Transcript
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Hello, my friends and fellow animal lovers, welcome to the Story of my Pet podcast.
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I am Julie Marty Pearson, your host, proud fur mom, pet lover and all-around animal advocate.
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I'm so happy to have you here to listen to the incredible pet stories that I have collected from around the world.
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I hope you enjoy this episode and I can't wait to share this pet story with you.
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Hello, my friends and fellow animal lovers, welcome to another episode of the Story of my Pet podcast.
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I am your host, as always, julie Marty Pearson, and I'm very excited to be episode of the Story of my Pet podcast.
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I am your host, as always, julie Marty Pearson, and I'm very excited to be here with a new guest to introduce you all to.
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Today I'm going to be speaking with Amy Castro.
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She is a professional speaker, author and pet industry expert who works with small businesses and large corporations to develop leaders, build great teams and help both provide best-in-class service to their customers all so important.
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She's also founder and president of Starlight Outreach and Rescue, a 501c3 nonprofit animal rescue in the Houston area, and the host of the Rescue's podcast, starlight Pet Talk.
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She lives on a seven-acre rescue ranch and her daughter, kelsey, who manages the day-to-day activities of the Rescue.
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Oh, so much fun stuff to talk about.
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Hello, amy, thank you for being here.
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Hi Julie, Thank you for having me.
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I've been excited to talk to you.
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This is going to be a five-hour episode, I'm sure.
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It'll be a miniseries in six parts.
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Luckily for you guys, we've already been talking.
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Amy and I are doing what we call a podcast swap.
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She just interviewed me for her podcast Starlight Pet Talk, and now she is coming here so that I can interview her about all of her incredible rescue work, and so I'm really excited for this conversation, for you guys to get to know Amy and also learn a little bit more about what animal rescue life really is like.
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As we often do here on the Story of my Pet, we like to start off in the beginning.
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Amy, were you always a pet lover?
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Did you have pets as a kid?
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Yes, I have always been a pet lover and yes, I had pets as a kid.
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I can remember, and I want to say I was four years old, we had just moved to a new house and my dad's business partner who, my dad, worked in New York City, his business partner lived in New York City showed up with this leather weird box and out sprung this orange tabby cat.
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Little did I know the cat was probably feral, or at least borderline feral.
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His name was Snippy, and a day did not go by when that cat didn't bite or scratch me, but I adored him and so from then on it's I don't care, I love you anyway and you will be my friend.
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The tale is old as time.
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They may bite us and scratch us, but we love them anyway.
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That's right.
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That's right.
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Sounds like he prepared you for a life in animal rescue.
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Yes, he did.
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He did.
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Early on, I realized how, when to avoid a cat, when he was telling you enough was enough, or at least I tried to.
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That is some really important information.
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I think people don't realize you got to read the animal's body language and do what they're asking you to do.
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I'm sure you do a lot of that.
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Yes, have you always been a cat lady, or do you?
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Are you a dog mom too?
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Are you just happy to have any type of pet in your life?
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older the ease and charm of a smaller animal like a cat or a smaller dog.
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We recently just had a 150-pound Great Dame with a broken leg.
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Well, he was healing.
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That was at my house and I realized that is a lot of dog, but as a young kid I like the bigger animals and horses.
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I've always been a horse girl too, so anything I can take, anything that's around that needs my love, is going to get it.
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I understand we had a rescue possum at one point, so I think we are each other's people in that sense.
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There you go.
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So we talked a little bit about your rescue Starlight, outreach and Rescue.
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So can you talk a little bit about kind of the process of getting that started, why you started and what the purpose is?
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Sure.
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So when I started, people always have always said, oh, you should start a rescue, because I'm always taking in and helping animals, and I was volunteering at my local municipal shelter and had been for several years when I got a text message no-transcript.
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These kind of things happen to me, but immediately I knew I was going to start a rescue.
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I was going to call it Starlight Outreach and Rescue.
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I had the vision of what the logo was going to look like.
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That's how weird it was that it just had to be done, and so that was in October of 2017.
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And by December we had our 501c3 paperwork and our incorporation done and everything else it was a mission-driven start for sure Sounds like it.
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That's amazing, I think that a lot of times I think in rescue and volunteering we get inspired by others Like wow, they did that, I want to do it.
