My cat has been ill, very ill. It has been a terrible time. Where I live there are no vets and no animal medicines available. The cat has been treated based on phone calls to a friendly vet back home and with small doses of human medicine. I wouldn’t recommend it as an experience.
The cat, as with all the pets we have, is a rescued animal, taken as a kitten, half starved from a local rubbish bin. We are surrounded by poverty here, and the effect it has on both people and animals is terrible. While I comfort myself that investing here, employing people and donating to charity all have their benefits for people, my attitude to animals is a bit more complicated, perhaps because they are easier to adopt! In fact my husband has imposed a rule, only 4 animals at any given time, otherwise we’d have to open a zoo.
As you can tell from the lengths I have gone to, to save the cat I take my responsibility to the animals I adopt very seriously. Many expats I know here adopt one, or often many more of the poor animals they see on the street. But what confuses me is the attitude many expats have when it comes time to leave.
We are regularly inundated with emails from people who are leaving asking for help to find homes for adult dogs and cats, or we hear that the animal has been given to a staff member or colleague, who is likely struggling to make ends meet for their own family without another, pampered mouth to feed. My husband has even been asked to assist in putting down a veritable herd of animals belonging to one expat family because they chose not to take them when they left. He refused.
Let me be clear that, even here with little veterinary support, it is possible to arrange pet transport and to have animals micro-chipped so they can travel. I have a friend who took her local stray cat with her when she moved first to South Africa and then to Mexico, and the cat seems none the worse for the travel – apparently he really liked the colourful birds in Mexico! What I find strange is the decision to adopt one or more animals, give them a good life for a while and then shrug them off on departure. I understand that for some people this is a difficult decision, and for others it’s “only an animal” - but can our consumerist society really have reached a point where we want a companion for the time we are away from home, but don’t feel the commitment to that companion to take them with us or leave them well-cared for?
When my cat was at death’s door last week, friends tried to comfort me with the notion that his life had been better with me than it had been on the street and I could accept that, since nature was taking its course. What I struggle with is the notion that a short period of that “better life” and then being abandoned by your carers can really be kinder than having been left on the rubbish dump in the first place. I don’t have an answer, but thinking about the ways we sometimes play god with animals when we are abroad certainly makes me uncomfortable. How do you feel? Comment below...
Easy subscription, easy to unsubscribe - No Spam
Back to Expat Daily News
Subscribe in a reader
As an animal lover, vet tech student, volunteer for Puppy Mill Rescue, I am an avid advocate for animals. Kudos to you for helping all you can. I beleive that an animal that you adopt or save is a life-long commitment. However, not everyone feels that way. Even in the US I know people who give away their animals or euthanize them if they become a hassle. Jeez. A hassle? Really? But I also think rescuing an animal from a garbage dumpster, giving him a good life, then letting him go again, is better than doing nothing. The animal's immune system is probably beefed up if nothing else, and it will have a better chance of survival on the streets, or in the jungle, or wherever. Whatever you or your friends or expats do, the best thing for the animals would be to start a spay and neuter clinic. Feral cats pass on horrible diseases to one another and their lives are not very pretty. Many diseases are passed from the queen (momma cat) to her kittens. The tomcats typically transmit sexual diseases. Other countries do not feel the empathy we do for animals. Only Britain and the US treat their animals like members of the family. I'm sure the animals that are rescued by expats have a better time of it, even if just for a short while. I don't agree with the rescue then dump mentality...but it's not a perfect world. Thank you for being one of the good guys :-)
ReplyDeleteI am sure Britain and the US treat their animals like members of the family but so do people in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, Czech Republic and most prosperous countries. Dogs are becoming status symbols in Mexico and treatment there is improving. But even in the U.S. and other dog loving countries there is dogfighting. Think about football star Michael Dick.
ReplyDeleteIt's difficult at the best of times to do the right thing when living in another country where animals if they don't provide food are invariably left to fend for themselves and the indigenous population has not the time nor the inclination to raise their standards or attitudes to pets like many other countries try too. I have 4 cats all rescued and did have 4 dogs. The latter one by one have died of old age which is unavoidable as they don't live to the ripe old age of 65years like humans. Console yourself to having done the best you can under the difficult situation. I have a cat that is mean and spiteful for 'no apparent' reason sometimes and we can't get her to take worming pills etc so she can't get the same care as the ones that are more sweet. It's just the way it is. I have lived in many countries and would say the US is one of the least pet friendly compared to places like Germany and the UK when it comes to dogs. It's more than petting, feeding and veterinary help that makes one place better than another for pets it's also about mixing in public, taking them out, socializing with them etc. In Germany for instance one can take a well trained dog into a restaurant, shop, city, town etc., trying do that in the US if not a dog for the blind. I find it gut wrenching to see animals neglected, shunned, abandoned, hurt, abused etc and extremely angry at the ignorance and selfishness of many.
ReplyDeleteAdopting a pet then letting him or her go is cruel, both physically and emotionally.
ReplyDelete