Winograd presents a compelling history of the animal-sheltering movement along with an argument for the move toward what he terms the No Kill Equation. It is a quick, interesting read, and his passion is evident. Overall I would recommend it to others interested in the subject, but with a few reservations.
On the positive side, the history of the ASPCA was very informative. I never knew about the origins of the organization, nor was I aware of how far from its roots it has strayed. It seems that things went wrong once the ASPCA took animal-control contracts from cities; at that point, it became all about the money rather than the animals. And that is why today we see depressing shelters run by bureaucrats, who often shun offers of help from idealistic volunteers.
Winograd's central thesis seems to be that the high kill rate of most shelters is indicative of massive system-wide failure. He backs this up with details of shelters' success stories. When radical changes were made, positive results were achieved. Such changes included a focus on adoption to compete with commercial breeders, with more convenient hours of operation, better customer service, and clever PR; a focus on preventative measures, with low- or no-cost spay/neuter operations made available, counseling made available for behavioral problems, and funding made available for TNR; and a paradigm shift in which employees who clung to the old model of sheltering were fired.
As a law-school grad, Winograd deftly dismantles some of the logical fallacies clung to by those mired in institutional inertia. Unfortunately, he engages in some of this sloppy rhetoric himself, most notably when he makes statements without citations and expects the reader to accept them as factual. There is also a rather embarrassing use of my favorite logical fallacy, reductio ad Hitlerum.
There are scads of quotations and passages that are not attributed to their authors, and there are studies that are mentioned but not cited. For me, the biggest disappointment was the chapter on TNR (the trap/neuter/return method for the humane management of feral cats). In addressing the concern that feral cats have negative ecological impacts, Winograd mentioned a few studies with flawed methodology and attacked them on scientific grounds. There was usually enough information for me to be able to find these studies if I did the research -- however, negative evidence is not evidence. I wanted references to the scientifically valid studies that have apparently shown a benign effect that feral-cat colonies have on local ecosystems. Winograd, however, does not reference them. I can only assume that they're included in the 12-page bibliography, but I'm not going to locate and wade through every single one of those manuscripts to find the confirmation that I want. If this were a work of true scholarly merit, the author would have included citations, footnotes, and references to peer-reviewed scientific studies.
At my old residence I trapped all of the feral and stray cats, took them in for sterilization, and released them back onto my property. I enjoyed watching them from a distance and observing their behavior, and knowing that I had made a difference was incredibly rewarding. Ferals and strays came to occupy a special place in my heart, and when I moved away I even took one of the friendlier ones with me -- he is a spoiled house cat now. Despite my love for feral cats, however, I'm not in denial about the potential impact they have on native wildlife. Maybe where I live, in an urban center, the impact is not so great, but even at the outskirts of my town feral cats have been connected with the deaths of some endangered bird species. I was delighted when Winograd pointed out that humans are the original invasive species, and I agree with his outlook. Feral cats exist only alongside humans, and we are responsible for far more habitat loss and species decimation. As long as there are human settlements, there will be feral cats, and extermination will not solve any wildlife-management quandaries.
Still, in discussing this matter Winograd actually sunk so low as to play the Nazi card. In a common association fallacy, he connects a concern with maintaining native species to racism, claiming that native-plant gardens gained popularity in Nazi Germany. I don't know whether or not that's true (there was no citation), but even if it is, that is hardly relevant. The Nazis championed lots of things, vegetarianism included, but that doesn't automatically imbue an idea with evil. Nazis' gardens are not relevant; the scientific consensus is. And the current consensus is that invasive species are a threat to biodiversity, pure and simple. This means that feral cats, depending on where they live, are indeed a potential threat to biodiversity. Of course, humans are the original threat, and the cause of the feral threat.
Another problem is the obvious lack of any editing. (If this book did have an editor, s/he should be fired.) I'm not just talking about the frequent descent into repetitive wordiness that could have been tightened up, or the irrelevant paragraph about Nazis that should have been removed altogether. I'm not just talking about the occasional sloppy and confusing wording that should have been rewritten and clarified. I'm talking about the abysmal copy errors. Misspellings; subject-verb disagreements (to his credit, this only happened with tricky words such as "criteria" and "data"); split infinitives (OK, no one cares about those anymore); and the biggest offender by far, the myriad punctuation errors. Sometimes there would be entire stretches of text in which errors appeared on every page. Maybe Winograd's ideas are valid, but the bad editing makes it seem like the work of an amateur.
These flaws combine to detract from the perceived credibility of the material. I cannot, for example, use this text to argue with a TNR opponent, because Winograd gives no citations and I wouldn't want to use such an amateurish work as a primary source. I hope to see a second edition in which the repetitive screeds are tightened up or eliminated, footnotes and references are attached to quotations and statements of fact, and the text is expanded to include references to solid scientific studies.
One criticism of this book is that No Kill shelters only push more responsibility for killing onto traditional shelters. This misses the point, because as Winograd shows, there are positive steps we can take to make things better than they are now. Even if 100 percent No Kill will never be achieved, it doesn't mean we can't abandon old models and move forward. The status quo is an obvious failure and a paradigm shift is greatly needed in order to reduce unnecessary suffering. The author gives us hope that we really can make things better.
