Feline Friends

    After our morning canine greetings, we started each day of volunteering at the shelter by doing rounds in the car wards. There are four separate wards, each with probably 15 to 30 cats. I was very impressed by the areas in which the cats live. Each ward has an indoor component as well as several outside areas that are fenced in to keep the dogs and any wildlife from getting in. Outside, there are fences to climb up, various wooden perches, beds on different levels, and most importantly, places to sunbathe. The cats also enjoy rubbing against the fence to greet people who walk by.

 Each room differs, but inside there are bunk beds in several of the rooms, as well as platforms at many different levels and boxes for the cats to hide in. The more timid cats are free to keep to themselves, and the social cats are able to interact with each other as they please and watch the people and dogs go by outside. 

     We brought in a few balls for the cats to play with one afternoon. Many of them were uncertain of what to do with them, but one cat figured it out and soon many of the others joined in, happily passing the balls back and forth between each other or chasing them across the room. Others couldn’t care less about the balls but just wanted human attention.

      We started off each morning in what we deemed the social ward. When we approached, nearly all of the cats would move to the door to greet us, meowing away. If we sat down, we’d often be swarmed by cats as they inquisitively inspected our clothing and shoes and faces. 

We named some of them with not-so-creative names based on their looks or behavior, but there were too many to keep track of. Scrapper, Little Scrapper, Ms. Mustache, Tripper, Lemur, Leo... We check on how everyone is doing, observing them for any obvious physical or behavioral abnormalities. It’s a challenge with such a large group, but definitely got easier as we grew to know the individual cats and their behavior. We treated some of the cats for various acute and ongoing conditions. There were two cats with kidney conditions that we placed in a separate treatment area for closer monitoring until they resumed their normal appetite and behavior. 

     After we were satisfied with how all the cats were doing in the social ward, it was on to visit the other three wards. Rubber and Orange Guy were pleased to see us in one of the wards, but all of the others there are absolutely terrified and hid in their little boxes, darting away when we approached - especially Scaredy, whose eyes seem to be eternally dilated. There's another room dominated by torties and calicos. There, all of the cats were initially extremely timid, but I made friends with one tortie who always sat on the same bench outside and happily rubbed against me, purring, whenever I came to visit her. By the end of my time volunteering, a few of her friends were brave enough to visit me as well. 

     Upstairs is the room made up of mostly orange cats, where they weren't so sure about us at first but soon many of them were very happy to have us. TomTom and Creamy were usually the first to say hello. As the cats got used to our presence, we usually were swarmed in orange fluff as we sat on the ground to observe them and spend time with them. 

It's funny how much the colors here correlate to behavior. Almost all of the black and whites who are brave enough to approach us love to lick our shoes. None of the black cats will get anywhere near us, though that's more understandable based on how they are treated out in the world. Most of the calicos and torties are also very afraid, and most of the orange cats are fairly social and quite the rubbers. There are a number of the cats living at the VSPCA who are extremely social and would do very well in homes with people to constantly love. Others will thrive for life in their colorful rooms at the shelter, but would certainly appreciate more volunteers to spend some time with them!

Meet Monster

     This adorable dog liked us on our first day, but the next day was glued from the moment we walked through the gates. He bounded after us as we did our rounds in the cat wards and tried to poke open the wooden doors when we were inside, setting the cats on a round of hissing. Whenever we went to get anything from our bags in the office where Tarzan (a cat) lived, he followed after us, but enjoyed harassing Tarzan. Sometimes he would follow us out when we left, but other times, a bit more needed to be done for him to leave the poor cat alone and he got sent to a kennel to keep him out of trouble for a bit (he certainly wasn't happy with that!). 

As we walked around the shelter grounds, he was very often running ahead of us, looking back to make sure we were following. When we passed other dogs, he sometimes growled at them, needing to be certain that they would leave us alone. There were certain dogs who were allowed to join his herd and come along with us, but he definitely made sure that the path ahead was clear and intervened when he thought there was a problem. When we went to work with the calves, we closed the gates, but he found another way around and soon happily bounded up to us. I was afraid at one point he was going to get kicked as he stood right behind an unhappy cow whose feet were being manipulated, but he did just fine. 

     One of the most entertaining things to watch was his game with Chitti the monkey (more about her later). Chitti was probably the one animal who outsmarted our little Monster. Monster ran after her barking and trying to catch her as she jumped from tree to tree, dangling her tail, getting close to him but not quite close enough to be caught. He's a little guy and as much as he tried, could only stand up so tall. He thought that he could win this game like all his others, but Chitti was having the time of her life taunting him and Monster had no such luck.

     At the end of the day, we gathered our things and walked out, shutting the gate behind us. Most of the dogs run free and there are a lot of ways out besides the gate, so the moment that I opened the car door, Monster was beside me and jumped right on in, surprising the driver a great deal, but it was no great surprise to us that our little shadow had found a way to try to come home with us. I picked him up and put him outside of the car, but the driver's door was open so half a second later, he was back in the back seat. We booted him back out and tried to drive away, but he ran with the car, eventually running a ways ahead of us so that he could keep up. We had to get out and walk with him back to the shelter and get someone to keep hold of him so that he didn't follow us all the way home. 

