My Menagerie

 

On the walls of the southeast corner of my study hang pictures of the dogs we have had in the 32 years of our marriage.  Only our most recent acquisition, Princess, is yet to join the gallery, but it is inevitable she will.  We've had more cats than dogs, but only Inky, a Maine Coon and one of the first, hangs on my study wall.  To tell the truth, it would be impossible to fit pictures of all the cats into the free wall space left in my study.  From our point of view, it's not a case of too many animals, but rather one of too little wall space. 

I should have known we'd have so many animals—Charlene had 4 cats when I met her.  It was a clear mandate: love me, love my cats.  So we've always had a menagerie in spite of its concomitant work and expense.  When we had a farm, a few of our dogs lived outside, and some of the cats lived in one of our barns.  They all seemed to so well, thanks in no small part to many long trips to the nearest good vet and also to many station wagon loads of pet food (unavailable at any price in our tiny hamlet, Patriot Indiana.) 

But our household dogs and cats are only part of the story.  In Cuba we're connected to another menagerie.  First there was a pack of about ten survivors of Havana's streets living in Nora and her mom's 10th floor apartment. When I first saw them there had to be 10, and since then, their number has ranged from 8 to 12.  Whenever I visit, a knock on Nora's front door ignites a riot of barking that finally abates when I take a seat.  Nora had one little roly-poly curly who wants to snuggle up by me.  They're all delightful, but she's my favorite, though I can never remember her name.

Another part of my Cuban menagerie is 10 to 12 lucky dogs who are permanent residents of Aniplant's slick new headquarters.  There you'll find the protagonists of several of the posts in this blog.  My all-time favorite is Aló Presidente (see my 8/20/10 post to this blog), a curly black Cocker-like leader of the pack who rules the roost from a defended fort between a large box and a wall and under a table.  He couldn't be more my dog if he were here in Florida, sitting next to me as I write this.

Aló has a female counterpart, Bella, also beautiful, long haired and hospitable to visitors.  Bella perhaps belongs to Angela more than she belongs to me, not for any lack of my love, but for the amount of Angela's.  She is a flight attendant from the UK, who was on one of her layovers in  Havana, who spotted Bella, sick and shy near the Plaza de Las Armas, a popular tourist spot.  At home Angela got on her computer, found us, and then Nora found Bella, took her in, treated her pneumonia, and then adopted her into the headquarters pack.  Bella means "beautiful" in Spanish, and the name certainly applies to this dog.  Angela takes every flight she can work to Cuba, and she is a regular visitor to Aniplant's headquarters, always bringing treats and toys for the whole bunch.  Bella's story is told in these posts on 2/26/12.
 
And, although I'll only see most of the other Cuban dogs in my menagerie only once, I can't end this post without a mention of them.  They're the dogs and cats whose owners bring them to Aniplant's clinics for low cost sterilization.  Aniplant's primary activity is spaying and neutering animals.  They do thousands every year with TAP funding the medicines.  When I visit Havana, I always try to visit one of the Saturday clinics that move weekly through the neighborhoods.  There animal lovers and their companion animals wait patiently for their turn in the veterinarian's schedule.  It's a great gift to the animal to be neutered, and each operation is also a gift to the community because massive spay/neuter programs are the only humane way to reduce the population of homeless animals.
 
So, while I usually don't know their names, I pet them, chat a little with their owners, and mentally add each one to my Cuban menagerie

 

Les Inglis

Chinatown 

On my first trip to Cuba I was surprised to learn Havana has a Chinatown.  I wanted to see it, but why the surprise?  After all, the Chinese, as the most populous country in the world, for centuries had sent its people to the far corners of the world.  Thus we have Chinatowns in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco—why not Havana? 

To find Havana's Chinatown you only need to walk around to the back side of the Capitolio, Havana's most famous building.  Then take a few steps past the Cuban Telephone tower where my friend, Dulce, worked many years ago.  (The Cuban Telephone company was the first US owned business to be nationalized after the 1959 Revolution.)  Now you can see a large oriental arch with a pagoda roof at the entrance to Barrio Chino, Cuba's Chinatown.

Once through the arch you see Zanja Street is closed to autos.  It's a narrow pedestrian street stuffed with Chinese restaurants, each with a young man or woman out front trying to show you a menu.  In truth, after several visits, I've never passed completely through the street.  I always got waylaid by the menu hawkers and guided in to a table for lunch.

Of course they all have the traditional Chinese dishes—chop suey, Bhudda's delight, lo mein —but these restaurants also offer rice and bean dishes like my favorite, Moros y Cristianos, which is black beans and white rice.  I'll admit I could probably find something more exotic, but I happen to love beans and rice.  I think after years of practicing vegetarianism, my tastes have become simpler.  Anyway the many types of beans and of rice and the many ways of cooking them offer vegetarians a large variety of dishes.