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Or sometimes we lose someone or we lose a pet.
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That kind of ignites our we want to help more.
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So it sounds like that's really you were doing the work already as a volunteer, but that experience really pushed you to start the rescue Right and I forgot to mention Emma's middle name because her brother had asked to name the baby.
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and they said, yes, well, he wanted to name the baby.
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And they said, yes, well, he wanted to name the baby Starlight.
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And they were like, yeah, oh, how about the middle name?
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So Emma's middle name was Starlight and that's why it's Starlight Outreach and Rescue, that's an amazing tribute.
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But also you wouldn't think necessarily that was named after someone with such a unique middle name.
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So I love that and I'm sure a living legacy would mean so much to her.
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I hope so.
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I'm sure it does.
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Anybody who is an animal person, an advocate, a volunteer, all of that, anything like that, would mean the world to them.
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So that was your push to officially start the rescue.
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When you started, did you have a focus in mind of who you wanted to help, what type of animal, or were you just getting set up and then see where you went?
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No, that's a good question.
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I hadn't really even been had thought about this, but we really started off focusing on helping that particular shelter where I was volunteering.
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So it started off on a small scale because and many people may not realize this when they either take an animal to a local city shelter or pick up a stray animal that all shelters are different.
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Ours happened to be a pretty good one in the grand scheme of things, but from the standpoint of fostering animals that can't stay overnight in the shelter, like baby kittens or medical treatment, most cities and counties don't have budgets for medical treatment for these animals and so, unfortunately, they end up being euthanized.
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So the original focus was to foster animals that couldn't be left alone at the shelter so that they weren't euthanized, providing medical treatments and care so that animals couldn't be euthanized.
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And then we expanded and I knew in the back of my head that the whole point of calling it Starlight Outreach and Rescue versus just Starlight Rescue was that I knew that reaching out to beyond that shelter, to the community, was going to be a part of our long-term mission, because education and helping people on a one-on-one basis, I think, is the key to animals not ending up in shelters and rescues in the first place.
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So now we do it.
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I wouldn't say we do it all, but we do work with local shelters.
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We do take animals in straight up as strays.
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We do help owners with their pets.
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So it's an education, is another big facet of our mission with their pets.
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So it's an education is another big facet of our mission.
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Yeah, and I think in the animal world rescue shelters education is key because so many people have pets and they have no idea what animal rescue is, how shelters work and how each shelter is different depending on where their funding comes from, and all of those things that I have learned myself since starting this podcast and getting more involved.
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That education is key because people just don't realize the ripple effect of a decision they make about their own pet can impact so many things.
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Right?
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So you talk about outreach.
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So what way?
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What exactly do you guys do in terms of outreach to your community?
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So we do.
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We do public presentations, so I'll go to the library and do a presentation that's open to the public.
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One of the popular topics that we end up doing is what to do when you find baby kittens, because too many times people will come across a little bundle of kittens in there.
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I've had them come out of wood piles.
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I've had them come out of people's recycle bins, on a pile of rags in the garage, and immediately people look around and say, oh, they're abandoned.
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The moms I don't see the mom.
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But what they don't realize is mother cats don't hang out with their kittens all day long and they may not need the rescuing, but what they do is once they pull them and take them to a shelter they've condemned is a strong word, but it is a strong word condemn them to whatever that future is going to be.
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And shelters will often euthanize them because they don't have round-the-clock staff to take care of those.
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So we end up with those in rescue, and it is a round-the-clock job and it is a labor of love.
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You've done it, I know, but you know doing it times a thousand is gets to be a lot, and so it's so much better to just leave them where you find them.
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So we do things like that.
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We do a lot of one-on-one consultations for lack of a better term with people who will call looking to surrender a pet, and my first question, if they don't make it quite obvious from the beginning, is why do you want to give up this dog?
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Well, it's doing this or it's doing that.
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And then the next thing I know an hour has gone by with me talking about problem solving and troubleshooting, and I'm not saying I've won them all, but I certainly have had a lot of people that have been like, oh, I'll try that or, oh, I hadn't thought about that.
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So that's part of the outreach is the education piece and then also financial outreach.
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We find that there are wonderful pet parents who, for whatever reason, they're going through tough times.
