Our Friends the Animals

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22540, 3 October 1936, Page 8 (Supplement)

Our Friends the Animals

WORLD DAY OBSERVANCE

DEAR BOYS AND GIRLS.— QNCE again our attention is called to the cause of our animal friends by World Day for Animals, which will be observed to-morrow. Many are the loyal workers in Auckland who are devoting their and ungrudging labour to the betterment of conditions under which animals work, live, and die, but they could do very much more if more liberal support were given to the only society which interests itself exclusively in the animals' welfare, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Among our four-footed friends who should be remembered on World Animal Sunday is a little Auckland doggie named Jeff, owned by Miss Caulfield, of Mount Eden. For the past three or four years Jeff's collection box for the S.P.C.A. has helped swell the fund most generously, and Jeff has been the most eager of all the society s unpaid workers. His mistress, too, does all she possibly can for sick animals, and Jeff and his box report punctually for duty at every S.P.C.A. function, garden parties, fairs, carnivals. In our page to-day you will find much to interest you, if you are fond of animals. I would particularly like all our girls and boys to read Gloria's story of the little stray cat in Albert Park, and, if you dlon t feel something of a lump in your throat when you get to the end of it, we ll you will be of stronger stuff than most lovers of these little helpless creatures. There is a lesson to every lover of pets in the story. It is so very easy to keep a kitten, or several kittens or puppies when they are tiny, and the children love to play with them. But, presently, they grow into cats and dogs, or the children tire of them. Then all too often they are " thrown over the fence," like the poor little waif in our story, or they are taken in motor-cars out into the country and turned adrift in some lonelv road, to die of starvation or become hunters of birds, and the hunted of dogs and cruel boys. Far kinder would it be to drown the little creatures when they are small, or have them painlessly killed, if you cannot find a home for them when you no longer wish to keep them. Finally, dear boys and girls, never lose the opportunity of speaking a good word for our friends the animals. And if you see another boy or girl acting cruelly or thoughtlessly, then speak to them courageously and try to teach them something of the same lesson of A* kindness you have learned /V * yourselves 1 // f Your friend always for the animals, '