Let’s make OKC a better place for animals
Conference to raise awareness of treatment
Toddy was a plump ginger cat who lived for many happy years in the Tobermory distillery on Scotland’s Isle of Mull. The Scots love their cats, and vice versa, and visitors would pause beside Toddy’s basket by the front door and give him a “wee stroke.” Each day the local bus stopped outside the distillery, whereupon Toddy would hop out of his basket and get on board, taking his seat beside the driver and enjoying the hourlong circuit of Tobermory and its environs. When Toddy died in 2012, all of Tobermory was bereft.
Toddy would have felt right at home at the Kirkpatrick Foundation’s upcoming triennial ANIMAL Conference, Friday and Saturday, at Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, where adoptable cats will abound in the Showroom cafe; upstairs, an artist will be on hand to draw custom portraits of beloved pets. More of a dog person? A fleet of golden retrievers, the Lutheran Church Charities Comfort Dogs, will be waiting to lay their soulful heads in adoring laps. These furry saints, each with 2,000 hours of comfort training, also will be visiting local nonprofits.
“We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals,” said the philosopher Immanuel Kant, and that’s very much to the point of the ANIMAL Conference and the vision it serves: to make Oklahoma one of the safest and most humane places to be an animal. The conference is planned and hosted by Kirkpatrick Foundation, which for years has devoted resources to improving the lives of animals and the humans with whom they coexist.
At the ANIMAL Conference, attendees will learn from the world’s foremost educators and advocates how we can make our cities and the world at large a friendlier place for creatures great and small. Brian Hare, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University and author of the best-selling “Genius of Dogs,” will help us understand our dogs’ thoughts and needs, while researcher Joshua Plotnik will discuss how the study of elephant intelligence helps diminish the incidence of human conflict with animals in the wild.
Also on hand will be Drew Edmondson, four-term Oklahoma attorney general, and Joe Maxwell, the former lieutenant governor of Missouri, who in 2016 worked with dozens of Oklahoma organizations to successfully defeat the so-called “Right to Farm” proposal, an effort by industry groups and multinational corporations to constitutionally protect such inhumane practices as extreme confinement — the concentration of chickens and pigs in factory farms that prevent them from turning around, lying down, standing up or extending their limbs (Kirkpatrick Foundation led the nonpartisan, public-education campaign). Jonathan Gary, the superintendent of Oklahoma City’s Animal Welfare Division, will discuss a new animal shelter that’s part of MAPS4, and the Common Bonds team will address the statewide initiative to end the needless euthanasia of cats and dogs at municipal shelters throughout Oklahoma.
Above all, the ANIMAL Conference is a great way to meet like-minded animal lovers and learn how we can support endeavors in our own communities — and have fun in the process. Pets are welcome at Campbell Art Park on Saturday morning for a “blessing of the animals,” and attendees can expect animalthemed art such as a paw de deux from Swan Lake by the Oklahoma City Ballet, Animal Soul inflatable sculptures, a Chickasaw storyteller and other performances.
Breakfast, lunch and a snack (vegan, natch) will be provided both days of the conference, and scholarships are available. Everyone is welcome — even a cat in a basket — but space is limited.
The ANIMAL Conference is a masked event, and health and safety protocols are listed on the website. https://theanimalconference.com.