I'm very very sad

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I feel very very sad, because of this cruel work.
I'm volunteering at animal welfare for many years. I'm rescuing cats from bad conditions and foster them at my home while they are searching for new owner. I'm doing trap-neuter-return to feral cats. I was coordinating animal welfare section in my city.
I was giving all my free and not free time for this, I was answering phone even in night if someone needed my help. I gave all my energy and minds to this. Together with this organisation we rescued chimpanzee from circus and now she is living in Holland reservation.
I feel happy for all animals I have helped, but I can;t stand the mind that I will never be able to help all animals and that many people still doing bad things to them. Now I'm living somewhere else and just started to work against captivity here, and it so hard, I do not have my team and people whose trust me and I could spend my all energy right to animals. Now I have to spend it to building those relationships. . .

I'm very very sad, because my friends are suffering and I can't help them. Even some people from organisation i'm trying to help saying that I'm doing a lot, I think it's not enough. And this is killing me.
I'm very very very sad.
I don't know why I'm writing here now. Maybe I need someone to misery me.
I can't complain to people from organisation, they are seeing me as someone who is always able to help, and can't say no. I can't complain to my friends because they can't understand, and if i will complain it's possible that people stop take me seriously. . .
: (
Sorry, for disconnected minds

hiya AIWS
try to keep in mind that you are just one person, and one single solitary person can't do it all. you are doing what you can, you could take comfort from that. sure, you will not be able to help all the animals you want to help, give other helpful-minded people a chance to pick up the slack. even the animals that aren't the recipients of your loving care will all go to the rainbow bridge after a short while, where they will suffer no more and live ever after in the elysian fields.

It would break my heart to see those animals...you're a much better person than me because you are actually helping them.

Think about the ones you've helped.

When i look around the world i feel the same way quite sad and unhappy.

Today i was buying vegetables in the market when a lady came and gave my purse
which had fallen down.

i thanked her and when i was walking towards my home she followed me
and started calling me inside a building compound from behind

I was quite scared so started walking fast and eventually her son followed me and started
asking me to give some prize for returning my purse

I gave a 5 rupee he made a scorned face and said only 5 rupee.....

I just left that place quickly it was all very confusing for me....she returned my purse to finally ask
for money

This planet sucks

If animal work makes you feel bad, then you need to reconsider what you're doing.

One morning an elderly man was walking on a nearly deserted beach. He came upon a boy surrounded by thousands and thousands of starfish. As eagerly as he could, the youngster was picking them up and throwing them back into the ocean.

Puzzled, the older man looked at the young boy and asked, "Little boy, what are you doing?"

The youth responded without looking up, "I'm trying to save these starfish, sir."

The old man chuckled aloud, and queried, "Son, there are thousands of starfish and only one of you. What difference can you make?"

Holding a starfish in his hand, the boy turned to the man and, gently tossing the starfish into the water, said, "It will make a difference to that one!"

(source unknown)

I don't think you should be in this job.

I know you do it because you care very much for the animals, but it takes people with a very thick skin to be able to work it. I couldn't do it.

You can't keep helping animals if you let yourself go as well. You also can't help every single animal and person that comes to you. It's impossible, and trying to do the impossible will make you miserable. I feel for you--I volunteer with an animal shelter and it kills me when it's full and animals get turned away. We save as many as we can but there's almost no way to take care of every single animal.

Do your best with what you can. Step back, in your mind, and think of all the animals you helped. You are doing amazing work that a lot of people aren't strong enough to do.

Thank You all for Your posts.
I've started helping animals when i was 3 or 4. I was bringing all injured birds home and some of them we were able to rescue and release after. later I have started finding cats and later I have found organisation which was helping stray pets as well.
This is not a job, it's volunteering work, but it's the thing that I really can do and know how, and there is no power in this world which can stop me from this, I guess. . . All my minds are here, when I'm doing my art projects I'm trying to do something against vivisection, circus and other things. I can;t write here everything I'm thinking or doing.
When my own cat has died because of kidneys defence (which was because before I got her someone just threw her away from ninth floor) i have thought that I have to stop helping animals because there is no point of doing this, but I was not able. And I do not want to stop doing this. That would mean that I'm closing my eyes to bad things those happening, that I will let my friends to suffer. If it;s an animals I just know about his or her existence, it's not so hard, but for those I have met I would do everything that is in my power to help. Maybe it;s more about cats and dogs, because with wild animals is different.
My logic is saying that I'm doing a lot, and sometimes the most in our organisation, because I never say no if someone is asking me to do something. But anyway I feel like I'm doing not enough and should do more. . . But it's ok, now I feel better.
Thank You all, for encouraging and for suggestions to stop. But I hope You won't ask other people to stop helping animals, because if they will stop no one will help them anymore.

