Coming to Asia has opened my eyes to the world of animal cruelty which I never imagined could exist in this day and age.  The Chinese would kill anything for money or tummy, I am ashamed to belong to that race. 

In the Philippines, animal cruelty is very widespread too, in a country where 75% of its people survives on merely 2 dollars a day, animals are seen as either food or nuisance.  Dog eating is a cheap national delicacy, if we lose our dog she will end up on someones dinner plate or be made to work for the security trade, the market rate for a large meaty dog like her fetches 250 pesos (5 dollars).  Cats have no value except as free rodent controllers, the country is plagued by animal and human overpopulation due to its Catholic affiliation, every now and then, the authorities would round up the homeless animals and kill them by mass euthanasia.    Dogs get sold off to the meat trade.  Even if some cats avoid the mass culling fate, they are treated very cruelly by people who don't want them trespassing on their property, they get fed rat poison or antifreeze and die an agonizing slow death, or they get scalded by boiling water or hot frying oil, a favorite tactic of cooks in domestic households.   New born kittens are suffocated alive in plastic bags or thrown into street manholes for drowning.  In my short stay of less than 1 year, I have rescued so many animals in need that I have lost count.

Our family live in an upscale village  but prosperity is only restricted to its human occupants, there are so many sick and hungry cats roaming our neighborhood that I could not simply turn a blind eye.  Apart from feeding them (up to 200 cats!) daily I also joined a local grass-root animal welfare organization which provides low cost spay and medical treatment for stray animals, it was started by a small team in 2002, this is a very small charity with a big mission, we operate a spay clinic full time and  offer low cost service to local animal owners to encourage owner responsibility.

Another day of animal cruelty and abuse, can we really make a difference! Can one small group of volunteers change the way a country thinks and behaves. A country that doesn't even look after its own starving children and heaven forbid we mention those words birth control.

 

Some days I feel like giving up, I can't cope with seeing another cat scolded by boiling water, another dog starving to death on the street or another abandoned kitten on the roadside. Why don't I just go to coffee mornings and visit the beautiful beaches. I hear so often from my fellow expats - oh the Philippines is such an easy posting, life is so great here with all the drivers and maids. Think again, look deeper, it is not....

 

 

Above are my three babies. They were rescued from a plastic bag which had been thrown down a drain, they were only two days old - the Philippines way of dealing with over population of animals! Luckily my husband jogged that way and happened to hear them crying. And yes, I also live in an up-scale village, I actually live on one of the most exclusive roads in the Alabang village but that didn't stop someone throwing these helpless kittens down a drain on that road.

 

So every time I want to give up and retreat to a less emotional and heart breaking type of stay in the Philippines. My three kittens are there to remind me that their fellow feline and canine friends need my help. Coffee mornings aren't for me, I don't like coffee anyway!