Joan Miller. (Beth Clifton collage)Architect turned lobbyist won 1990 law needing California shelters to do spay/neuter prior to adoption
Joan Miller, 88, who for more than thirty years bridged the divide in between cat elegant breeders and the gentle neighborhood by directing funds into spay/neuter work and effort into collective tasks, passed away from problems of pneumonia on May 16, 2023 in San Diego, California, with her other half Peter Keys at her side.
Maddie’s Adoption Center at the San Francisco SPCA.Architect
Born in Scarsdale, New York, Joan Miller participated in Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts from 1953 to 1957, making a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in architecture and interior decoration.
“I worked for two architectural firms in San Francisco and spent one year in Sydney, Australia as interior designer for a large hotel project,” Joan Miller remembered on LinkedIn.
“I then became director of Herman Miller Space Planning in San Francisco,” after which “I started my own business in 1965. My work for over 30 years,” Joan Miller composed, “was primarily interior design for commercial offices, airline terminal interiors, hotel and restaurant design.
“For 13 years I was the design consultant for Ghirardelli Square, a prominent shopping center in San Francisco. I selected artwork for all projects and built a large fine art collection for U.S Leasing Corporation/USL Capital, an ongoing client for over 10 years.”
Maddie’s Adoption Center at the San Francisco SPCA.From San Francisco SPCA to Maddie’s Fund
Joan Miller retired from architecture in 1997 after adding to the acclaimed style of Maddie’s Adoption Center at the San Francisco SPCA.
Funded by PeopleSoft creators David and Cheryl Duffield, called after their schnauzer Maddie, building Maddie’s Adoption Center was the partnership in between the Duffields and after that-San Francisco SPCA president Richard Avanzino that led 2 years later on to the 1999 reorientation of the previous Duffield Family Foundation to end up being Maddie’s Fund, promoting no-kill safeguarding with a preliminary endowment of more than $200 million.
Joan Miller, nevertheless, appears to have actually had no active function with any of that.
Joan Miller circa 1981 with Abyssinian cat.Cat Fancier’s Association
Becoming a Cat Fanciers’ Association all-breed judge in June 1981, “I thoroughly enjoyed my 32 years judging the finest pedigreed cats in the USA and the world,” Joan Miller kept in mind. “I was thrilled to judge cats in the early years of Cat Fanciers’ Association international growth. Memorable foreign shows included one of the first held in Moscow, Russia, and the second cat show ever held in China.”
Elected to the Cat Fanciers’ Association board of directors in 1987, Joan Miller served 25 years because capability, consisting of as CFA vice president from 2008 to 2012.
(Beth Clifton collage)Cat Writers’ Association
Even after retiring from the Cat Fanciers’ Association board, Joan Miller continued as chair of CFA outreach and education, and from 2012 to 2014 was a board member of the Cat Writers’ Association.
Joan Miller likewise chaired the Cat Fanciers feline health committee for several years, served for 16 years as president of the Winn Feline Foundation, served on the board of advisers for the Cornell Feline Health Center for ten years, and served for 15 years on the board of advisers of the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis school.
Joan Miller. (Vicki Nye/Facebook image)Lobbyist
Joan Miller might have ended up being best understood, nevertheless, as Cat Fanciers’ Association legal organizer, and later on, from 2008 to 2014, as Cat Fanciers’ Association legal info intermediary.
“I monitored federal, state and local legislation in the U.S., and sent alerts to a large grassroots network to oppose laws detrimental to the breeding and selling of pedigreed cats, any laws harmful to pet ownership, or to the un-owned community cat population,” Joan Miller remembered.
“I attended hearings and offered guidance with points to make as well as letters to present the view of CFA and cat fanciers on issues.”
(Beth Clifton collage)Won California law needing shelters to repair dogs & cats prior to release
Margaret Anne Cleek, an ANIMALS 24-7 board member given that 2020, remembered that Joan Miller was the driving force behind modifying an awkwardly worded 1990 “mandatory dog and cat sterilization” expense into an extremely effective state law needing public animal shelters to decontaminate dogs and cats prior to release.