The little animals need all the help they can get. But you have to be in a certain personal place to be able to do it. If it's causing you this much distress, it's best left to someone with a thicker skin who can let the pain of it not affect them.

You are doing a wonderful thing. You just have to make sure you stay ok though.

There are other ways you can help the animals and not put yourself in such a vulnerable place. Some shelters do fund raisers where people go to raise money for their cause.

I went and bought a lot of blankets and toys and donated them to the shelter - another example.

Who told you that this helps animals, and not just selfish humans who want to control their behaviour and their population?

You kidnap them, MUTILATE them, and then "return" them to the wild with a part of their self missing, which results in some kind of hormonal imbalance that makes them unable to act like wild animals any more (which is why pets are neutered in the first place).

I'd expect that someone with autism would know what it's like trying to live in a world without the necessary kind of mind, but then you go and butcher a bunch of animals and leave them in a similar situation... All while claiming to care about them?

Have You ever met a cat which is living in the street, breeding four times a year, getting babies even in winter?
her babies are dying under the wheels of cars, because of cold in winter, because of sickness or bad kids just took their eyes out (I had a foster cat which has no eyes because of this). Cats whose are already pregnant when they are still feeding babies.
I can't take those cats at my home, no one can take them all. I can compare how they are living after neutering them and before, they are happier now, they do not have to fight because of females and females are not breeding machines anymore, they do not have scars, they do not look gount and there are no little poor kittens those are most likely going to die.
I have met many of cats, before I was volunteering and I remember every single one I ever have met from when I was 6 year.
I do not know what You are doing for cats, but I know that I care about cats, and it's not that I got a mind to neuter and spend my and other people's money and time just for fun.

Yes, because the world needs more starving feral cats.


This post is about someone expressing their sadness. I'm sure there's a better thread somewhere where we all could debate the humanity of spay/neuter. This is not the place.

Maybe i'm a bad example of autism. Perhaps I'm a very bad example of everything, but I know that I care about cats, and it's thousand times better for them to be neutered and live their happy life than to be killed, nbecause there are too many stray cats.


Thank You very much. I think that I was doing everything, going to events, meetings with new volunteers, answering phone, mails, but for me it's much more stress to help right animals instead of communicating with people. But the good part that I've learnt to comunicate very well just because of this.

And how is the mutilation that you force on them any better than the mutilation that others force on them?

Why would you assume that the rest of their lives are somehow "happier" after you have taken away a large chunk of what it means to be an animal? I have seen many animals before and after being neutered, and they are never happier. They are less energetic, less playful, and generally just appear confused, not knowing what to do with themselves any more. The difference in them is very noticable.

You are not helping or saving them, you are just using them as a way to make YOURSELF feel better. By neutering them just to prevent their kittens from being born, you may as well just be killing them yourself.

This is the real world. All animals will suffer and eventually die in the real world, and so will people. You can't do anything to stop that, and all you're doing is reducing their numbers so that even less of them survive to adulthood. Not only will their lives ALWAYS be dangerous, but now they won't get to experience any kind of happiness before they die either, because you have literally removed the part of their mind which enables them to pursue the only thing that really makes an animal's life WORTH the suffering that they endure.

If you genuinely cared for the animals, rather than just caring about an easy way to make yourself feel good, you would take your trapped feral cats into the wild, to release them in a forested area, with their reproductive organs still in one piece.

I'm sure that you would not only find this easier, but it would probably make you feel a lot better too, knowing that you didn't just ease their suffering so that they can die quietly, but actually made their lives positively better, and gave them a chance to prosper.


Exactly my point. This has nothing to do with what is best for the cats, but what is best for people. Killing them off in slow motion through eugenics, just to keep them out of sight and out of mind, is not helping them, it only helps us, so that we don't have to look at them.

I wish I could do that where I live. There are loads of feral cats here and a spay/neuter and release program lets them live their lives without having the neighborhood overrun with feral cats that will live miserable lives because of overpopulation. It would be better if they could have homes but most are too scared of people for that.