Tina Traster, is an award winning journalist, author and filmmaker. Tina directed the award winning documentary Catnip Nation which exposes 3 towns across the country for their political cruelties to feral cats. Oceanside, New York and specifically the Town of Hempstead are one of the 3 towns in the film. See our Facebook page here.
Catnip Nation, is a documentary that sheds light on the crisis of feral cats, TNR as one solution to deal with the issue, and the plights of individuals who devote themselves to these creatures but have to get to do their work in the political and legal arenas.
Tune in for this heartfelt conversation at TalkRadio.nyc or watch the Facebook Livestream by Clicking Here.
The show opens up with Tommy introducing himself and what the show is all about, animal advocacy. Valerie comes in by also introducing herself, Tina’s documentary, Catnip Nation, and reiterates the purpose of the PALS. Tommy then introduces Tina Traster and she comes in and clarifies what she wanted to discuss in today’s show: feral cats, Catnip Nation, and TNR. Tina offers some data about stray cats and the cause of how “colonies,” or groups of stray cats, are made. She then defines what TNR is, Trap-Neuter-Return, and how it can help these colonies of cats. They finish off the segment by touching upon a landfill in Oceanside, New York and red kayaks.
After the ad break, they come back to Tommy reading out Facebook Live comments and reintroducing the show. They return to the original topic of the situation in Oceanside where Valerie was first introduced to animal rights and caught the attention of Tina who was in the middle of making her documentary. Tina explains that her documentary is about the people who take care of the stray cats, how the feral cats crisis is hidden to the public eyes since feral cats are reclusive, and how there is no one leading the legal and political war against the government. Tommy interjects before the ad break to clarify the objective of Tina’s and Valerie’s point of view and discusses what he wants to talk about in the next segment, statistics.
Tommy comes back to ask Tina to describe a photo of a protest in Hempstead. Tina depicts the situation of armed protesters, police cars, and towing trucks. Tommy then asks both Valerie and Tina to describe to him what makes this feral cat crisis a political war. Valerie and Tina explain that it is about the money. Valerie talks about how good activism is when you frame it as a fiscal issue. She expounds with a rhetorical question, “What is the best way to use tax dollars?” Politicians realize that they don’t want to just euthanize the colonies, and they don’t realize that it would be efficient to invest in TNR since it would be the town supporting the shelter instead of the other way around. Tina talks about how politicians give shelter jobs to their political “cronies” instead of actual qualified animal professionals and they use the animal rights to gain votes.
To start off the final segment, Valerie talks about the stories of people who helped with feral cats and the statistics of cat reproduction. She then describes how it is very difficult to bring the crisis into the topic of national news because younger generations are disconnected from the problem; they don’t see it and therefore it doesn’t exist to them. We need a celebrity to bring this to the masses and raise awareness. They close out this week’s episode by shouting out some organizations that are dedicated to helping feral cats through TNR.
