By Ahsan ul Haq
I am a caretaker of a colony of 21 feral cats and a few of their kittens.
I have gone through a terrible experience with 4 abandon kittens and out of which only one is left. One kitten killed by neighbor, one by another. A third ran away with fear which I could not catch myself as she had a lot of speed but the next day I came to know by my student that an old “pious man” killed him just strangling her with a stick on her head.
So I have caged the fourth kitten and she is grooming and eating well (see above). But I may say that no law and no rule. Yes it is very sad and we Pakistanis must accept the truth if we want to see Allah subhanahu wa tala’h with a pretty smile or otherwise get ready for a beautiful burning HELL FIRE. 🙁 Thanks for the article Michael. May Allah guide us towards the sayings of Holy prophet SAW and not towards a land to protect.
The basic is that why do we human beings hate any animal who needs us and saying even not a word and disturbing even not a second of our private lives.
Michael I just cried a lot and I am still broken but am ambitious to bring more and more feral kittens at home and bring them up for their welfare sake. Allah helps me inshallah ameen. I will share my experiences about ferals, I have a deep love for ferals 🙂
Here I share some pictures of feral cats who are regular visitors to my home. They often spend the night in groups but as I had kittens, they stopped visiting me but I still go to them and spend my time upto 4 hours a day regularly.
She is grey beauty and she is pure feral with big claws and aggression (see below), but sure not with me 😉
Just want to share here that where I live, we have no vet service, if there is a shop of vet 12 KMs far from my residence, it’s always CLOSED.
Now after every effort I have decided along with my three daughters to do a basic course of veterinary for cats and kittens.
Unfortunately there is a private institution in an other city, which we can not go to because of our work.
Do you or someone know, an online basic vet courses or certificates, I mean distance study online type so that no one of us leaves Pakistan or truly speaking, we don’t want to leave our sweet home 🙂
Is there some way, we can serve these tiny creatures of Allah by obtaining any certificate online about cats and kitten’s medicines or latest research equipments needed for emergency so that we altogether can have our cats neuter/spayed.
We have no such services and if we have in Lahore or Karachi (big cities), they are very costly and I am unable to afford them. I want to become a welfare doctor of cats (not for money but for their well being). Please guide me , thank you.
I will keep sharing so that every Pakistani on this planet may know the truth about ferals insha Allah, ameen.
Of course I will share more with pictures now but I am really sad because I have only one kitten with me and she is happy and sad due to a full loss of her brothers and a sister kitten. We are just together now 🙁 Allaah may give her a long life ameen.
This is my tom cat SAJID (see above), AAaaah a kitten raised by me but he decided not to stay with anyone. He is very dangerous but he is my regular tom cat. I love him as he loves me too. It’s only me who is allowed by him to pet him on this planet earth. Others stay away 😀 h
Here is my male alone feral SOLO CAT TUMTUM (see pics above). He was a kitten when I raised him as he was beaten terribly by some idiot here. I just caged him and when he became a harsh hunter and rude fellow, I released him so that he can enjoy his own life and give a great lesson to his stone thrower or beater and that is what he does now but he is my regular guest and now adopted by my one neighbour. I tamed him and he is a daily visitor to me as my neighbor does not mind it if I check him a bit or love him as he is my boy.
The pictures above is PINKY and she just loves me a lot because I have raised her from the kitten hood. She visits non-stop thrice a day and once at night. She rubs her head with my legs/arms and is a lap kitty. I love you PINKY
Hello Ahsan ul Haq,
I run a cat rescue in Windsor, Ontario, Canada called Cat Advocacy and Rescue Association – CARA. I would like to be a resource for any questions you may have with the cats that you care for. You can message me any time on my Facebook page and I will answer your questions to the best of my ability or I will seek help from my vet. I have almost 10 years of experience rescuing cats and kittens and have seen most of the diseases which are common to cats.
Please be careful with the information that you find online because much of it is misleading and some of it is simply bad advice.
If you have a Skype account I can give you Skype contact so we can connect much easier.
Best Regards,
Barb Sparkes
Barb, thanks for offering help. Nice of you. Please make a comment in response to one of Ahsan’s. He’ll receive it. You can see a “reply button” below the comment box.
You and your daughters are doing so much for these lovely cats.
This is such a sad story. I have great difficulty in finding the words to say how sorry I am for your struggle Ashan and how I admire you for the good work you do.
It’s heart breaking that cats and kittens have such a hard life and are killed by cruel people, we had no idea here in England of the reality of this going on in your country.
It must be dreadful to have no access to a vet for neutering the cats and for caring for the ill ones.
I think we should share this article far and wide and hope some compassionate young vet might see it and offer help. You do need to be shown practically how to give injections and perform surgery and of course you need to be able to get anaesthetic and medication. I don’t think can happen without a vet’s backing.
You can only do your best and you really are doing a good job.
Take care and God bless you
x
I think how many cats in Pakistan and other countries like Pakistan are suffering and being killed like this. I makes me shudder.
Hi, Mr. ul Haq:
You have such a good, kindly face, I sat looking at it for half an hour. Your beloved cats are beautiful too – especially little ‘Pinky’ and ‘Tumtum.’ You’re a two-legged heart, is what you are.
Unfortunately, it’s probably impossible to learn to become a veterinarian online, since (that is, over here) veterinary students have to study anatomy and physiology, dissection and hundreds of diseases and injuries. They also have to learn surgery – to put into practice their textbook learning. It’s a four-year program in the U.S., and the learning these skills means you must have access to thousands of dollars of surgical instruments and medical supplies, an operating table and an x-ray machine–everything you’d see in a veterinary clinic.
