Recently, I saw a post that the "cat schoolboy" who adopted hundreds of cats in China passed away, but this is not news, but old news.
Because there are not many people who pay attention, when the students leave, they have not become a hot search.
Cat students spend all their savings on cat ownership, work hard to earn money, and earn cat food on live until the day before they are admitted to the hospital for cancer.
In China, it seems that the development path of private aid agencies is so strikingly similar:
The initiators initially had relatively generous economic conditions, and then in the long rescue career, the initiators ran out of family property, gave up their careers, were misunderstood, and even displaced, constantly changing animal rescue sites.
And since my video began mentioning that my boyfriend had 150 dogs and 9 cats, I always received cynicism from some people that Mike was "living on a donation."
This made me not only start to think about some deeper questions: why do domestic animal rescue, will face so many foreign animal rescuers will not face the problem!
Take my boyfriend Mike, who is studying medicine in Germany and has a dual degree in pharmacy and dentistry, he has also experienced the dilemma of spending all his savings after coming to Thailand to start rescuing animals, and he has also experienced the difficult choice of giving up his job, but he has never been misunderstood and sneered at, which has never happened in his more than ten years of life in animal rescue. (Except for some people who left messages below my video)
Mike said that in Germany, dogs are children to people, family members, and a life that all beings are equal.
Among the people who left the comments, some people said, why spend money on dogs and cats? And not disabled? Or out-of-school children?
I think this reflects one's view of the value of life. If you think that life is equal, or that dogs and cats are friends or family members of humans, there will be no "Yulin Dog Meat Festival"!
In the 2021 public data, the number of stray cats and dogs in China is nearly 50 million.
Hunger, illness, incurable treatment, abuse, theft, and even illegal dinner tables, as well as car accidents and other accidents, are the tragic fate of these stray cats and dogs.
According to the survey, the average life expectancy of stray cats and dogs is less than three years, while the average lifespan of normal domestic pets is about 13 years.
Such a huge number of stray cats and dogs will naturally affect our living environment, so this is not only a problem of animal adoption, but a problem of the whole society. Rich people abroad, out of a sense of social responsibility, donations to cats and dogs abound, such as bill Gates, which everyone knows.
The United States is the country with the most philanthropy in the world, and the "2020 Annual U.S. Charitable Giving Report" released by the American Charity Fund shows that the total amount of charitable donations in the United States in 2020 reached a record high of $471.44 billion.
According to data released by Forbes in 2022, the cumulative donation amount of the 25 most generous billionaires in the United States is as high as $169 billion.
However, according to a report by the United Nations Development Programme, Chinese only 4% of charitable donations from European countries in the United States!
In contrast, the "2021 Hurun Global Rich List" released in March 2021 shows that China became the first country in the world to have 1,000 entrepreneurs who have already reached $1 billion, and more than the United States, India and Germany combined!
No country in the world will wait until it has been lifted out of poverty to mention the protection of animals!
I remember that the cat owner Shusheng wrote in his Douban diary before he was born:
I hope that the rescuers will live well, so that everyone can see that people who are willing to do things for other animals can live happily.
In fact, it is a very sad thing to see people engaged in animal rescue expressing their wishes with such humble evidence.
Mike once said that it was the stray animals who needed to be rescued, not him!
He only represents the caring people while caring for stray animals.
The 150 dogs and 9 cats did not have him, most of them had starved to death, died of illness, and even went to the dinner table, but if he had not chosen to rescue animals, he would still be a well-paid white-collar or even gold-collar worker, and even if he immediately put down his rescue work and returned to Germany, he could live better than he is now, but he did not, because he really loved these animals.
I think that domestic rescue of animals will always face a misunderstanding: since you rescue animals, you should first scatter your family property!
It seems that rescuing animals is a noble job, but it is vulgar when it comes to money.
But in foreign countries, since the rescue is a job, the labor should be paid, the worker needs to be paid, the management of the rescue center should be paid, like Mike alone to do three people's things, one person to take care of such a large rescue center, and even because he studied medicine, so he saved a lot of medical expenses, why shouldn't there be a pay?
There are other rescue centers on Koh Samui, and even the Relief Foundation posts regularly online to seek public help in its operation, which is normal abroad. If the people who rescue animals can't even guarantee their normal life, how can they rescue animals?
Management Guru Peter. Drucker said:
The mission of non-profit organizations is to transform people and society.
The purpose of charitable donation is not to be donated because of poverty, but because people of insight have chosen to do good!
This is a manifestation of the progress of human civilization!