JEDDAH: Saudi national Umm Abdullah is an ardent animal lover. When she found out that a group of kittens whose mother had been poisoned were starving to death on the first floor of an empty building, she called Civil Defense and asked them to get a ladder and rescue them.
“I was told that they don’t rescue animals and that I should call the municipality,” she said.
When she called the municipality, she received news that disturbed her. “They told me that when the kittens die they would come and remove them!”
Umm Abdullah had come to face this situation after she had learned that the mother cat had been poisoned by a neighborhood resident. The man owned a watchdog and had become annoyed that the dog would bark each time it saw a stray cat. So the man decided to leave poisoned food next to the trash bins to kill off the alley cats.
“The man got rid of many cats in the area,” a local doorman had told Umm Abdullah. Dismayed by the response of government officials, Umm Abdullah paid the expatriate watchman to bring a ladder and get down the kittens.
Jeddah’s streets are filled with cats that forage from the open trash bins found on nearly every corner. This municipal waste-management strategy is a recipe for creating a huge population of stray felines, yet the city has no animal control strategy.
“It is a shame that there is no law for the protection of animals even though Islam has given animals their rights,” said Umm Abdullah.
“And these rights are openly violated. Shame on the Civil Defense and the municipality!”
Veterinarian Lana Dunn has spent considerable time researching animal rights in the context of Islam. She points out specific passages in the Qur’an that advocate positive treatment of animals. “The Holy Qur’an is one of the earliest records advocating animal rights and Islam is one of the few religions that specifically endorse rights to animals,” said Dunn.
Indeed, there are several records of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) advocating not only the positive treatment of animals but also their freedom. In fact, the Prophet opposed the caging, buying and selling of cats and dogs. There are Hadiths that praise helping animals in need and state that animals should be treated with respect as creations of Allah.
But Dunn lamented what she perceives to be a lack of a culture of respect in Saudi Arabia for the animal world, especially cats and exotic animals illegally smuggled into the country and often sold in vet clinics and pet shops.
“The record in the Kingdom is so poor mainly because no one knows what is cruel and what is not,” said Dunn, pointing toward a lack of education among the population and a lack of oversight by the government — especially pertaining to the regulation of pet shops and vet clinics.
“There is no governing body to check on the standards of care provided to animals in pet shops,” said Dunn. “I have seen animals in terrible states in pet shops and the resident vet admits he doesn’t know how to treat them and really doesn’t seem to care. This is unacceptable, lazy and cruel.”
Dunn says she once asked a pet shop employee about the care of iguanas that the shop was selling.
“He told me to give it only water since iguanas don’t eat, and he also said that iguanas don’t live for more than a few months,” she said. “This is awful. Not only are they starving the iguanas to death but they’re telling buyers to treat them the same way.”
Due to Saudi Arabia’s proximity to East Africa, it is common to see caged cheetah cubs inside vet clinics. These animals, which are protected under international animal trafficking agreements that Saudi Arabia has signed, often die from the effects of being smuggled, or from mistreatment by animal collectors ignorant of the needs of exotic pets. Two years ago, Arab News learned of a case of an adult female cheetah that had its rear legs broken to prevent her from running away.
Naeem, an expatriate animal lover, said she had seen cases where expensive breeds of cat were dumped on the streets just a few months after purchase as the novelty of pet ownership wears thin when owners realize animal ownership involves responsibility.
“These cats can’t survive on the streets, they have weak immune systems and don’t know how to fend for themselves,” he said.
Marcela, a resident of Riyadh, said she was shocked the first time she saw how animals were treated in pet shops.
“I once saw a very old, sick and blind dog for sale, and a female with her puppies,” she said. “The dogs were skin and bone. They had dermatological problems.”
Marcela has even seen exotic animals, such as vultures, porcupines, monkeys, and baby crocodiles in terrible conditions. “One big problem in pet shops is that the employees don’t know how to handle animals or care for them. Many animals from pet shops are psychotic because they are kept locked up in small space without water, without care and under stress.”
