Whether she’s encouraging locals to adopt her “pet of the week,” writing books and for magazines about animals, teaching a Compassionate Critters class at Montecito Union School, or running a local nonprofit animal education group, Karen Lee Stevens’ life truly is “All For Animals.”
Leslie Dinaberg: Why don’t we start with the founding of All For Animals?
Karen Lee Stevens: I credit my founding All For Animals to a stray cat named Cassidy. … There is one pet in everybody’s life I think that you consider your soul mate and this was that animal for me.
There was something about him. He had gentleness about him, he had a grace about him, he was an old soul. He had these big blue, amazingly big round eyes and he would look right at you. Now most cats … kind of look next to you. He looked right at you. He looked at everyone in that way, and there was just something about that that just started me on a different path and a different way of thinking.
LD: Then you started researching animal rights and animal testing?
KS: Yes. It started with this little stray cat that got me thinking in a different way. It also just happened to coincide with the Internet becoming really popular. I thought for a couple years about what I wanted to do to help animals and on Jan. 1, 1997, we launched the All For Animals Web site. My vision was to just be a local resource for animal lovers. So we had links to all the rescue groups in town, links to veterinarians, to pet stores, community events. Early on I knew I always wanted to give back and support local animal shelters and so almost from the beginning we started working with four groups: ASAP Cats, which stands for Animal Shelter Assistance Program; BUNS, which is Bunnies Urgently Needing Shelter; DAWG, the Dog Adoption and Welfare Group; and K-9 Pals which is the K-9 Assistance & Placement League. … They started providing pictures of adoptable pets and I would put them on our Web site and, I’m telling you, from the very beginning until this day that photo gallery page is the most popular part of our entire site. People love it, even if they’re not looking to adopt they’ll go there and look at the pictures.
LD: Really? That’s interesting.
KS: At one point DAWG told me that the All For Animals site was responsible for helping four to six dogs get adopted a month … It just kind of blossomed from there. All of a sudden we were doing a lot with animal rights … I started putting out lists of all the companies that do and do not test products on animals.
… What started out as a resource for animal lovers in Santa Barbara blossomed into an animal rights organization in the last decade, and we were doing a lot of protesting fur, protesting animal testing — all of those sorts of things.
But I felt like I needed to do something happier instead of protesting. It’s much easier to be an example for someone and to educate someone and have them make their own decisions.
So I started writing. The goal with my column is to entertain, engage and sometimes enrage my readers on a multitude of topics.
LD: How did the video project start?
KS: I had heard that DAWG started doing these videos of dogs and cats and I wanted to see what that was all about. … I clicked on the first video. It’s this dog, and I’m watching the people petting him and he’s wagging his tail and giving kisses, and I completely lost it. I was sitting there getting goose bumps with tears streaming down my face and I had one of these Aha! moments … I knew in that instant I wanted to be doing videos.
Pictures of the animals are fantastic; they have helped so many animals get adopted. I felt like this was just taking it to the next level.
LD: So you did some research, found some funding, got the equipment and learned how to shoot the videos?
KS: Pretty much. I just really felt like I needed to do something happier and, because the world is so crazy now and everything is so dark and scary with the economy and working with animals, for me it’s just such a comfort. It’s so happy, and it’s sad because right now every shelter in this country, including every shelter in Santa Barbara, is completely overflowing with animals.
LD: Because of the economy?
KS: Largely because of the economy. When I walked into ASAP Cats two weeks ago I saw every cage was full. I walked back in the next week there were cages lined in the hallways, there were cages outside. I said, “Is it my imagination or are there more cats here than there were last week?” They said, “Oh, no, there’s more.” People just drop them off. They are losing their house, they are losing their jobs, whatever it might be, and these animals have nowhere to go and Santa Barbara shelters don’t put down healthy, adoptable animals simply because there aren’t enough good homes, as many shelters across the country are forced to do. So these animals are healthy, adoptable wonderful pets and they will stay there until someone adopts them.
The same thing over at the dog shelter. They are full, they need volunteers to foster these animals because they don’t have enough runs for them so anybody who can come out and can foster an animal, even take a dog for a weekend just to break the monotony of shelter life.
LD: You’re very passionate about this.
