Elite Animals of West Hollywood Battles Nine-Week Siege by Animal Welfare Community With Unusual Tactics

            Elite Animals Resorts to Sorcery to Repel Animal Rights Activists

                                                 By Carole Raphaelle Davis

                                                       Activists protesting outside Elite Animals in WEHO 

Elite Animals, a pet store in West Hollywood, California, has endured nine consecutive weeks of protests by animal welfare activists. Neither side is budging but Elite Animals is showing signs of battle weariness. 

The Companion Animal Protection Society  (CAPS ) conducted an investigation  of Elite Animals' breeders which revealed footage and still photos of breeding dogs suffering in inhumane conditions. The dogs in the mill that supply Elite Animals are exposed to the elements, living in rusted wire cages and many of them are sick and injured. CAPS also has evidence of USDA inspection reports of repeated violations by several of Elite's suppliers  in the Midwest. 

In addition to selling dogs from puppy mills, Elite Animals also sells puppies under the age of six months from Russia. Importing puppies under the age of six months old for resale from overseas is a violation of the federal Farm Bill passed in 2008.

Animal advocates hope the protests will push the store to convert to a humane business model and that Elite Animals will begin to work with reputable rescue organizations, making their profits from supplies and services, not from selling animals raised in factory-like conditions.  Elite Animals' owners did make a visit to the Amanda Foundation in Beverly Hills several weeks ago but no formal agreement with that rescue organization or any other has been announced.  

Because the siege by protesters has deterred so many potential customers, two puppies, a Moscow Terrier and a Maltese have not found buyers and are outgrowing their cages inside the store. Activists are concerned that this long period of confinement in small glass enclosures with no socialization is detrimental to a dog's well being. To our knowledge, these dogs have never been taken out for a walk. Representatives from several local rescue organizations have offered to take the dogs and find them adoptive homes but they have been rebuffed. 

These two dogs are considered "easy placements" by rescue organizations. Loving and stable homes could be found within days if Elite Animals would agree to transfer ownership to a rescue organization. An ownership surrender document accompanied by an agreement to cease and desist from acquiring animals from commercial breeders would also move the negotiations forward and, most likely, would halt the protesting of the store.  

Last week, Elite Animals closed for five consecutive days with the two dogs inside the store, alarming animal welfare advocates. The City of West Hollywood and animal services intervened, calling the owners and imposing an emergency inspection. The dogs had food and water and the store was not cited for violations at that time.

There is nothing illegal about the store leaving a dog in a cage for 24 hours a day, as long as he has food and water. Animal welfare advocates believe that though this treatment is not illegal, it is inhumane. 

On July 11, week nine of the protest siege, a bizarre and culturally intriguing scene unfolded. 

Outside, animal rights protesters chanted, "Elite! Elite! The meanest on the street!" Inside, the owners of the store, who are middle-aged Russian women, were visibly unsettled. They seemed highly agitated. One of them brought a heavy, crystal ball, the size of a bowling ball, from the back of the store and perched it ceremoniously on an ornate gold pedestal at their front desk. 

Her face hidden behind long black hair, she placed a ghoulish-looking figurine next to the crystal ball. It looked like a scene from the movie "Rosemary's Baby." The figurine she was posing in front of the crystal ball looked demonic, with a long, black cloak--it looked like a child's evil action figure or a cult object used for black magic. Then, oddly, the woman with the long dark hair walked briskly to the back of the store and returned with a fistful of loose, ten-inch long black bird feathers. She then hovered over the crystal ball, muttering--possibly some kind of incantation, while she waved the black feathers back and forth over the satanic figurine. 

"They're actually putting a spell on us!" yelled one of the activists. "Quick! Spit three times!" said activist Kimmy-Sue, laughing. "I'm half gypsy," said Elizabeth, another protester.

This group of activists is highly experienced, having converted or shut down a large number of puppy mill fronts in the last two years. They have endured a barrage of insults and and have stood their ground against physical intimidation and harassment from store owners in the past. Sorcery is an unfamiliar form of bullying by dog dealers. 

