“Cat Whisperer” advocates for animal rights and encourages volunteerism

With several cases of animal abuse popping up over the past year in Prince Albert, it’s clear the rights and safety of animals are not at the forefront of everybody’s mind.

Not only does Galaxy go from animal shelter to animal shelter sharing what he knows and teaching everyone he can about how to understand cats, but he’s also active in trying to change laws to better serve our four-legged companions.

When asked, in his experience, how someone can help bring awareness to issues of animal abuse or animal cruelty Galaxy said, “I find a lot of times folks don’t really let it hit home unless it has to do with other humans. I think the thing you have to realize is that if there is animal abuse happening in your home, if you’re not caring about the animals, remember that it’s humans next.”

He said rarely do abusers stop with animals and that animal abuse needs to be taken seriously.

“One of the things I teach every day is to value the lives of animals more, to elevate their status a little bit more.”

He said the life of an animal is just as valuable as the life of a human.

“Our laws should bolster up our SPCA more than they do. It should be a much larger crime to abuse an animal than it is currently right now, so we can start by reforming those laws,” Galaxy said.

He said the process of changing laws can be systematic, “the voices of government, at least from the ones I’ve approached, at least on a federal level, have always been a little bit like ‘we’ve got bigger things to deal with.’”

“But on a local level we’ve gotten a lot of response. For instance, I’m a huge proponent of outlawing declawing of cats, which in the Canadian world is illegal … so what we do is we attack those laws on a city by city basis as we’ve done in California. [We’ve] gotten declawing outlawed in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Hollywood, Santa Monica, we’ve gotten them one-by-one. If we can’t do it from the state level we’ll take it down to the local level,” he explained.

“One of the things I ask people to do is get involved to the point where it’s just locally, act locally, by that measure we can change the reality a little bit more.”

Galaxy is a believer in shelters adopting a no-kill policy and would eventually like to see all shelters adopt that philosophy.

Galaxy himself worked at shelters where he had to euthanize animals.

“Who wants to live in a place where we kill millions of animals a year, nobody … I have put more animals to sleep than a person should have live through, because of that and that experience … my life’s work is now saving them from that reality and saving the humans who have to do that job,” he explained.

In the United States of America three to five million animals are killed in shelters every year and Galaxy said since he’s been working in the movement for 18 years that number has been decreased from over 12 million killed every year.

“We’re making progress. I am sure that in my lifetime that we can achieve this no-kill reality, we just have to wake up a little bit.”

How My Cat from Hell came to be

Galaxy was out doing what he’s always done since becoming involved with shelters and cats, going into people’s homes to work with their cats and teaching classes.

“I was teaching a class in Hollywood and I had a guy who turned out to be an independent producer see my stuff and he basically did that classic Hollywood thing, that ‘You do that with cats?!’ … You know [with] the way I look and everything the next thing you know I’m putting together a sizzle reel for a show and it went really well,” Galaxy explained.

After he put together a demo reel for Animal Planet Galaxy never thought he’d get to season one, let alone season four.

He said it was an “iffy proposition the whole time.”

“Even though Animal Planet always loved the show and stood behind me with amazing passion there was always this fear I think, on the networks side, that cat people wouldn’t tune in and I had the same fear,” Galaxy said.

“But [cat people did tune in] and they did in growing numbers and now we’re the number one show in Canada sometimes, depending on the week, and that’s pretty amazing for us.”

He said when he’s not working on the show he continues to volunteer in shelters and help teach what he knows.

For more on Jackson:

Visit his official website or Facebook page.

swallace@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahthesquid

by paNOW

“Cat Whisperer” advocates for animal rights and encourages volunteerism

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