You say the nearest clinic is always CLOSED. By this you may mean they’ve gone out of business, or have a small clientele and are open only on certain days.
Have you ever considered posting your essay, above, on Facebook? People who read it – who care about cats as much as you do – might be willing to help fund your effort.
Neutering is a less complex procedure – and thus less expensive – than spaying. But would it help prevent kittens? Not if other male cats in your neighborhood came around. Scientists are working to develop an injectable contraceptive that makes cats unable to reproduce for a long period of time – but it’s not yet available.
Meanwhile, your colony needs to be sterilized, or you’ll be overwhelmed by dozens of kittens. Again, could you ask FB for assistance? Whatever the monetary exchange rate is between countries, many people might respond.
You might also help your endeavor if you kept readers informed of your work in caring for your cats. Updates from you could keep them involved in your efforts.
By the way, there are online VETERINARY ASSISTANT programs, as you may know, but you’d want to thoroughly check them out before you enrolled in a program of studies.
Whether Pakistani vets would agree to this or not, in the U.S. – in the rural area where I live in Washington state – several of my friends have large numbers of cats to keep down the rodents in their horse barns. And once their vets have neutered and spayed the cats – in other words, once these clients have brought some business to the vets’ doors – the vets have been willing to provide these clients with a few basic medicines and hypodermics (vaccines, etc.), showing them how to treat their own cats. They explained to the vets that they had too many cats to afford to bring them to the clinic too often, so the vets agreed to teach them how to diagnose a few basic problems, and give the cats pills and injections.
You’re a kindhearted man.
Best of luck in your endeavor.
Well said Sylvia Ann. I wondered whether he could learn some basic skills such as injections and basis diagnosis and even perhaps neutering male cats. Neutuering male cats seems to be a relatively simple operation with little recovery required. That would at least allow Ahsan to improve cat welfare where he is.
The difficulty is getting a vet to teach him that stuff as there are no online courses for basic skills. There are vet tech online courses but there has to be some hands-on somewhere in the course. It can’t all be done online.
Here are some instructional guides:
Giving a cat an injection
http://www.wikihow.com/Give-a-Cat-an-Injection
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drMDxAez4sM
Symptom Checker to help diagnose
http://www.petmd.com/cat/cat-symptom-checker
I’m sure there are some instructional guides somewhere about how to neuter a cat, but I don’t particularly think it is a good idea to do it unless there are no other options. Farmers castrate their livestock sometimes in very rural areas. However, neutering a cat is still considered a surgical procedure and requires licensure to do it here. That may not be the case in Pakistan though.
Thanks Dee. Very useful. Ahsan needs help. God he needs it badly. He is surrounded by people who kill the cats he supports. Terrible and cruel.
Michael, how can you (we) help him? What is the best way to help him?
I have offered some financial support but he doesn’t want it. He wants to be able to learn about cat health and treating cats because veterinary services are poor in Pakistan. I am not sure how we can help him to be honest except for going over there!
Michael! I can accept financial support but I have told every one(also here) that if there is no any systematic procedure of the AUDIT/ scrutiny of the money sent by anyone, So, I will be blamed. I need a solid system before accepting such kind of welfare for cats money.
Can anyone guide me how it can be possible to transparent the procedure????????????? 🙁 because my cats need financial and security support plus food, shelter, products.
On one hand I can make the woodwork with my own hand because I have learnt it from my school time in Copenhagen, Denmark. That is not an issue and I can spare money through doing it my own and save labor charges.
I can share the updates through videos and photos. But I have a bank account, no paypal works here, I have no western union account. please guide me how it can be possible so that I can tackle the cats and their welfare money with sincerity and honesty. So, no one blame on me. 🙁
please tell me and I will share the estimate to you all friends right away.
Otherwise, please oh British troops, land on my roof and take the system 😉 (just kidding with Michael my friend)
Not sure what you mean by that. Are you saying that people will blame you for stealing money if PoC sends you some money?
No Michael
I mean that there are many people who ask for money in the name of cat welfare projects but that money is spent on their own and cats get nothing benefit out of that. They are blamed because they have to maintain a genuine record for the MONEY SPENT on such welfare.
I can suggest only small projects of cat welfare with passage of time and make them finished, share the photos and videos here.
I have number one priority for LAILA (my kitten) so one cage for her is my requirement that she may be protected forever.
I will share my Step one plan with you Michael, with a graph picture, how I want the cage should be. And make a survey or the material required. Then if you all can share, I will accept but first of all I need a market survey, please.
And at last I will say that I hell not care what people say about me or my cats here, I just work with these tiny friends boldly. 🙂
Michael,
I know it is obvious we will place no blame on him. We have seen his heart through these wonderful pictures. Is there any vet in the entire world who would be willing to go over and teach him what he needs to know?? He needs this money for his cat and future kitties.
Is there any way for you to set up a Western Union account in his name, giving him complete authority to retrieve the money??
I will look at a Western Union account. I just want to make sure it works and it does not cause problems and a waste of money. You’d think it would be easier in the 21st century but no.
This was the first day of these beautiful tiny creatures of Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala at my rescue shelter. They were happy, they were silent after feed, they slept with each other a sweet dream as they were feeling themselves in heaven/paradise. I was sitting beside them smiling and making so many dreams in my inner heart. looking forward to their future and just dreaming myself with them.
<3 <3 <3
will share you more about them in next episode, thank you for reading and watching the photos <3
3rd one
Hi Ahsan! I see you have added pictures since I was last here!!! Those babies are precious and so very lucky to have you. I hope you have enough money to feed them and to continue on this quest to get education so you can help the population to not grow! You are in my thoughts and prayers!! I saw you are a friend of Kylee’s on FaceBook. She is my friend so feel free to send me a request.