You can sense that life in Cuba isn't easy for most people, including Chinese restaurateurs.  Coping with shortages is a constant problem.  On one of my Chinatown visits I was given a paper napkin.  As I opened it, I discovered the napkin was actually half a napkin neatly torn into two rectangles along a fold line.  Other periodic shortages force waiters to explain that not every menu item is available every day. 

Service is good or bad depending on your luck in choosing a restaurant.  Most dining is on the second floor so you can't see how crowded the place is while out on the street dealing with the menu hawkers.  One time we were we were worried to see our little table for three was right next to a party of twelve at a long line of tables pushed together.  I knew we were in for slow service, and I was right.

The servings always seem large to me, but in Cuba everyone has a plastic bag to take home leftovers.  Nora calls the plastic bags the Cuban's second stomach.  Not having a bag was no problem for me—for a few coins the restaurant offered styrofaom boxes for leftovers. 

My leftovers were for a couple of dogs I'd seen in a fenced vacant lot used as a parking lot.  These dogs obviously belonged to the lot attendants and ran to me when I stopped by the fence.  A few words is Spanish got me permission to feed them.  I knew they would love even beans as you could see traces of their ribs under their fur.  It turned out there were three dogs, and I divided the food into three portions.  The dogs politely each ate his own portion and didn't bother his canine friends.  How like my own dogs, I thought.  They never bother their housemates when they are eating. 

I made the parking lot stop to feed dogs two times on different trips a year apart.  The lot attendant said he remembered me, but he my just have been being polite. 

I know the dogs remembered me, though. 

Les Inglis

Pablo 

Amanda was on vacation in Havana when she spotted a black dog in Central Park who really looked terrible.  He was thin and listless and not very interested in eating.  She was alarmed, as the reason street dogs hang around the park is to get handouts from the tourists.  If he didn't want to eat, he might be very sick. 

Like lots of animal lovers, Amanda bonded instantly with the dog, and she began to think that it's not right an animal should be anonymous, so she gave him a name.  Pablo was her choice.  She called her vet back home and asked him if there was anything she could do for Pablo, given his circumstances and the fact that she soon had to fly back home to California.  She had a Cipro tablet with her, and the vet counseled her to give half of it to the dog, so she did.

Next, she talked to the concierge in the hotel, the Park Central, about finding a local vet to help the dog.  He told her the carriage horse drivers usually knew vets, and he was right.  Reynaldo, one of the drivers took her and the dog to a state run vet clinic where the vet examined Pablo and gave him more medicine.  All of this took place on a Saturday.  Amanda, who had to leave soon, tried to pay the vet to care for the dog, but he wouldn't take more than a small payment for the medicine.  He did promise to take him home and care for him and bring him back on Tuesday, so she agreed. 

Here the story gets a little confused—the vet said the understanding was that he was going to bring the dog to the clinic at 8:00 am on Monday, and Amanda understood Tuesday was the day.  It didn't help that Reynaldo was the only one who spoke a little English besides Amanda. 

Back at her hotel, she did a search for animal protection in Cuba and came up with a couple of possibilities.  The Aniplant Project (TAP) was one such contact, and we relayed the situation to Nora Garcia, Aniplant's President. 

Here's where it gets crazy.  The vet brought Pablo to the clinic on Monday morning, and, with no one there to pick up the dog, gave him to a person he did not even know.  Nora showed up on Tuesday morning, and all she got was the vet's story.

From a dog lover's standpoint, the vet was irresponsible in trusting the dog to someone he didn't even know and leaving Amanda and Nora with no path to trace his whereabouts.  From the vet's perspective, he was at the clinic at the right time and this was just some other tourist who may already have even left the country.  He had a clinic full of sick dogs to run.  From the dog's standpoint, the chances of his new custodian being a dog lover able to give Pablo a new home were slim to none.  He had a better chance of being abandoned again. 

I was injected into the middle of this polemic translating Amanda's questions to Nora and Nora's answers to Amanda.  Our best hope was that the stranger who received the dog really wanted him and that we could somehow find out who he was to resolve Amanda's anguish. 

If the dog was to be abandoned again, I was hoping it would be again near Central Park.  Dogs in that area know where to search for food and have many more tourists from whom to beg.  That seemed not too likely since abandonment is usually done without regard to the dog's needs.  Amanda had some photos which Nora reproduced and posted in likely spots, hoping someone had seen Pablo recently. 

Meanwhile the emails and phone calls continued.  I really felt sorry for Amanda not knowing how this animal could so completely be lost to her.  But it all came to a happy conclusion when on Sunday, eight days after being taken to the vet; an email arrived from Nora which said: 

We just found Pablo.  He's again in the same park in front of Amanda's hoetl where she found him.  Today I fed him as he is extremely thin.  Tomorrow we start treatment, and we are looking for a foster home.  I'm sending pictures. 

Nora 

All's well that ends well.  In later correspondence, Amanda decided that she wants to adopt Pablo and bring him to her home in California.  That's a long and very complicated procedure, but it has been done before with the help of friends at APAC Varadero, Air Transat and Candi International.  We'll cover that activity as it develops in these blogs. 

Les Inglis