There are good people out there, all around us. Sometimes the news media paints a distorted view of the world. In this instance, two volunteers drove a round-trip of over 1,600 miles (2,600 km) in Saudi Arabia to rescue a couple of cats who had nerve damage injuries. One of them, Blue, was paralysed with a suspected spinal injury. We don’t know the full extent of his injuries by which I mean we don’t know whether his spinal cord has been severed or whether it has been compressed. If it is the latter then it may be possible to treat him successfully.
The other, Star, has a mangled right fore-leg. It looks like the sort of injury a street cat can pick up very easily. The same goes for Blue. They are just a couple of Saudi Arabian street cats and life for them is (hopefully was) very hard. Apparently in Saudi Arabia people don’t believe in neutering and spaying cats. I’m told that the reluctance comes about because they think it is harmful to the animal to conduct these operations. There are therefore very few TNR programs in the country. Hence more unwanted cats and more street cats.
Blue and Star were thousands of kilometres from the nearest proper veterinary clinic. Their predicament was dire and they would no doubt have struggled to survive unless they were rescued. I don’t know the names of the people who rescued them and brought them back to a veterinary medical facility in Riyadh. Because women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia I would have to presume that one of the volunteers was a man and perhaps the other was a woman (update: I have just watched part of the video below and it seems that I am correct).
As I understand it, a resident of a small provincial Saudi Arabian town contacted the animal charity Let’s Adopt Global about Star and Blue as they had noticed them on the street in a critical condition. The charity found two people who were willing to make this enormously long round-trip, which, by the way, took them 11 hours.
I don’t know the outcome of the surgery that they have undertaken. There is hope that Blue will be able to walk again. It all depends, as mentioned, upon the nature of his injury. Star’s injury is less severe and it would seem that he will be able to recover sufficiently to live a decent life.
I think it’s wonderful what these two people have done. We should know their names and we should know more about them. The story is rather surprising, in that way, because the detail is rather thin. Perhaps they have requested anonymity because their work may be frowned upon by some people in Saudi Arabia. I don’t know.
I hope Blue and Star are looked after as domestic cats for the remainder of their lives. I’d like to think of them as pampered and content looking out of a window in the living room of a nice home with the best food available waiting for them in the kitchen.
What a lovely story, Michael. The way you wrote it up at the end, picturing them sitting in the comfortable living room of a home somewhere with the best food available waiting for them in the kitchen made me tear up. That’s how it should be for all cats.
Yes, these poor souls need love as we all do. Their lives are too harsh and people made it thus.