This requirement was based upon research study by Lewis Robert Plumb (1923-2001), a retired Chico State University teacher of physics and leader of animal overpopulation research study, who with his spouse Charlotte cofounded the Promoting Animal Welfare Society in Paradise, California, throughout the early 1980s.
Marvin Mackie. DVM.“Get 70% or flunk!”
Plumb found throughout the mid-1980s that unsterilized dogs and cats rehomed to the general public by animal shelters really contributed more puppies and kittens to pet overpopulation than intentional breeding by both fanciers and industrial breeders integrated.
Plumb likewise was very first to use the animal recreation logarithms found by the Italian mathematician Fibonacci (1170-1250) to dog and cat population control through spay/neuter, producing the “Get 70% or flunk!” guideline that specifies success or failure in animal contraception programs.
(See Pet Overpopulation and the 70% Rule, by Marvin Mackie, DVM.)
Richard Avanzino circa 1980.Fight over the “Feline Fix Bill”
Despite her 1990 legal success, Joan Miller in 1993-1994 discovered herself at chances with the majority of the California humane and animal rights neighborhood in opposition to a so-called “Feline Fix Bill,” AB 302, which mandated that free-roaming cats over the age of 4 months be sanitized.
AB 302 was near passage when in early 1993 Miller explained to Richard Avanzino that the phrasing of it may be utilized as a pretext to eliminate feral cats.
Avanzino––a lawyer and lobbyist for the pharmaceutical market prior to ending up being San Francisco SPCA president in 1976––required changes to safeguard the capability of feral cat rescuers to preserve neuter/release nests.
That’s when it ended up being clear that the sponsor of the expense, the National Audubon Society, had eliminating feral cats in mind the whole time.
Persuaded by Miller and Avanzino, the Fund for Animals withdrew assistance for AB 302 in January 1994, after which gentle society and animal rights support for the expense broke down.
(Beth Clifton collage)Funding to repair 60,000 feral cats
Joan Miller in 2007 assisted to eliminate a comparable expense. During the argument over that expense, both Joan Miller and Margaret Anne Cleek explained that in Cleek’s words, “Casual feral cat feeders are adding to the problem,” significance that any phrasing implied to exempt neuter/return professionals from a few of the punitive language in the expense would need to be extremely thoroughly crafted to prevent developing a loophole permitting feeding without sanitation.
Meanwhile, Joan Miller in a 1993 short article for the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association specified feral cats as “those who generally do not voluntarily accept handling by humans, and are “feral, independent wildlife” or “feral, interdependent free-roaming/unowned.”
Using this meaning, Maddie’s Fund in August 1999 given $3.2 million to the California Veterinary Medical Association to fund spay/neuter of 60,000 feral cats in California above and beyond the number modified in 1998.
Joan Miller.(Arden Moore Facebook image)
USDA-APHIS regulative change
Among Joan Miller’s lesser-known lobbying achievements was the adoption of a February 2, 2001 change to the federal Animal Welfare Act enforcement policies that enables the USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service [APHIS] to position federally seized animals with some non-USDA certified individuals or centers, such as gentle societies and sanctuaries which are not under USDA jurisdiction due to the fact that they are not usually participated in interstate commerce.
This change, Joan Miller informed ANIMALS 24-7, “allows APHIS inspectors to move more quickly and efficiently to remove animals [from abusive situations] when necessary for their health, and get them into the hands of shelters and rescue organizations that can care for their needs.”
(Beth Clifton collage)The Rexelle case
Miller was inspired to look for the Animal Welfare Act enforcement policies change by her experience with popular program cat breeder Debra Rexelle.
Fined for keeping more than 50 cats on her property without the appropriate license in 1993, Rexelle remained in August 2000 discovered in ownership of 212 cats, plus 50 dead cats, at her leased home near Modesto, California.
“Rexelle was immediately suspended from all Cat Fanciers’ Association activities and registration services as soon as the CFA board was made aware of the raid and impoundment, and on preliminary investigation by the CFA Animal Welfare Committee,” Joan Miller informed ANIMALS 24-7. “At a CFA board of directors hearing she was permanently suspended from all CFA services and activities for life, commencing on February 4, 2001,” Joan Miller included.
