Egyptair disastrously messed up transportation of rescue cats to the USA when they smashed cat carriers

Egyptair handlers managed to totally mess up the transportation a rescue cats from Egypt to America. They were transporting, in a cargo flight, 12 Egyptian street cats some of which were disabled. That’s not uncommon for Egyptian street cats as you might imagine because life is so hard in a country where there are no animal welfare laws. In that regard the country is like China. It appears to me that they have a very poor relationship with animals in Egypt and this background information may be partly why this mishandling of rescue cat crates occurred at Cairo airport.

The cats were meant to be on Egyptair flight 985 from Cairo to New York. The Safe Haven Egypt (SHE) Facebook page tells us what happened.

The flight was well en route to its New York destination when the person on the ground at Cairo, Koky, was informed of some bad news. They were told that during the moving or loading of the rescue cat crates (carriers) a number of them fell and were badly damaged.

Three of the cats from this rescue escaped and two cats from another rescue also escaped. The US coordinator in Cairo said that “these things happen” (a bit offhand don’t you think?). They were told of the problem seven hours after it had happened.

One of the rescue cats was named Angus. He was blind and probably died of his injuries when the crates were smashed. He would have been terrified. The authorities in Cairo refused to release his body and buried him at the airport, they said.

Another cat who escaped, Shadia, was found after several hours. Koky has her and she is safe.

They are all supposed to be starting a new, happy life after suffering on the streets of Cairo (it’s a myth that cats are treated like gods in Egypt, both cats and dogs are considered vermin and there are NO ANIMAL WELFARE LAWS AT ALL in Egypt). Instead, we have this carnage. Safe Haven Egypt has thousands of supporters, mainly in the UK but all over the world, and we are all heartbroken. The team who run the rescue in Gisa, Cairo are absolutely devastated. Egyptair were entrusted with these poor cats and did not take care of them or safeguard them from harm in any way. They did not inform the admin team of what had happened until SEVEN HOURS later. They just don’t care.

SHE

The cats on the transport plane which arrived at New York were met by a volunteer and they found that all the crates had been damaged. The pictures of the crates are horrendous. Some were completely smashed. Two crates had doors missing with the cat sitting inside because there were too scared to come out.

Initially there were three cats in all missing with no information about where they were. Later the SHE Facebook page reported that one escaped cat, Aubrey, has been found. She is safe and with Koky.

And SHE was told by the authorities at the airport that they were looking for the other missing cats.

A Facebook page to remember Angus has been set up. His great moment of escape from the harsh streets of Egypt was shattered thanks to the careless handling by Egyptair.

Comment: it is obviously tragic when all the effort of volunteers to get cats off these dusty, hot streets where they often barely survive to good homes in America are shattered thanks to sloppy handling which can only be the underlying reason why it happened. Yes, these things do happen but they shouldn’t happen. It points to carelessness and a poor attitude. It seems that the handlers were treating the cat carriers as inanimate cargo. When that kind of cargo falls from a height it is less problematic. If its broken it can be replaced under an insurance policy; not so with sentient beings.

I’m going to stick my neck out and say that this poor attitude in Egypt comes about because there are no animal welfare laws in that country protecting animals from human abuse. This is a terrible weakness in a country but I suspect that most countries on the African continent including those in North Africa either have no animal welfare laws or week animal welfare laws that are poorly enforced.

FYI – Great Britain was the first country in the world to implement laws protecting animals when in 1822 an act to prevent the cruel and improper treatment of cattle was passed in Parliament. That’s quite neat because it is 200 years ago.

In respect of animal welfare, Egypt is 200 years behind Great Britain. It is this disparity in the development of the world’s countries which tears the world apart. It isn’t just in the development of animal welfare laws it’s in all other aspects of society as well. This disparity is at the root of the mass immigration problem from Africa to northern Europe via southern Europe.