Greetings, cheerful viewers, and welcome to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Today we’ll travel to New York, USA’s picturesque Hudson Valley to visit the loving Catskill Animal Sanctuary, founded by former teacher and animal advocate Kathy Stevens and Jesse Moore.

Ms. Stevens has written a book about this special place called “Where the Blind Horse Sings: Love and Healing at an Animal Sanctuary.” Located in the Catskill Mountains, the 40-hectare haven is home to farm animals who have been rescued from cruelty and neglect. Since its establishment in January 2001, the Sanctuary has saved over 1,500 animals, with some now living permanently at the facility and the rest having been successfully re-homed.

We have right now about 250 animals from 12 different species. We’re a sanctuary for farm animals, so we have horses, donkeys, pot-bellied pigs, sheep, goats, cows, ducks, chickens, geese, rabbits and turkeys.

Right now we’ve got about 20 to 30 of every different species. We’ve got about 30 horses; we’ve got 20-some cows. We’ve expanded a lot in the last year, new pastures, new barns. We’ve got a lot more room right now for the middle-sized animals, pigs, sheep and goats.

Kathy Stevens, a vegan, grew up on a horse farm in Virginia, USA and has always had a special connection with animals. Deciding to follow her heart’s call to help our gentle fellow beings in need, she made a pivotal career change some years back.

I had been a teacher for 10 years, a high school English teacher, and I was offered a job as the principal of a new high school opening in Boston, Massachusetts (USA) and I found myself turning the job down. And I thought, “Hmm, what do I want to do for the rest of my life?” And so I took some time off and I really did some very serious searching.

I took lots of long walks in the woods with my dog Murphy, I spoke with friends and finally what came to me was that I wanted to combine the love that I’d always had for animals and my knowledge that they’re really not so very different from human beings with my passion for education and my belief that education, if it’s done properly, is a transformational experience, and so from those two passions the idea of running an educational sanctuary was born.

With passion and determination, Ms. Stevens created the Catskill Animal Sanctuary, a safe, healing place for abused and abandoned farm animals.

What we do at Catskill Animal Sanctuary is let a number of animals free range, which means they walk; they’re not confined in pastures or stalls. They walk anywhere they would like on this big piece of property. And the reason we do that is because we believe it’s so important for every animal to heal in his own way and at his own pace.

Through workshops and school programs, the Sanctuary provides opportunities for people to learn about and understand the sentient nature of our fellow beings, and the severely detrimental impacts of factory farming on animals, humankind and our precious, shared planet.

We offer this place as a facility for school groups from underprivileged communities to come without charge. And we create different programs depending on the kids’ backgrounds, ages, interests, etc. I also go all over the state as a speaker, primarily to schools because I’m very interested in working with school children. So those are some of the ways that people can take part in what we do.

Surprisingly the farm animals at Catskill Animal Sanctuary do not necessarily come from rural areas. Some come from the largest metropolis in the US – New York City!

People who find animals, and many of our animals do come from Manhattan (New York City), goats wandering around the streets, and ducks and chickens; many of our sheep, goats, ducks and chickens have come from New York City, interestingly. We try to take every single animal we have room for.

We’ll do our best, either to take them in or to find a suitable placement.

Now let’s meet some of the joyful animal residents of the Catskill Animal Sanctuary.

This is Lumpy. Lumpy is a Merino sheep, he’s a very, very old sheep. He and his friends, Aries and Hannah and Rambo enjoy the whole property all day long. Normally, they’re much more active but because it’s cold today, they all hanging out in here where it’s warmer. Hi Lump, hi, Lumpster. Say “Hi, hero!” say “Hi, hero!” “Welcome to Catskill Animal Sanctuary!”

All of these animals are quite good friends. The two chickens are Cheyenne and Barbie, both of whom the poultry industry refers to as “broilers.” Because they’ve been made to grow so quickly, they become very overweight and then they suffer all the health problems.

Same with the two turkeys, Nicole and Agent 44. These birds in a normal environment should live well into their teens. Alright, I’ll give you a scratch; I’ll give a scratch. This is Charley our senior pot-bellied pig.

And this animal right here, the most amazing animal I’ve ever met, I’ll tell you lots of stories about Rambo. Hi, Rambo.