(Beth Clifton collage)Conviction
Defense lawyer Lisa Fitzgerald Wagner argued that Rexelle was framed by envious competitors. Rexelle declared the dead cats were delegated rot in order to restore their skeletons for clinical research study, which she had actually passed an evaluation by regional animal control officers in February 2000.
Finally Rexelle and Wagner called Joan Miller and Cat Fanciers’ Association reveal judge Lindajean Grillo to affirm in Rexelle’s defense.
Miller and Grillo each affirmed that Rexelle took excellent care of the cats they saw at cat programs, however acknowledged having actually never ever checked out Rexelle at her home.
Rexelle was on May 17, 2002 founded guilty of 4 felonies and 4 misdemeanors, however was acquitted of 9 other charges, consisting of a felony count connecting to the discovery of the 50 dead cats.
Esther Mechler, Peter Keys, and Joan Miller. (Facebook image)“Unsurpassed in her devotion to cats”
“Joan was unsurpassed in her devotion to cats, and by no means just purebreds,” remembered Esther Mechler, director of numerous spay/neuter programs given that starting Animal Rights Hawaii in 1974.
Forming the nationwide SpayUSA program in 1990, hosted by the North Shore Animal League America given that 1993, Mechler hosted the series of conferences from which the Alliance for Contraception in Cats & Dogs emerged in 2006, with Joan Miller as an active individual.
Mechler retired from SpayUSA in 2010, going on to form another spay/neuter organization, Marian’s Dream, in memory of her sibling, which promotes awareness that cats ought to be made sterile prior to 5 months of age to avoid “oops” pregnancies.
Peter Keys with Joan Miller.Marian’s Dream
At around the exact same time, Mechler informed ANIMALS 24-7, Joan Miller and Peter Keys “met at the San Diego airport on August 19, 2010. They fell in love at first sight, and were married on February 22, 2012 in Scottsdale, Arizona.”
Gradually withdrawing from her Cat Fanciers’ Association and Cat Writers’ Association activities throughout the next couple of years, Joan Miller put ever more time into assisting Mechler build Marian’s Dream.
“Joan worked tirelessly to bring prominent veterinarians to the Veterinary Task Force on Feline Sterilization table at the North American Vet Conference in Orlando, in January of 2016,” Mechler said. “She invited progressive, proactive veterinarians from the American Animal Hospital Association, American Association of Feline Practitioners, and the American Veterinary Medical Association to discuss the optimum age at which to spay and neuter cats, knowing that this would impact the well-being of cats everywhere.
(Beth Clifton collage)“Most people want to be responsible”
“They came,” Mechler continued, “discussed the pros and cons, and in the end, they unanimously endorsed a series of five statements regarding the best time for cat spays as well as neuters. All of these participants took the information back to their organizations. Within 18 months all had formally endorsed the statements,” producing the Feline Fix by Five campaign.
Explained Joan Miller, “Most people want to be responsible; they do not want litters or the behaviors that come with a female cat in season or a male who sprays and fights. The problem is that most people don’t realize that cats can come into season so early,” a month younger than dogs.
“Fix Felines by Five Months gets to the heart of the problem,” Joan Miller included. “If outdoor cats are not altered, they will be in season, pregnant or nursing; unwanted kittens will be born. That’s the bottom line.”
Joan Miller in unusual image without a cat.Fought Parkinson’s illness by singing
Mechler chosen Joan Miller for a life time accomplishment award she received in 2017 from the American Veterinary Medical Association.
By then, composed Pam Kragen for the San Diego Union Tribune, “after suffering a few falls, [Joan Miller] was diagnosed with a fast-moving form of Parkinson’s disease that left her in a wheelchair and her speech so faint that she used an amplified headset to communicate. But at a party earlier this month [December 2016], Miller-Keys joined in singing Christmas carols and even danced a few steps to ‘Feliz Navidad’ in the arms of her husband.
Beth & Merritt CliftonJoan Miller, Kragen explained, was “a member of the Tremble Clefs, a free choir for people with Parkinson’s disease.”
“This has become our major social activity,” Peter Keys informed Kragen. “Joanie was world-famous in her field and we traveled to every continent of the globe together, so when she had to give it up, she was heartbroken. This has become our outlet, so important for both of us.”