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Somebody lost a job, they've lost a home you know their home and they're now struggling to provide either basic care or extended medical care for their pet.
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And although I can't pay somebody's vet bills for the rest of their lives, there are times where I can do a fundraiser.
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And one quick example was a gentleman that had called us.
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He wanted to surrender his dog because his dog had happy tail.
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And if you're not familiar with what that is, it's when a dog and it was a pity and I know from the fact I've got a blind pity in my house right now that that tail gets going hard and fast.
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If it whacks you in the leg it hurts.
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And so this dog was such a happy dog and wagging his tail that he would whack it into the walls and his tail literally split open and would bleed, and it was.
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Then it becomes a chronic condition with blood flying all over the house and the gentleman didn't want to put his dog outside but he could not afford the surgery because basically the solution is to amputate the tail because but after that repeated injury it has it had to come off.
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And so you know, we did a fundraiser in 30 minutes.
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We raised the $500 or $600, I think.
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It was to do that surgery so that man could keep his dog.
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And he still has his dog and his kids still have their dog.
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We've also had animals that have gotten hit by a car and it's like the people are there when somebody calls me and they're willing to surrender their pet so that the pet can have a chance at a better life or a life at all willing to surrender their pet so that the pet can have a chance at a better life or a life at all.
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That to me.
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I'm going to go out of my way to help you.
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It's a little bit harder when somebody's I'm moving and I can't take my pet.
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Really, what apartment building could you not find that wouldn't take a pet?
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I have a little harder time with that.
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I don't say that, of course, but if you're willing to give up your pet for its better interest, I'm going to try to help you.
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So that's another element of outreach that we do.
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We also do trap-doodle-return where it's legal around us for kittens, cats that are community cats, like you mentioned.
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In California we don't really have that and, as a matter of fact, in many municipalities it's actually illegal to have cats at large, very unlikely to be enforced because nobody will ever claim that's their cat.
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But we try to help reduce those cat populations by spaying and neutering the cats and then returning them to where they came from.
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Yeah, tnr is so important, no matter what your situation is in your area.
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I had mentioned to her that in California cats are considered free roaming, so shelters cannot take them in as strays because they're not considered such.
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So they can only take cats in if they're sick or injured or, as like you mentioned, kittens who are too young to take care of themselves come into the shelter system.
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But unfortunately, because of that, we have rampant communities of feral cats in a lot of areas and trap neuter return is so important because, gosh, you have a handful of cats in one area.
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That's going to become hundreds really quick Hundreds, yeah Well.
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And people, the poor people who are trying to feed and care for those cats as best they can.
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It's always some nice person who starts off.
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Oh, this kitty wandered into my yard so I started feeding it, then it brought a friend, then it brought her husband, then it brought her significant other, cousin, whatever it is.
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Next thing you know they've got 50 cats they're feeding and then they're breeding like wildfire and it gets out of control really fast.
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So yeah, a lot of times I think people don't realize how young cats can be impregnated.
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They can be six months old and be pregnant, and that's actually really dangerous.
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And one of our cats, frenchie, our middle child at the time, at right now she was actually the baby of a feral that hung out in our yard a lot and then she moved her litter, but unfortunately Frenchie didn't make the trip, didn't?
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make the cut she got stuck between our fence and our neighbor's fence, oh wow.
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So here comes little Frenchie coming out.
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Once I opened the fence and, yeah, now you all know how that story ended.
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We heard her at first, we knew there was a mom.
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We waited, we watched.
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We heard her at first, we knew there was a mom.
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We waited, we watched.
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We didn't see the mom again for a whole 24 hours.
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She continued to cry.
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We're like, ok, we got to step in and help her because she can't take care of herself.
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But I think that's an important thing no matter what the situation in your area is when it comes to cats, if you find a litter of kittens that are obviously too young to be on their own, don't just grab them and go.
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So what would you say to someone who finds a litter of kittens in their yard, in their area?
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Some tips of what to do and what not to do right away.
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Well, I think identifying about how.
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Obviously you're not going to know the exact age for kittens and I won't waste time going into all the at this age this happens or whatever but you can certainly go out on the internet there's plenty.
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Even if you just search images, there are a lot of great charts.
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It'll show you.