If Elite's magical spells are effective, maybe they can teach us how to wave those magic black feathers over our local shelters so that an actual miracle can occur--a loving home for every homeless pet dying at the pound.

For animal activists, questions remain unanswered.

1. When will the store realize it has no alternative but to go humane?

2. When will they release the dogs suffering in their cages to a rescue organization?

3. When will they admit the truth that they have been lying to consumers about the fact that they are supplied by puppy mills?

4. Where did they get those large black feathers? Did the birds just GIVE them the feathers? 

Given where their dogs come from, the worst mills in the Midwest, it's doubtful they acquired their special incantation feathers humanely. 

Michael Jackson's Former Animals Live in a Creepy Zoo

This Michael Jackson guy really left a mess behind him. I'm taking about the animals he abandoned. Basically, they were all dumped. My mom tracked down where a lot of his animals ended up and believe me, you wouldn't want to live there behind the chain link fence.

Michael Jackson's private zoo was auctioned off when he split to go shopping in Bahrain. One of the buyers is an "educational zoo and recreational park" in Oklahoma where they are asking for money to support M.J.'s abandoned animals. What a load of cat poop that is. 

This is lifted directly from their phony rescue park  (www.gwpark.org) where people can gawk at Michael Jackson's animals behind bars and in cages. 

Check it out:

"In the "Movie Free Willy" Michael Jackson sang "Will You Be There"

Which made the Movie heart warming. It was sad to hear about the king of pop's death but the animals at the G.W. Exotic Animal Park, which once belonged to Michael, will long live his memory here at the park.

Help us make the Michael Jackson Memorial for his animals"

What's sad is that these crooks are making money off his death, jailing his former animals and making dumbasses think they actually care about these animals they bought. 

Look at this poor lion. I'm just a dog from death row but I've got way better digs than that.

On the website for this creepy place, there is an entire section devoted to slamming animal rights. Look here how they frighten animal welfare people:  http://www.gwpark.org/newkirk.html

And then they shamelessly ask YOU to pay for Michael Jackson's animals! 

Yeah, right. Like I would send them anything other than an atomic fart bomb. 

Sure woulda been nice if Michael Jackson had taken care of his animals to make sure they went to a sanctuary instead of this creepy joint, where you pay these greedy animal jailers to hook up your RV and have fun poking your finger at caged wild animals. 

May this "park" owner suffer the bites of ten-thousand fleas, twenty-thousand gnats, and may he forever be picking millions of ticks out of his ears.  

Beverly Hills Ruling on Ordinance to Criminalize Stray Cat Feeders

                 Jinky, the dog of a Hollywood wife goes to Beverly Hills City Council meeting and mouths off

There are some really spoiled and mean nitwits in Beverly Hills. Boy, am I glad that lady who complained about a little bit of cat food in her alley is not my neighbor because I'd have to leave her a giant pile right where she walks around in her robe in the morning.  It'll get on her slippers right when she's having coffee and she'll track it into her precious house.

So the other night, my mom makes me go to a really, really, long meeting at Beverly Hills City Hall. Mom sneaked me in her bag and they didn't know I was there.  It was really boring listening to the "problems" they have in Beverly hills, like that a basement is really a ground floor and that people are mad about how expensive yoga classes are getting and how the city should pay for the yoga classes. Wow. I had to distract myself by counting how many people were farting in the auditorium. I think I caught the scent of a councilman letting go at one point. 

So here's what this super long meeting was about: 

1. There's a nice lady who feeds stray cats.

2. There's a mean lady who hates the nice lady AND stray cats. She thinks they ought to starve.

3. The nice lady is not only feeding the stray cats, she's also spaying and neutering them so we don't have too many cats in Beverly Hills (I'm happy to help her trap them, I can chase them right into the trap thingie anytime she wants, she can just call me, I'm really good at it). 

4. There's an old dumbass Beverly Hills rule that you can't feed stray animals in public in Beverly Hills. Who made up that rule? What are we supposed to do if somebody dumps us? Are we supposed to just die slowly in the street? Uh...I'd like to bite that guy, whoever he is.

