History - All Sentient Beings

Blair Sorrell, a long-time member of our Advisory Board and a highly-regarded animal activist here in NYC, has compiled some facts on the history of our non-profit organisation, All Sentient Beings,Inc.
Here is my account, as told by Blair, for your edification and amusement.










My organization, All Sentient Beings, evolved from my quarter of a century of rescue experience. My love for felines and their caretakers is inseparable from this chronology of spontaneous, hands-on Hell's Kitchen placements. Over time, I have almost single handedly arranged for the vetting, fostering, outreach, and delivery of stray or abandoned neighborhood cats and kittens to responsible homes.

Occasionally these lost souls gravitated to me as one summer a contingent of gray cats migrated to my backyard, a distinctive parade silhouetting the trees and cityscape of my former industrial backdrop. I didn't despair. I did what I always do, calmly and methodically, I got to work. And what was as gratifying as finding good people was the rapport I developed with my loving adopters. They wrote notes then -and now they email and forward their "baby" pictures. Even greater proof of their obvious adoration is how they speak of their kitties when we congregate at my annual adopters' party. Because a little known fact is that when you rescue a cat, you are often really assuaging the guardian's sense of solitude, boredom, stress, or even self-absorption. Adoptions are mutually beneficial and I'm always happy to be the interloper in what have proved to be some of life's most blissful matches.


Now functioning as a non-profit, tax-exempt charity, ASB has as its two-pronged mission the tasks of: a) continuing to participate in the myriad, ongoing rescue and adoption work of all of the similarly-involved local groups as well as: b) raising awareness for Humans to be better, more responsible, committed and informed animal care-givers. This includes information on holistic vet care, quality food and inclusion of Pet Trusts in people's Advance Directives.

We hope that by sharing our background and hopes for the future with you, our public, we can continue our outreach work as an information clearinghouse. Do share our story about our work with as many people as you can and do consider fostering an animal to help save a life.

Many thanks!

The Newest Problem we are facing

I'd be interested in hearing from you, our readers, to know what you suggest we do to try to counteract all the "dumping" and surrendering of "beloved" animals due to financial hardship. We know that conceptually, everyone would agree that they wouldn't give up their kids (I'm assuming) nor would they knowingly take on a pet thinking they'd ever have to make that choice. But it is happening everywhere now, and the Euth. List on Death Row is growing: perfectly healthy and (until now) happy animals are facing this horrible killing.

We are trying so hard to explain to people what sort of commitment they are making when they take an animal from us, and - again, in principle- everyone agrees of course. It is logical and seems perfectly normal. And then....if we're lucky, they at least contact us to re-adopt their pet, so that we are on top of the situation, however tragic it may be. But often they do not contact us and we find out later that the animal has been let go into the street or sent to a Kill shelter.

Let's try to use these columns as a vehicle for communicating and networking, so maybe we can come up with some viable alternatives to the path of least resistance that seems to be today's general solution to this terrible problem.

Items of Interest

There are so many areas to explore, and Pet Trust is probably the top one. If you have suggestions of what you'd like to see posted, please let us know. Also, if you would like to post a comment or write an article for our blog, we are delighted to share our space with appropriate, interesting and informative submissions.

Right now there are so many animals on the Euth list and Death Rows across the country, that we are somewhat limited in time for writing. So do spread the word about our animal rescue work, information clearing house and outreach program. We appreciate it! Thanks!