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This is what the kitten would look like and this is about how old it is, and based on the age, you can usually figure out a newborn.
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Anything under a month old, anything under two weeks old probably needs round-the-clock feeding.
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Beyond that it gets to be.
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It's like a human baby, right.
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As they get older it spreads out a little bit further.
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So, being able to estimate the age and knowing, like you said, if that kitten was teeny, tiny that you found and it had been 24 hours that's a long time for it to go without eating and if mom hadn't come back by then you need to intervene like you did and you did the right thing.
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But one of the things that I find really helpful that I tell people to do is just take some flour whatever kind of flour you have in your house and put a ring of flour around where the kittens are and then go away because mom's unlikely to come.
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If it's a stray or a feral cat, she's probably not going to come just moseying up.
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Because think about it from her perspective If she makes a beeline to those babies, she's showing predators exactly where those babies are and as far as she knows, you're a predator Right.
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Put that flower around, go back in the house and then wait again a proportionate amount of time based on the age of the kittens, and then if you don't see any little paw prints in there, then yes, you might consider taking them in.
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But consider too at least in Texas, consider too what you're going to do with them once you do that.
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Because I know I was naive before I started volunteering.
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The very first cat that I found, that kind of started my whole fostering process was a kitten I found and I thought, oh, my vet has rescue kittens there in her lobby, I can just go drop this kitten off.
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And folks, it doesn't work like that and you'll be surprised how many times you'll be turned down by a rescue or even shelters, depending upon where you live to take that animal.
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So you might become that animal's caregiver and now you've taken that responsibility.
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So think about that for sure.
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Yes, I've seen that happen in my area at the shelter.
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I worked there part-time for about six months doing adoption events for them, and some of that before I got started.
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I would sit in the front office and help, but I would observe what they were dealing with and a lot of people would come in with a cat or a kitten and they'd be like well, how long have you had it?
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Well, I started feeding it and I had it for three days.
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Okay, well, legally, that cat is yours now it's the same in Texas, three days and it's yours.
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You have to be aware of that, obviously, but you also have to be aware that when you're taking a kitten or a litter of kittens you've found, you've done your due diligence.
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Mom hasn't come back, whatever it may be.
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I think this also you mentioned is when you take them to a shelter.
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Most shelters cannot care for underage kittens because one they don't have staff 24-7.
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So most shelters like mine and I think yours is those kittens have to go immediately to foster, otherwise they could possibly be euthanized Right?
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Could you talk a little bit about your experience with being a part of that kind of process and how your rescue helps or what people need to understand better about that?
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Yeah, well, what's interesting now is as far as how this whole process works.
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It's so different than the way that it worked a couple of years ago and this could be a whole nother episode talking about the no kill movement.
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But the concept of no kill is great.
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I would love it if a day would come along where animals healthy, adoptable animals were not euthanized in shelters.
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The dilemma in Texas is the.
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It's just there are too many.
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And so what shelter?
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What our municipal shelters are trying to do?
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Nobody wants to be the bad guy.
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That is like you referred to, a kill shelter.
00:19:16.586 --> 00:19:24.855
So everybody's trying to either be no kill or achieve a level of live release which is generally going to be over 90 percent.
00:19:24.855 --> 00:19:27.763
So 90 percent of the things that come in here go out here alive.
00:19:28.224 --> 00:19:36.530
The ripple effect of that is, in order to do that, what shelters are now having to do is tell you, no, they can't take those kittens.
00:19:36.590 --> 00:19:40.827
Tell you, no, they can't take your grandma's dog when your grandma passed away.
00:19:40.827 --> 00:19:43.603
And so now you turn to rescues.
00:19:43.603 --> 00:19:55.288
Well, we're now taking in all the animals that they're saying no to, plus the strays on the street, because even in Texas I'm still shocked about this that many of our municipal city shelters in the Houston area.
00:19:55.288 --> 00:20:06.281
If you call and say hey, there's this German Shepherd running up and down my street or whatever kind of dog it is, they'll say we're full, we can't pick it up, so it's left to roam the streets and get hit by a car or whatever happens to it.
00:20:06.281 --> 00:20:15.623
Or you end up responsible for it as the person who found it and I get a lot of actually very angry people that will call me and they'll say I tried calling the shelter and they said they wouldn't.