 After they heard all the experts making minced meat out of the mean lady, the council is gonna think about it. They need to think about it? If they could think at all, they'd just tell that pinch-faced meanie she's wasting everybody's time. Everybody's got to eat, including cats. 

Here's what nasty sour puss lady is afraid of:

She 's afraid the left over cat food in her alley is going to attract rats, coyotes, cockroaches and crows. Boy, I think she's got cat litter for brains. First of all, cockroaches have been here, in Beverly Hills, for, like, a million years! Way before Rodeo Drive was here and way before sourpuss moved here. And guess what? Cockroaches are going to dance on her property after she is dust. Way after she's moved out of Beverly Hills and off the planet. 

Rats. She doesn't want rats in her alley. She needs to wake up because rats live here, lady. It's not cat food that brought them here. It's life. She's better think about rats a little more, maybe read a little history about the black death. Rats were blamed for killing 1/3 of the population in Europe in the 1300s. But it wasn't the rats, dummy! It was the fleas! If they had front line, they would have lived. Anyway, rats are gonna be in her alley and probably inside her house for a long time whether or not anybody feeds a stray cat outside her precious door. Personally, I hope one crawls into her bed to keep her company because she must be pretty lonely and bored right now. I like rats. I like to chase them. They live in our garden and they are cool with me.They pretend they're scared, run up trees---it's a whole game we play. They don't bother anybody. They got a bad rap in the 14th century, that's all. The Jews got a bad rap too back in the 14th century. They too were falsly accused of causing the black death by "poisoning wells." 

There's always a heartless idiot making trouble.

Coyotes. Wow, she's scared that coyotes are coming to eat the left over cat food. What a dumbass. The coyotes live here! We live in their digs, get it? And they like to eat the cat food inside the cat before it's digested. They eat cats, rats and other small animals. So if you don't like rats, mean lady, then you should LOVE coyotes because they chase the starving kitties you have no compassion for away, get it? Wow are you dense. You're about as dense as a brain-dead Chihuahua. Me? I'm scared of coyotes but I respect them. I know we are building on their land and they need a place to do their thing. Who are we to move them? Coyotes are not after cat food. They come into my place and drink my pool. That's cool, Mom keeps me inside unless she's there with me. 

I really hope a coyote bites mean anti-stray cat lady but they won't because they're way too smart to do that. If a coyote bit one, single, blown-out, overdone, plastified, divorced, botoxed, Beverly Hills hag, there would be a massacre and they know it. The City Council would probably vote that in before you could say, 'Bulgari-is-having-a-sale."

Crows. Sourface is afraid that crows will fly into the alley behind her house to eat the cat food. Yikes! Is there no limit to how pea-brained this woman is? Crows live here too. And just FYI, they are smarter than sourpuss stray-cat-hater. I know crows are not even worried about this at all. In fact, I just saw them shitting on her car, on her windows and at the next really long meeting, they will follow her to City Hall so they can shit on her head.

What sourpuss really needs is to move to a hermetically sealed condo that gets blasted into outer space, where she can completely control every aspect of her space...out there, far away in space.  

I really hope this nasty lady is never homeless because if she ever becomes homeless, nobody will feed her.  

Wanna complain and tell City Council what hey ought to do?

Here ya go...

You may reach city officials by phone at:
• Mayor Nancy Krasne, (310) 285-1000
• City Attorney Laurence S. Wiener and prosecutor Maria S. Chung, at (310) 285-1055
• Vice mayor Jimmy Delshod and council members Barry Brucker, William Warren Brien, M.D. and John A. Mirisch, (310) 285-1013.

Michael Jackson: Lover of Animals or Callous Collector?

Abandoned giraffe cage at Michael Jackson's private zoo

July 3, 2009 ADMJ --Carole Raphaelle Davis

Michael Jackson did not love animals. He loved to collect them. He loved owning them like a sheik owns his harem.

As details emerge about the bizarre life of Michael Jackson, questions about the animals who were housed in his private zoo of exotic pets remain unanswered. Members of the animal welfare community wonder whether Jackson was truly an animal lover or merely a collector who abandoned his dozens of exotic pets, leaving them to be scattered, with no endowment, in different facilities around the country.

