I don’t know much about this saint-like woman in Indonesia. She deserves a medal and recognition for her voluntary struggles in rescuing homeless cats from huge mounds of garbage in Indonesia’s West Sumatra province which is why I am writing this.
Her name is Salmiati. I have her name in the title deliberately. It deserves to be there. It should be shouted from the rooftops. Yahoo tells me that she is 40-years-of-age and a mother of two children.
Every day I treat these cats as my own children. In one day I have to prepare two kilograms of fish mixed with two kilograms of cat food for them to eat. It’s a pity to see abandoned cats, so I take them home. In a day, sometimes I can save three to five cats” Salmiati said.
She is one of those people who can’t bear to see animals suffer. She has to step in and do something even when it places a big burden on her slender shoulders. She has been rescuing cats for a year. Fortunately she has received recognition because she gets donations to help cover her expenses.
She has built her own cat shelter. It is an enormous achievement. You know cat welfare is not great in Indonesia. In general cats live a tough life. They are mainly community cats ekking out a life which looks relatively brutal compared to millions of cats in developed countries.
It looks horrible to me. It looks like a distinct failure in the process of cat domestication. Is this where we (humankind) have got to with domestic cats? People in the West should realise cat domestication can only be described as a failure in many countries of the world. Homeless cats wandering around slums living short, miserable lives. What happened? If cat domestication was an examination humankind would get an F grade. A big fat fail.