The next morning, Monster came bounding up to us the moment that we walked through the gates. We were really happy to see him as well - it was amazing how bonded we had become to this dog in just a day. He followed us through the beginning of our morning routine and stood waiting for us outside of the first cat ward, but after that he disappeared. As the day went on, we still didn't see him and had no idea where he had gone. We soon found out that he had only been staying at the shelter temporarily - he had been brought in for the animal birth control (ABC) program.  It turns out that Monster was from the steel plant on the other end of Vizag and the trip was only made out there occasionally. He has a family who takes care of him there and is well known in the community, so I was very sad to see him ago but very glad that this personable little guy has a good life out there. 

     Monster was just one of the countless dogs who pass through the shelter as part of the ABC program. The on-staff veterinarian spays and neuters 10-20 dogs a day. They each receive antibiotics, pain medication, a rabies vaccination, and several days of food before being returned to the area that they were taken from. Some of the dogs that come through the shelter are covered in ticks or have minor wounds and we do what treatment we can while they are anesthetized. Most of the dogs are actually in fairly good condition and clearly adept at surviving on the streets. There is the occasional dog who for whatever reason is unable to survive on his own and is therefore kept for life at the shelter rather than being released. Such was the case with an extremely friendly blind dog who caught our attention with a wagging tail and kisses when we walked down the ward one morning, as well as many of the other dogs who are now have care for life at the VSPCA.  It’s clear as I walk around Vizag that this program is having an impact in the city, as most of the dogs that I come across have ear notches, which serve as indications that they have been vaccinated and sterilized. The dogs and the city itself are both very lucky to have such a program that effectively targets a large number of dogs.

Getting to know the dogs

I recently spent four weeks volunteering at the Visakha Society for the Protection and Care of Animals. As a third year veterinary student from the United States, I spent a lot of time getting to know and caring for the animals at the shelter and in the community. Here are some of my stories of these wonderful animals and the lives they lead with the help of those at the VSPCA.

The first animals that I encountered when I got out of the car on my first day were the dogs. There’s a group of dogs who enjoy relaxing in the shade outside of the gate.  They have the freedom to move inside the gates but some choose to spend their time under the trees or climbing on rocks, always returning for their individual bowls of breakfast and dinner. Our first greeter was a sweet dog with beautiful brown eyes. Every day when we arrived, she’d get up from her nap and come running over with a wagging tail, eager to say hello and get some scratches. She always stayed outside of the gate, but she was always there to see us depart at the end of the day, following us to the car but knowing not to get in. When we took a stroll down the road one day to explore the area, there she was happily running alongside. Not knowing her name, we initially called her TanTan (creative, I know), but later found out that her name is Sota. Look at that face – she’s clearly a very happy dog.

When we first walked through the gate on our first day, there was a loud chorus of barking as all of the dogs announced the strange visitors. Many ran up to us in curiosity, and others soon lost interest and went about their business. As the days went on, we were no longer worth announcing, but we did have our inside greeters as well. We weren’t sure of the names of many of these dogs, so please bear with the names that we made up. We were always amused by Waterdog, who had the right idea about how to avoid the heat. She was also a love and when she saw us arrive, popped right out of her bath and wiggled her way over to say hello and giving us a morning shower.

Mangey Face (who we later found is named Clint Eastwood) is an adorable bouncy guy with a big smile on his face. He loved to follow us around and would sometimes lie outside the cat wards waiting for us to come back and play with him.

Cookie is a very sweet little girl. She was abandoned at the shelter because one of her back legs is paralyzed, so she was dropped off as a puppy and bottle-raised by the staff. Her leg doesn’t stop her from following us on our cat rounds, running around the shelter grounds, rolling in the dirt, and being a loveable lapdog.

After we greeted these dogs and many others each morning, we walked through the ABC ward where the street dogs who have recently been spayed/neutered or are awaiting their turn reside. They were usually paired up in twos in their kennels and cuddled up with their housemates. Some were very timid, hiding in the back, but others readily approached us with wagging tails and many kisses.

A big hello each morning was always to Goofy, who awaited us outside of the office where we put our belongings. She, like many of the dogs in the shelter, had self-assigned boundaries and only stayed within a certain region, but was always there to see us in the morning, at lunch, and in the evenings. She would sit on the stoop outside the surgery preparation room as we approached, eagerly wagging her tail. After some hello hugs and kisses, she’d follow us into the office and often try to steal my socks as I changed into my working shoes, or find some paper to shred if we didn’t take it from her quickly enough. Many of the dogs in India have a very different demeanor than dogs in the US, but Goofy struck me as much more of an American dog. She seems like the type who could chase tennis balls for hours and run on the beach, and it would be amazing if she could find a home. She certainly doesn’t have street skills like many of the dogs do, but is safe and happy in her stretch of the shelter grounds with people to lick and good meals each day. She was definitely one of the harder dogs to say goodbye to when it was time to depart.

More posts to come with my experiences of the many other shelter animals as well the work that I did at there and in villages near Kindness Farm, VSPCA’s other facility about 90 minutes away.