Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Muhammad bin Rashid Al Khartoum gives four men $13,610 each for being kind towards pregnant cat

NEWS AND COMMENT – DUBAI: Is this a publicity stunt? I am opening up with a provocative statement. I may be unkind to be that provocative but the ruler of Dubai has been suffering from bad publicity recently due to his alleged imprisonment of one of his daughters, Princess Latifa. She is apparently no longer allegedly imprisoned but she tried to escape across the Indian Ocean I recall. And he has a second daughter, Shamsa, who was allegedly kidnapped from a street in Cambridge more than 20 years ago. However, I don’t want to go to those details but they are relevant background stories.

Dubai: Four kind men who are immigrant workers save a pregnant cat from injuring herself in falling from a building
Dubai: Four kind men who are immigrant workers save a pregnant cat from injuring herself in falling from a building

Associated page written by a Dubai resident:Cat Ownership in Dubai: Laws, Tips and Other Local Info to Know

Fortunately, we have a video presented by Sheikh Muhammad bin Rashid Al Khartoum on his Twitter account of a pregnant ginger-and-white cat who looks like she’s going to slide off an apartment balcony railing. We don’t know why she is in that predicament. It is several floors up and if she had fallen to the sidewalk below it would probably have caused her serious injury and the babies inside her. Was the cat being ejected from the apartment? We can’t see anyone. Why aren’t these questioned raised by the news media? They seem to be far too naive.

Domestic cats are very good at falling from these heights and they normally get away with it because they have their famous self-righting technique and the ‘flying squirrel technique’ to break their fall through air resistance. But this lady cat is pregnant which would make all those techniques much harder to complete particularly at this less than an optimum height from the ground (too low).

Note: This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.


Four Dubai workers who noticed she was sliding off the balcony barrier opened up a blanket, held each corner and waited for her to fall into it. Actually, three guys held the blanket and the fourth videoed the incident. It must have been uploaded to social media and the Dubai ruler saw it and tweeted: “Proud and happy to see such acts of kindness in our beautiful city. Whoever identifies these unsung heroes, please help us thank them.”

The Dubai police collected the names of the four men and a representative of Sheikh Muhammed’s office handed over the reward to the men. At $13,610 (American) that is a mightily nice reward. This translates to Dh50,000 (Rs 40 lakh)

I need to mention their names because they were indeed kind-hearted and deserve to be rewarded. One of them is a driver with the Roads and Transport Authority of Dubai and his name is Nasser. Another is Muhammed Rashid who comes from Kerala in India and works as a shopkeeper in Dubai. The third man is Ashraf from Morocco who works as a watchman and the fourth is Atif Mehmood, a salesman from Pakistan.

It is noticeable, to me, that they are all immigrants working in Dubai to keep the country ticking over. It is an example of how immigrants can form the backbone of a society in keeping the economy working. It also appears that Dubai is reliant upon immigrants to do these sorts of jobs. Perhaps the local people don’t want to do them.

There has to be one question that comes out of this video. What happened to the cat? Of course, we don’t know. The cat should have been taken to a rescue centre if they exist in Dubai and I expect that there are at least a couple of animal shelters. The cat needs to be cared for until she gives birth to her kittens and afterwards as well. The kittens need to be socialised and rehomed. The mother cat also needs to be rehomed (see is domesticated). All these things probably didn’t or won’t happen. If they did, then you could also say that Dubai was a kind city, not just these four men. Would the native people have done the same thing?

SOME MORE ON FALLING CATS:

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