Recent photographs of Michael Jackson's private zoo have been released by TMZ.com. The photographs are of the emptied interior and the abandoned grounds of Jackson's Neverland Ranch north of Santa Barbara. The photographs of the zoo enclosures are particularly disturbing to some in the animal protection movement.

Jackson owned wild animals, including giraffes, elephants, tigers, crocodiles and monkeys and housed them in what appears to be caged conditions. Though the animals' enclosures might not have been illegal, they were inhumane. And though no animals currently reside there, their former home reveals much about how the animals lived.

Elephant cage at Michael Jackson's private zoo

Mr. Jackson bought the ranch in the late 1980s. There, he set up a zoo to house exotic pets. What happened to them when he left the ranch — and the United States — after his acquittal on charges that he molested a teenage cancer survivor in 2003?

There are numerous reports that the animals were sold at auction, that some went to sanctuaries, that some are being cruelly warehoused in Arizona, that caretakers were not paid after he left the property and that Michael Jackson was sued by his veterinarian for a six-figure unpaid bill for treatment of the Neverland animals.

Though the rooms inside the home look luxurious, the enclosures for his private collection of large, wild animals look woefully inadequate. The cages and outdoor enclosures appear not to meet the minimum standards of humane care that is required for the well-being of the animals living there. The photo of the elephant cage tells the story of a grim existence.

"It's a very small space with a concrete floor which is detrimental to elephants' joints and feet," says Catherine Doyle, elephant specialist and Los Angeles director of campaigns for In Defense of Animals. "It looks like a concrete cell. It's no way to keep an elephant; there's no way that type of enclosure could ever meet their needs. It's a depressing, small, impoverished space."

"Elephants walk tens of miles a day and their home ranges measure hundreds of square miles," continued Catherine Doyle. "They have extremely complex social structures and they live in tightly knit family groups in which the females stay together for life. It's like looking at a prison cell looking at these pictures."

I spoke to undercover investigator Jack Stevens on July 4th. He is an elephant expert, having worked hands on with them both in the Circus and at an Elephant Sanctuary. " I can state categorically that the pictures of the enclosures I've seen at Michael Jacksons Neverland Ranch are grossly inadequate to house an Elephant, " he said. "Unless the Elephant was given long term access to vast acreage on other parts of the ranch where he/she could roam around unimpeded at his/her own leisure I would say that cage bordered on the inhumane."

                                      Abandoned outdoor enclosure at Michael Jackson's zoo

There are thousands of pictures on the Internet of Neverland ranch and many on-line albums on photo sharing websites that have been uploaded by visitors to Michael Jackson's zoo. In every picture I could find, there are none where the animals are roaming. It makes sense that the zoo keepers would keep potentially dangerous animals from having access to visitors. The grounds are obviously not equiped like a sanctuary, where a visitor can observe wild animals in a naturalistic setting. The Neverland grounds, even in their decayed and delapidated state, look like what they are: a children's amusement park which also had zoo animals on display. This was a zoo and as far as zoos go, not a very enriching one for its captives.

"It reminds me of the pictures you see coming out of Guantanamo," said Jack Stevens. "Elephants are highly social, intelligent, sentient beings. To house a single elephant in a concrete cell is cruel. Let's not forget that the elephant who was confined in a tiny stall had his/her own family and friends and no doubt longed for them but was denied because of the selfishness of humans."

I spoke with Jane Garrison, an animal advocate and contributing author of "Elephants and Ethics" (Johns Hopkins Press). While she was running an international program to protect elephants ten years ago, she was so concerned about a paricular elephant at Michael Jackson's zoo, she contacted the Neverland veterinarian.

"I was horrified that this incredibly social animal was being housed alone and I contacted Michael Jackson's representative to get the elephant moved to a sanctuary, " said Ms. Garrison. "They live their entire lives with their mothers, their sisters, their aunts... so no amount of space could make up for this. Keeping a female elephant alone is actually the cruelest thing you can do to her."

"I tried to get them to retire that elephant and the vet wouldn't budge," continued Ms. Garrison. "They have job security by having an elephant there. Any vet who approves of a female elephant being alone certainly does not have the best interest of the animal at heart."