When we return, Kathy Stevens will share with us how the highly intelligent Rambo saved the lives of his friends. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

I always had that chance to connect in a deep way with animals, so animals have been my life and an important part of my life since I was about two years old.

I love these animals; I am surrounded by love! I feel like I’m really the luckiest person alive, and love lives here, and that’s what counts.

Welcome back to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Today we’re visiting the Catskill Animal Sanctuary, located in New York, USA’s Hudson Valley. The haven was co-founded by vegan animal advocate and author Kathy Stevens. Ms. Stevens now shares her most memorable experience with one of the Sanctuary’s animals.

The most remarkable animal, certainly the one I consider my greatest teacher, is an animal named Rambo.

He has these great, curled horns like this; they probably weight 20 pounds apiece.

Rambo was our first free range animal. Rambo sleeps in the middle of the barn every night, he has his special bed. I go to the barn every night to check on the animals, and I went into the barn one night and I said “hallo” to everybody; Rambo was there in his bed, I didn’t notice that anything was wrong, so I came back to the end of the barn and I said, “Good night, animals!” Rambo gets up from his bed, runs up to me, looks at me, “Baaaaa.” And I said, “Tell me what’s wrong.” Because he might as well have said, “Something’s wrong!”

He turned around, he walked halfway down the barn, and he walked into this empty stall to tell me that the turkeys were not in the stall. We had left them out; it was a cold, bitter November night. They would have spent a miserable night outside. I couldn’t believe what I had just witnessed. I went, got the turkeys, brought them in, dried them off, and I was weeping. He knew something was wrong. He found a way to tell a human being. He knew that I would help them or he wouldn’t have gone to this effort, which told me that he truly understands what Catskill Animal Sanctuary is all about.

He cared about the well-being of two animals of a different species. That was maybe the most remarkable thing I have ever experienced in my entire life, and it completely changed me. And it made me understand that the problem is not that animals are limited or even so very different from us, the problem is that we don’t slow down enough to take the time to see them for who they are.

So nobility, courage, compassion; absolutely you see that in a lot of them. He’s the most extraordinary, as I said, teacher I’ve ever had.

Under the affectionate care of the Catskill Animal Sanctuary staff, animals of different species live together happily, sharing an abundance of love with one another. The warmth of this true kinship extends beyond shape, color and size.

We’ve got a free range horse, many free range pigs, many free range ducks, chickens, sheep and turkeys. And we have found that absolutely they form friendships across species. We have two chickens and two turkeys who really love each other. We have a sheep and a pig who fall asleep together in a bed of hay. So, just like human beings have learned that superficial differences, like race and gender don’t matter, animals figure out that species doesn’t matter, it’s much more about a connection that’s much deeper than that.

In 2007, Kathy Stevens released her first book, “Where the Blind Horse Sings: Love and Healing at an Animal Sanctuary,” which depicts a world where distinctions between “human” and “animal” disappear and care and affection overcome years of neglect and abuse.

I had to write the book because I didn’t know that a former fighting rooster would hop into my lap and fall asleep. I didn’t know that he’d want to eat lunch with us every day. I didn’t know that on a cold night when I had to bring him up to the house because he couldn’t be with the other roosters that he would crow his head off, until I put him in my bed because he wanted company!

And so I had to write the book, I had to tell those stories that changed my life, because I think if people saw these animals as so few get the opportunity to do, then maybe it will encourage a few people at least to start to say, “Well, if this is who they are, do I really want to eat them?” So that’s why I wrote the book.

A lot of times I get emails from people saying, “I became vegetarian after I read your book.” And I think our job is very simple; the animals are the ones who convince the people, we just have to get people to read the book, or to come here and connect with the animals.

We applaud Kathy Stevens for saving the lives of so many of our vulnerable animal friends. May all people similarly choose to always show kindness to animals and adopt the vegan lifestyle.

For more details on the Catskill Animal Sanctuary, please visit

“Where the Blind Horse Sings” is available at

Graceful viewers, we enjoyed your company on today’s program. Please join us tomorrow on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants for the second and final part of our interview with Kathy Stevens. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment after Noteworthy News. May our lives always be blessed by Divine light.

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