Thanks to the overwhelming support of Americans on the petition against cat dissection in the high school classroom—now at 103,000 signatures—Brynnan and I were invited to discuss our position on a Charlottesville, VA NBC 29 news station.
We are grateful to our signers who have made this possible—on behalf of those cats who cannot speak for themselves, and the students who are too afraid to speak out against this kind of traumatic experimentation in our school systems.
As I made clear in the TV interview, “This [cutting up of cats by high school students]engenders a lack of respect for companion animals, and that’s the complete opposite of what we should be telling our students.”
My daughter Brynnan further drives home the point in the interview: “We can’t dissect these cats, they are our companions…they are what we love, what we come home to, what we care about.”
In speaking to a reporter from Culpeper County, VA yesterday, I was asked how many signatures will be enough to create change? I told her that was exactly the question, isn’t it?
If 103,000 people are telling a school district that the practice is morally wrong, yet the school district is still passing out rhetoric like “We are following all guidelines set forth by the state of Virginia” instead of taking the concerns of parents, students, and citizens across the world seriously and making a plan to end this archaic practice, just how many people standing up WILL it take?
I guess that remains to be seen.
Let’s keep sharing the petition and gathering signatures. I hope you’ll help. Remember that even though this particular petition is directed toward Culpeper High School in Virginia, the more signatures we gather the more influenced other school districts will be to end the practice, too. Even though some counties local to us still continue this practice, others told the reporter that they ended it years ago.
This in and of itself reveals that some schools already acknowledge the inhumane message sent by this practice; if we all stand together, we can make sure cat dissection is ‘off the menu’ all across America. Thank you!
Here’s the TV interview:
http://www.nbc29.com/story/30949320/mother-protesting-dissections-of-cats-at-culpeper-public-schools
Here’s the petition again (Also note, along the right hand side you can contribute a small amount to change.org to share the petition to a wider audience if you’d like, but it’s not required. Share and reshare again! Thank you)
https://www.change.org/p/don-t-force-our-children-to-skin-cats
