

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REVIEWS: Paws, Claws, Feathers & Fins

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Paws, Claws, Feathers & Fins, 30-minute video from KidVidz
(618 Centre St., Newton, MA 02158). $14.95 (video only); $34.90 with
Leader’s Guide, 50 activity guides, and license for public performance rights.
Here’s help for humane educators
who can’t bring controversy into the class-
room. Directed at children ages 4-12, but
probably most effective for primary grades,
Paws, Claws, Feathers & Fins succinctly
explains all that goes into keeping a pet, and
tosses in an operatic song about how every
kind of animal poops, sure to please most
young boys without offending most parents.

BOOKS: Little Brother Moose & The Tree in the Ancient Forest

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Little Brother Moose, by James Kasperson, illustrated by Karlyn Holman.
The Tree in the Ancient Forest,
by Carol Reed Jones, illustrated by Christopher Canyon.
Each $6.95/paper or $14.95/cloth, from Dawn Publications
(14618 Tyler Foote Road, Nevada City, CA 95959), 1995.
Attractively and imaginatively
illustrated, Little Brother Moose is modeled
on the Native American tradition of the
Vision Quest, a solo journey in search of
self-understanding that marks the passage
into adulthood––this time made by a moose.
It also resembles the story of an early settler
on the future site of Boston, who moved
west when it got too crowded. Invited back
for a visit by the civic authorities, decades
later, he rode in on a bull, trotted disgusted-
ly through the busy streets, and galloped
west again without even stopping for a drink.

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OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Morarji Desai, 99, former prime minister of India, died April 9 in Bombay.
Current Indian prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao memorialized Desai in a joint session of the
Indian Parliament as “one of the most devoted disciples of Mahatma Gandhi, an able adminis-
trator and one of the finest human beings,” who often accompanied Gandhi to jail during the
struggle for Indian independence. Shirley McGreal of the International Primate Protection
League remembered Desai warmly for a different reason. “In 1977,” she recalled, “IPPL
amassed documents about the U.S. use or misuse of imported Indian rhesus monkey use in mili-
tary experiments,” in violation of the terms of a 20-year-old export agreement. Desai had been
elected prime minister in 1977, and McGreal knew that, like Gandhi, “Desai was a lifelong
vegetarian [in fact, a strict vegan] and animal lover.” She appealed to him. On December 3,
1977, Desai’s government barred monkey exports. “He saved a species and hundreds of thou-
sands of individual animals from suffering and death in foreign laboratories,” McGreal said.
“Powerful users exerted heavy pressure on Desai. He stood firm,” as have his successors. “In
an attempt at historical revisionism,” McGreal continued, “claims were made by U.S. scientists
that the Indian ban resulted from conservation concerns and the dwindling numbers of rhesuses.
IPPL contacted Desai, by then retired, for clarification. In a handwritten letter dated April 16,
1985, Desai stated, ‘You are quite correct in saying that I banned the export of monkeys on a
humanitarian basis and not because the number was lessening. I believe in preventing cruelty to
all living beings in any form.'” But the monkeys had become scarce. “Later,” McGreal con-
firmed, “a survey by the Zoological Survey of India determined that there were only 200,000
rhesus monkeys left in India. The trade had taken a heavy toll. The teeming millions of former
days had disappeared. Those monkeys left owe their lives and freedom to Morarji Desai. They
are his living monument.”

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COURT CALENDAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Humane enforcement
Superior Court judge William Patrick on May 3
sent poodle breeder Charlotte Spiegel, 56, of Oroville,
California, to Chowchilla state prison for a 90-day pre-sentenc-
ing evaluation. A jury on March 15 convicted Spiegel of abus-
ing 350 dogs seized in two 1993 raids and later forfeited to the
Northwest SPCA. Patrick also ordered Spiegel to forfeit 57
dogs seized in later raids, and made her liable for up to
$260,000 in restitution to the SPCA for holding the dogs.
The Ottawa Shores Humane Society is in reported
financial distress after the scheduled May 16 trial of accused
animal collectors Earl Postema, 65, and his daughter Karen
Zalsman, 38, was postponed to mid-July because they fired
their attorney. OSHS volunteers in late March removed 72
goats, eight horses, and eight rabbits from their farm in Nunica,
Michigan. Four dead goats were found in a manure-choked

barn, and a dead colt was found in a field. Postema was reput-
edly involved with the Michigan militia, a private paramilitary
force whose events Oklahoma City bombing suspect Tim
McVeigh at times attended.

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BOMB SUSPECT MCVEIGH WAS A HUNTER

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

OKLAHOMA CITY––Tim McVeigh, charged
with the April 19 Oklahoma City truck bombing that killed 168
people, was a hunter––and his alleged accomplice, Steven
Garrett Colbern, arrested on May 12 in Oatman, Arizona,
was reputedly a hunter, a reptile breeder, and may have been
involved in animal-based biomedical research.
McVeigh defended hunting in a letter published on
March 10, 1992 in the Lockport (N.Y.) Union-Sun & Journal.
Contrasting hunting with slaughtering, McVeigh wrote that
he’d seen cattle killed with chainsaws and machetes, without
prestunning, methods not legal in U.S. slaughterhouses within
his lifetime but perhaps practiced by survivalist associates.

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Children & Animals

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Iqbal Masih, 12, of Murdike, Pakistan, was
shot dead on Easter Sunday by a man he and his relatives
Liaqat Masih and Faryab Masih caught allegedly raping a
donkey, police say. As the circumstances were not imme-
diately disclosed, media linked the murder to carpet mag-
nates whose child labor practices Iqbal Masih disclosed to
an international conference in Sweden last November. A
member of Pakistan’s Christian minority, Masih was sold
by his parents to a carpet factory at age four, where he
worked until age 10, often shackled to a loom. Foreign
carpet orders reportedly plummeted by $10 million in the
three weeks after Masih’s murder. “The $10 million is
only an immediate loss,” said Imran Malik, vice chair of
the Pakistan Carpet Manufacturers and Exporters
Association. “Irreparable damage is done when Western
consumers think Pakistani carpets stand for a child’s blood
and slavery.” Despite the outcry, also affecting carpet
exports from India and Bangladesh, Indian commerce min-
ister P. Chidambaram expressed satisfaction on May 8 that
the newly created World Trade Organization is unlikely to
address either child labor or environmental issues.

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