Women and Children Fuel Jeddah Pet Craze

JEDDAH, 20 February 2004 — There has been a phenomenal craze for pets such as kittens, dogs and birds in Jeddah in recent years, especially among Saudi women and children. The resulting industry now includes salons where a trim for your animal companion can cost between SR60 and SR75, Al-Madinah Arabic daily reported. “There is a lot of demand for pets in Jeddah, especially in summer,” the manager of a pet shop told the daily. Prices for cats range between SR500 and SR1,500 and for dogs between SR1,000 and SR6,000, the paper said. An unfortunate side-effect of cats’ popularity is that many of them are cruelly abandoned on the streets of the city, to become road kill, after their owners grow tired of them.