Reigning cats and dogs

The Laskarina sponsored, Symi Animal Welfare vet arrived last night for his annual week long surgery. The aim is to neuter and check up on as many stray cats and dogs (and tamed ones) as possible in order to keep down the islands stray cat population. Over population simply leads to more malnutrition, disease and suffering of the animals, particularly the kittens, and so the visit is well supported by locals - both Greek and non-Greek.

Volunteers will be doing a variety of things during this week. Some will be scouting around the harbour, boat-yard, Pedi and the village with cat boxes and sardines calling for the strays and tempting them into the boxes like the Child-catcher in Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. Another will then drive the boxes to the surgery where Martin, aided by two or three more volunteers, will check, neuter, treat and otherwise examine each animal in turn. The anaesthetic he gives them also contains a… something which gives them partial amnesia - so he tells me - so when the cat wakes up it can’t even remember being caught; this helps to lessen any trauma. (We could all do with some of that from time to time.)

There seems to have been a lot of puppies born this year. One bitch had nine in a ruin near us a few months ago. (I refer to the animal not the owner.) We attended a party the other weekend which we assumed would be a BPAB party (please bring a bottle). Turned out to be a PBAD party (Please bring a dog.) There was a ratio at one point of one dog for every two human guests; many were puppies from the sudden influx but the ‘stray’ mother of some of them also attended - well, gate-crashed. Our host’s farewell of ‘you wouldn’t like to take a dog with you would…’ was met with a ‘certainly not!’ Remember: a puppy is not just for Christmas. If you are careful there should be enough left over for Boxing day.

Sorry - not much of a dog lover me and I don’t subscribe to the argument that just because they are cute when young means you should commit yourself for life. (With the exception of Neil of course. Had to say that.)

But with cats it’s a different story. Cats commit to you if they feel like it and one of ours, Pipe, who we’d had since a kitten, has now left home. Or died. Not sure which. In the weeks leading up to her disappearance she’d started to get very grumpy about the food we were giving her. The supermarket had changed its brand to ‘Fleshy’ (yuk name methinks) and Pipe was not happy at all. She hardly ever ate but remained well fed; leading us to suspect that she’d found someone who was prepared to feed her on what she liked - which was tins of Tuna, cheese, peas (?!) and smoked mackerel fillets. And, of course, any left over cooked meat as long as there was gravy. In the last few days that we saw her she, uncharacteristically, became very friendly and cuddly and paid us lots of attention - like she was saying thank you and goodbye. And then the last I saw of her she was heading off through the garden just like any other day. Wherever she is I’m sure she’s getting better food than ‘Fleshy’.

Which leaves us with the feline alarm clock, ‘Jack’. Six thirty every morning, if I am not up, then he’s at the door shouting ‘mama!’ I kid you not. It does sound like ‘mama’, I must teach him ‘dada’ as I’d prefer that. Jack is deaf, noisy, white and moults a lot which is a pain when you have a dark grey carpet. Oh - and I once got woken up at five in the morning because the television was on. I went into the front room to find him sat on the sofa with the remote control in his paw, the TV blaring and the phone off the hook. (No, honestly!) Not only that but there were two cats with him, one licking his… never mind… and staring at me as if to say ‘what’s it to you, buster?’

Jack the party animal eh? Takes after his dad.

I’m off now, I have duties to attend to. The master of the house will be wanting his bowl of ‘Fleshy’ - he’s not as fussy as Pipe was.

Symi Animal Welfare page is here