JEDDAH, 4 June 2006 — It took five police cars, a limousine and a man pretending to have a firearm to arrest Ms. Eva — who was suspected of witchcraft — and the cat. Ms. Eva was released six hours later after questioning; the cat was detained overnight for inquiries.

It reads like an April 1 article in one of the more lurid European tabloids. It is true, however, and it happened in Jeddah. Only the name has been changed.

No dewy-eyed animal rights campaigner, Ms. Eva is the soul of practicality. “Cats breed prolifically,” she says. “Neuter them and return them to the streets and, because they are very territorial, the population in that area will quickly come down to controllable levels.”

On the night in question, she was trundling her trolley, laden with cat food and water, along one of north Jeddah’s busy main streets.

Not only were feline eyes upon her. A Saudi man, pointing what looked like a pistol at her, approached her and demanded to know what she was doing. Not accepting her simple explanation that she was feeding cats, he summoned the police and accused Eva of witchcraft. He had spotted that the cat had been recently sutured after spaying and contended that, “She had opened the cat and taken things out for witchcraft.”

Observing the proprieties to the letter, Eva was taken to the police station by limousine; the cat apparently traveled in the isolated splendor of a police car.

At the police station, they were kept in separate cells. Eva was released into the care of her husband after six hours of detention and a visit by a senior official; the cat was kept in jail overnight.

Eva is not alone in her passion. There is a group of remarkable women whose passion is animal welfare and who devote a good deal of time and money to healing the discarded and cruelly-treated animals they find in the streets or, if the animals are in extremis, having them humanely put down. The women’s stories are many and harrowing.

The sound of a cat screaming in pain attracted Angelika’s (name changed) immediate attention. She keeps over 140 cats in a specially created garden in her home near a large school in Jeddah and she helps street cats and dogs when she can. What she found on investigation beggars belief.

“A group of local schoolchildren, from five to perhaps 20 years old were torturing a cat they had caught. They had stubbed out cigarettes on its body and legs and even in its mouth,” she sad. “They had even cut its front paws off.” When she accosted them, they sauntered off. She contacted both the police and the local school. The reaction she said was best summed up with shrugged shoulders and “What can we do?”

Once, she said, she had been followed by a cat in the street. “It followed me for two or three kilometers,” she said, “a very long way for a cat. It was only when I looked more closely I discovered it had had its belly slit open. Somehow, it knew I would help.”

It is hard to believe that acts of this sort take place in the land of Abu Hureyra, a companion of the Prophet (pbuh) who was singled out for praise because of his kindness to cats. Indeed, the Prophet himself had a pet cat, Muezza, to whom he displayed exemplary consideration when he found it asleep on his robe. Rather than disturb the cat, he cut the sleeve off the robe.

Positive and negative images of cruelty are created early in life and have considerable influence on subsequent behavior. Professor Khaled Abou Al-Fadl, professor of Islamic jurisprudence and a scholar at UCLA law school remembers an instance from his childhood in Kuwait that triggered a lifelong concern about animal welfare in Islam.

A cat had been crushed with a rock atop a roadside concrete pole. Al-Fadl had to pass the spreadeagled cat every day. “Although I tried to look away, I will never forget the bulging eyes, open mouth and look of sheer terror on the face of that animal,” he said. “This immoral cruelty is remarkable,” he said recently from his Los Angeles home. “Especially if we consider the fact that children learn early on about the woman locking a cat in a closed room and risking going to hell for doing so or the man who saved a dog and went to heaven.”

He said that the message was clear. “Despite the technical rules of purity, the souls of these animals are important enough for humans to be condemned to hell or rewarded with heaven.”

He said that historically the neutering of animals was covered by a fatwa. “It is perfectly acceptable,” he said, “As long as there is no pain to the animal and it is intended to prevent suffering.”

The streets of Jeddah are filled with cats procreating, increasing the population pressure on the scavenging resources and suffering as a result. He regarded fatwas against population control as hypocritical and common in puritanical circles.

“I don’t see corollary fatwas extending the hand of mercy and for example providing water,” he said in reference to the Hadith of the man saving a dog’s life by giving it water.

Respect for animals extends far beyond just domestic animals, said Al Fadl. “The Qur’an is very specific against tormenting living things for it is equal to corrupting the earth and is an offense against God.”

Historically, Islam has been very enlightened in its attitude toward animals. Al Fadl noted that for much of the pre-Christian and Christian eras, cruelty to animals was a matter of course. All over the Muslim world in the past, wealthy people provided care for animals.

“Animal care is a Muslim innovation,” he said. “It arose from the depth of the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) teachings. It was not practiced by the Greeks, Romans or in medieval Europe. However, in later periods, Muslims disavowed it as the invention of the West.”

If not an invention of the West, in Jeddah care and kindness toward dogs and cats in particular has become the province of Westerners. There are also a very few Saudi men and women, very much the noble exception and very low profile, who extend the same care.

Animals are as much a part of creation as human life. Rather than arrest, criticize and deride charity toward animals or allow the infliction of terrible torture and pain on them — in many cases by children who are expected to grow into responsible citizens — perhaps there are valuable moral and social lessons to be learned from cherishing life rather than simply polarizing it into the categories of “beaten” or “eaten.”