00:20:15.623 --> 00:20:23.105
I pulled over on the side of the road and picked up this dog and I'm thinking to myself I hate to say this, but I'm thinking that's her first mistake, because it's not a mistake.
00:20:23.125 --> 00:20:28.393
It's just so awful that we have to think that way, I know, but it's like the shelter's not going to take it.
00:20:28.393 --> 00:20:32.948
The rescues are full and over and bursting at their seams, and good luck with that.
00:20:32.948 --> 00:20:34.271
This is tough.
00:20:34.773 --> 00:20:47.391
This is a very important conversation because I know, just before I met you and talked to you, that Texas has a lot of the same issues that we do with overpopulation and crowded shelters and stray dogs and all the things.
00:20:47.391 --> 00:20:55.885
Yeah, and people hear this no kill and they're like, well, why aren't you no kill or aren't you no kill and why can't we be no kill?
00:20:55.885 --> 00:21:00.826
And they just have this idea of what that means, and so I can from my own experience where I live.
00:21:00.826 --> 00:21:02.372
There are three shelters in my county.
00:21:02.372 --> 00:21:08.605
Two are what we call kill shelters, because one is run by the city and one is run by the county.
00:21:08.645 --> 00:21:09.528
Therefore, they are mandated.
00:21:09.528 --> 00:21:12.003
They can only hold so many animals at one time.
00:21:12.003 --> 00:21:25.105
So what happens is, if there's nowhere for them to go, they have to be euthanized to make room for the new animals coming in, which they have new ones every single day, yeah, and so that's why they have to be called that, because they're only able to save so many.
00:21:25.105 --> 00:21:28.148
We have a third that is a SPCA.
00:21:28.148 --> 00:21:34.474
That is no kill, but, like you said, they are no kill because they can say no to whoever they want to.
00:21:34.655 --> 00:22:22.989
That's why they're no kill, no-transcript think it's interesting to me for people who will say, well, I only want to adopt from a no kill place and I'm like you should be looking for the kill place.
00:22:22.989 --> 00:22:26.364
That's where you're saving a life You're not saving, Come to.
00:22:26.364 --> 00:22:29.276
I will tell people flat out go look at your local shelter.
00:22:29.276 --> 00:22:37.068
If you haven't checked there first, and then, if you don't find what you're looking for, come back to us at the rescue, because these animals that are here are not going anywhere ever Like.
00:22:37.068 --> 00:22:38.681
They will live here for the rest of their lives.
00:22:38.740 --> 00:22:43.667
Now it may stop me from bringing in more animals, because I can only put so many animals.
00:22:43.667 --> 00:22:45.009
Even if I stack them to the ceiling.
00:22:45.009 --> 00:22:49.355
There's, like you said, there's still a line more animals that probably need to come in.
00:22:49.355 --> 00:22:52.384
But yeah, the whole no kill thing is a.
00:22:52.384 --> 00:22:58.265
It's a sticky situation and it's very much up to, like you said, interpretation.
00:22:58.325 --> 00:22:59.548
It's easy to be no kill.
00:22:59.548 --> 00:23:04.508
We've got facilities around here, large ones that will only take owner surrenders.
00:23:04.508 --> 00:23:09.311
No strays will not take any bully breeds or even anything that looks like a bully breed.
00:23:09.311 --> 00:23:15.176
Well then, that does make it easier for you, because those are going to be easier to adopt out than the ones that are poor.
00:23:15.176 --> 00:23:30.083
I can say all kinds of bad things about the municipal shelter where I worked at, and that's why I don't name it, but what I will say is it's hard to be no kill when you're mandated to pick up those strays that people call about Like you have to.
00:23:30.083 --> 00:23:32.765
That's the law, and so where are you going to put it?
00:23:32.765 --> 00:23:33.788
Somebody's got to go.
00:23:33.788 --> 00:23:37.229
It's unfortunate, so they've got to go out the door one way or the other.
00:23:38.079 --> 00:23:42.771
And obviously the first ones to be euthanized if they're very sick and they can't.
00:23:42.771 --> 00:23:46.711
They always look at injury and illness and sickness and things like that first.
00:23:46.711 --> 00:23:47.622
They look at behavior.
