This is the season of fertility and procreation when the ‘barren is filled with hope’. That quintessential craving to sprout new life, that feeling of maternity is acute. Even the deadwood sprouts mushrooms, coiled tendrils of creepers embrace trees, the flashy fireflies fill the air, gluttonous caterpillars chomp on leaves, boisterous frogs engage in nuptial cacophony, male baya birds are busy displaying their weaving dexterity to their partners, and the strays get into the romantic mood as well!
While nature gives a fair chance to all life to reproduce, out there the raw maternity holds sway, driven by that urge to leave descendants. The season is resourceful yet challenging. The fodder is plentiful, but shelter is scant. The weather is wet, and the newborns are vulnerable to being decimated by a wet spell, abandoned by their parents, attacked by competitors.
The lucky domestic cousins of these species enjoy the patronage of their owners and the comfort of indoors and assured care and affection increase the chance of their survival manifold. Sadly, the strays are left to the mercy of nature and their life is a daily struggle.
Not having been neutered, they litter out in the open bringing their vulnerable progeny into this world with little chance of survival. And yet the ‘mothers’ in these strays are not bereft of compassion and care towards their offsprings. I’ve seen shivering famished feral bitches suckling their pups in this intensely wet season, and wet bristled stray cats refusing to leave their blind kittens risking starvation, only to give their litter a chance to survive this hostile season.
There is another heart-wrenching dimension of these innocent lives, and that is their abandonment and apathy by humans, who are supposedly endowed with feelings of empathy and compassion. It is not rare to see a ‘kindle of kittens’ and ‘litter of pups’ abandoned on roads, dump yards, and even bundled up with their snouts taped and legs tied to be drowned in waterbodies and landfill sites. Years ago, while on a visit to the Saligao Waste Management facility in Goa, I was shocked to hear that the workers here often find live kittens that come in along with waste collected from garbage dumps. This is not just inhuman but reflection of a corrupt, cruel and abhorrent mindset that shows little respect for life.
I see some good Samaritans who take these unfortunate souls into their custody until they are rehabilitated through adoption. I do also admire some kind citizens who regularly feed the ‘army of strays’ at fixed feeding points, braving criticism from many who argue that this compassion is misplaced and puts citizens at risk of being attacked.
Indeed, there have been rising incidents of stray dogs chasing and biting joggers on our sea-shores. Notwithstanding the vocal opposition to feeding strays, this empathy for these mute citizens soothes my soul and reassures me that the ‘humane in the human’ has not vanished fully! Of course, alongside the feeding of the strays by individuals and NGOs, the state must also ensure that strays are sterilized, vaccinated for rabies and shifted to animal shelters. If the leftovers and excess from food vendors and gated communities can be spared to feed these hungry animals, it can be a win-win situation.
I have in my home my adorable feline daughter Babli, who was picked up by my wife from her hospital premises as an abandoned stray kitten emaciated with hunger and just a few weeks old. From my garage she entered my home and soon enough our hearts. Now an indispensable part of our family, Babli has a mix Khao Manee-Persian lineage and has heterochromia, with one eye as blue as sky and another as green as a placid lake! A bit pampered though, she is adorable and has injected cheer into our life. My most challenging task in this season of monsoonal ban on fishing is to procure fresh mackerels and prawns for her. She inspires me to write couplets on feline beauty, stays awake well past midnight when my wife sits completing her office registers and anxiously awaits for my son to return. She understands Konkani reasonably well for a feline cognition, is sensitive to my mood and expresses affection by blinking, head butting and licking my hands.
Similarly, my sister Dipali Kamat picked an abandoned stray dog pup with infected itchy skin from the premises of ‘Goa Dairy’ and took him to her plush residence in Kurti, Ponda. The pup has grown into a mischievous and comic dog who is her best canid companion. She rejoices posting reels that she creates by video graphing antics of this pet who she has named ‘Dairy’, not only because of his milk-white fur, but also because he was rescued from the dairy premises! Both of us have probably inherited this fondness and concern for cats and dogs from our mother Sumati.
Throughout our childhood we’ve had cats as pets and they had interesting names such as Mangoo, Raja babu, Rangeela named after Bollywood characters.
We live in a country of contradictions. India has no dearth of compassion and kindness towards animals, and yet our cities and towns are teeming with these unfortunate strays and abandoned animals that are abused, have maggot-infested wounds, crawl dragging their paralyzed hinds on hot asphalted roads in summer, and scavenge for food and seek shelter in the monsoons. The sick and the old individuals pose another challenge. The few animal rescue and shelter centres are overburdened with inmates, constrained by lack of funds and volunteers. Negative perception in the public eye, abuse and cruelty is a hurdle to their rehabilitation. There is an urgent need to reach out to these unfortunate and forgotten animal citizens.