KS: When people say, “Oh, it’s just a dog” or “Oh, it’s just a cat” — it’s not, it’s another life. They deserve to be treated with respect and love. We are such a throwaway society. We toss out husbands and wives and get divorced like you wouldn’t believe, so how can anyone expect that we wouldn’t do that to animals if we can’t treat each other with respect. It all starts with animals. If we can learn to treat them well, I think it will spill over into treating each other better.
LD: That would be nice.
KS: So that’s kind of been our progression over the years. We started off as a local resource, we’ve always been a local resource, we’ve always had that Web site there.
LD: And you have some events coming up?
KS: Yes, a local attorney, Chris Jones, is going to give a free talk on “boning up on pet trusts,” providing for your pets when you die, on Jan. 20 in the café at Lazy Acres Market.
We’re actively doing fundraising right now for the video project. … Noozhawk has generously agreed to carry our adoptable pet videos in its new Pet Pix section so I’m going to be submitting a new pet video every week.
LD: If people want to help what can they do?
KS: In addition to monetary donations and a need for event volunteers and vendors, we also happily accept cars, boats, motorcycles and RVs. We are registered with Cars 4 Causes, which does all the title transfer paperwork and even comes out to the donor’s house to pick up their old motor vehicle (running or not!). Great tax write-off, especially at this time of year.
… We have a major fundraiser coming up in February. It’s a very tasteful family-friendly lingerie fashion show with lingerie from Purrmission.
LD: Family-friendly lingerie?
KS: Well, it just means something you could actually take your kids to: The Purrmission Lingerie Romance and Rescue Fundraiser.
LD: You’ve written and talked a lot about the importance of adopting animals from shelters.
KS: Yes, 25 percent of all shelter animals are purebreds so if you want a certain breed you can get your name on a waiting list and still adopt from there. There are breed rescue groups, too.
LD: With the Internet it seems like it’s not that hard to find what you’re looking for. Especially if you’re a little bit patient.
KS: Exactly. You might have to drive a day to get it, but there are groups and they have these dogs and they are young, healthy dogs. If somebody loses their house it doesn’t matter if they have a mutt or they have a $2,000 designer dog, that dog is going to the shelter.
LD: What else do you do when you’re not working or volunteering?
KS: I’m such a geek. I love working on computers, I really do. If you look at my bookshelf right now. I’m reading a Stephen King book called Duma’s Key, so that’s my one escape novel. Then I’ve got Blogging for Dummies, iMovie for Dummies and Twitter for Dummies. I’ve never read a dummy book in my life and all of a sudden I have three of them.
LD: They have one for Twitter?
KS: Can you believe it? I’ve learned a lot.
LD: If you could pick three adjectives to describe yourself, what would they be?
KS: Bubbly, compassionate and driven.
LD: What do you see as your vision?
KS: I want every adoptable pet in a shelter to have the opportunity to be featured in a video that will help them get a really good home. They deserve that. I want to make every pet a wanted pet and this pet overpopulation problem that we have, it can be solved. The key is education, and I also really think that, in our small way, doing videos is also going to help because whether they are depressing or not people still think of animal shelters as “the pound” of years gone by. They don’t want to go there.
We’re really lucky in Santa Barbara that our shelters aren’t depressing, they’re actually really neat places to go … What I would like to see someday is no animal shelters because that means there are no more homeless pets. That’s our goal.
Vital Stats: Karen Lee Stevens
Born: Aug. 2, 1961, in Santa Barbara
Family: “My mother, Rhoda, my best friend and my biggest All For Animals supporter, and Miss Bella, my cat.”
Civic Involvement: President and founder of the nonprofit All For Animals; supports local animal rescue groups
Professional Accomplishments: After 20 years working in marketing for various companies, Stevens is now the award-winning author of countless magazine and newspaper articles and the book, All For Animals: Tips and Iinspiration for Living a More Compassionate Life. She also teaches an after-school enrichment class at Montecito Union School and is a pet sitter in her spare time.
Best Book You’ve Read Recently: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
Little-Known Fact: “I have horrible insomnia.”
— Noozhawk contributor Leslie Dinaberg can be reached at leslie@lesliedinaberg.com.