Ms. Garrison added that even the AZA (Association of Zoos and Aquariums), which is regarded with disdain by the animal rights community for acrediting confinement of animals, is against the housing of a lone female elephant. "There is no way to humanely keep an elephant in captivity when you consider their physical and social needs," she said.

On July 1, CNN issued a report that featured Bubbles, the Chimpanzee Jackson brought on tour with him in the 80's. When Bubbles became "too difficult" (Bubbles bit a hole in Quincy Jone's daughter's hand) he was returned to the trainer who originally bought him from a facility in Texas that breeds chimps for research. The trainer handed Bubbles over to the Great Apes Sanctuary in Florida, where he is retired and thriving with other chimpanzees. As in the case of other Neverland animals, he was surrendered with no endowment for their care.

Fans of Michael Jackson insist he loved Bubbles but a more skeptical look at TMZ photos of Bubbles' former cage reveals that he lived in a zoo, not a sanctuary. He lived a solitary existence in a cage when he wasn't on display. Chimpanzees are social animals and thrive in a naturalistic environment with other chimpanzees. Bubbles was dressed like a toddler and treated like an entertainer for Michael Jackson's pleasure. He is certainly happy now, climbing and enjoying the company of friends, not gawkers.

According to the London Standard, two of Michael Jackson's tigers did not find buyers when his zoo animals were auctioned. Tipi Hedren, who is the mother of actress Melanie Griffith, adopted the tigers after animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) broke the news of the deplorable conditions the animals were living under.

"They, as did 98% of the animals requiring sanctuary at the Shambala Preserve, came with no bank account or dowry," said Tipi Hedren. "As a sanctuary, that's what we do. We rescue exotic felines who have been born in the U.S. to be sold as pets or for commercial use. It is a grave human error to acquire a wild animal as a pet."

Certainly, the desire to own or have dominion over dangerous wild animals has psychological implications. Psychologist, author and animal advocate Jana Kohl told me she wanted to cry when she saw the pictures of Michael Jackon's zoo enclosures. Her opinion of the zoo includes the psychic suffering its owner.

"The physical and emotional abuse Joe Jackson inflicted upon his son, including objectifying Michael as if he were a possession, merely there for his own narcissistic needs, was sadly something Michael repeated himself," said Dr. Kohl. "He thoughtlessly acquired exotic living beings whose own needs were secondary to his insatiable child-like drive to collect and display as many prized possessions as he could, like the priceless objets d'art he bought by the truckloads. The animals were there for his amusement, and whether or not they suffered in cramped or unnatural conditions appeared to be something he was incapable of recognizing. If Michael had spent a fraction of his fortune in therapy, understanding and mourning his painful past, he would have likely made different and more conscious choices, including being able to empathize with creatures who have no voice, just as he had no voice as a child, other than the one he created for performing."

Michael Jackson might have professed to love animals but upon closer inspection, his relationship to them was less than loving. You don't sell your pets when you tire of them. Nor should you buy pets that you can't commit to for their lifetime. A responsible pet guardian makes arrangements for their care.

Michael Jackson used wild animals for his entertainment and as a lure to delight the children he wanted to surround himself with and then he abandoned them, both financially and emotionally.

Supposedly unable to care for his private zoo as a result of "financial troubles," Jackson continued his lavish spending right until the end, where he was leasing a California castle for $100,000 a month while his former animals, the ones lucky enough to live in sanctuaries, depend on donations from the public.

As the public waits to discover the specific contents of the Michael Jackson family trust, a private document that instructs how his assets are to be allocated, some of us in the animal protection movement hope that a few dollars will go towards the animals he abandoned. So far, the details released to the press are as follows: 40% to his mother. 40% to his children. The remaining 20% is to be distributed to undisclosed children's charities.

Nothing to animals.

Michael Jackson never visited Bubbles once he gave him away. Maybe John Branca, the executor of his estate, will throw him a banana.

Carole Raphaelle Davis is the author of "The Diary of Jinky, Dog of a Hollywood wife" and West Coast Director of The companion Animal Protection Society

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