Gift Baskets

Some people live their whole lives without finding a stray cat or dog on the front porch.  Those people aren't usually known as animal lovers.  I think it is impossible to be known as an animal lover in one's area without someone eventually deciding to leave an animal at your door clandestinely.

Granted such secretive "gifts may be motivated by a desire to help a homeless animal, but they are also a burden on the recipient, no matter how much he or she loves animals.  Most animal lovers have more than one companion animal—sometimes a few or several.  I'm not talking here about "hoarders" who are mentally ill and have far too many animals.  I'm talking about normal people with a special love for dogs and/or cats.  People like my dear departed mother-in-law and father-in-law who loved all animals and instilled that love into their daughter, my wife, Charlene.

Mary, my mother-in-law, usually had one dog and a few cats.  She and her husband, Ben, cared for all their animals, spent plenty of time with them, and often talked about them with friends.  But Mary and Ben were often victimized by others who might dump a cat or a few new kittens at their house.  Each time they found a box or basket at the back door, they had to care for the new arrival(s), feed them, and try to find a friend who might want to adopt it.  That meant they usually had a few more animals than they could reasonably support.

In our own case, although I can't prove they were dumped, over the years we have encountered several cats hanging around our house.  This happens with a frequency that leads me to suspect some of them may have been unrequested midnight deliveries.  As a result, we have averaged about 6 cats in our house over the 24 years we have lived here.  It was the same at our farm before we moved here, but the number of strays in that area was always large.

What's the alternative if you find a dog or cat?  Well, first decide if you have room in your life for a new companion.  Do you have any friends who might like to adopt a lifelong pal?  Also, consider a local shelter or refuge.  Yes they are usually full, and some must euthanize animals to control the number they keep, but, assuming the shelter practices humane euthanasia, that is neither cruel nor unfair in this imperfect world.  What does seem unfair is to leave an animal at someone's door just because that person loves animals.

I'm saying that when you encounter a homeless animal you should do everything possible to get it into a caring home.  Charlene's mantra is "Never be too busy to help an animal in distress."  And she lives by that Commandment without exception. But beyond animals found along the roads or in the occasional picture of a rescued dog in foster care that we fall in love with, we really don't need surreptitious additions to our menagerie.

Every animal adopted by loving, sensible people is one less animal at risk of injury, sickness, or starvation.

Les Inglis

Finca Vigia

To me, the best weather in the world is found when you go toward the equator until it gets too hot, and then you go straight up until you find cool breezes.  I learned this years ago when I passed a couple of weeks in Cuernavaca taking Spanish lessons.  Cuernavaca calls itself the city of eternal spring, and that's a pretty accurate description.  Even though it's squarely in the Earth's tropical zone, 6000 feet of elevation assures that Cuernavacans don't need air conditioning.

I have a friend, Lilian, who sited her home halfway up a mountain in the suburbs of San Jose, Costa Rica.  Weather there stays close to perfect due to a happy combination of latitude and elevation.  One night, while visiting there, we all decided to go to a restaurant near the mountain top.  I foolishly neglected to take a sweater along, and shivered through dinner, proving on that mountain you can be either too high or too low.

In 1939, Ernest Hemingway brought his third wife, Martha Gelhorn, to live with him in Cuba.  After settling in, Martha began to look for a permanent home. She must have known that in a hot place like Havana it would be a good idea to be as high up as you can get because after a search, she set her sights on a large finca situated on many acres on top of the highest hill on Havana's southern horizon.  It was in a little town called San Francisco de Paula, and Papa Hemingway agreed with Martha to make it their home.

Finca Vigia (literally, "farm with a view") is home to hundreds of species of tropical trees and plants surrounding a one-story, expansive home with huge rooms.  Soon after the purchase, new bookshelves in the house filled with books and the notes of Papa, who read even more than he wrote.  Papa's fourth wife, Mary, built him a four story tower with a writing studio on the top floor.  From that room you can see all of the metropolitan area of Havana and beyond out into the Florida Straits.  Papa felt the tower studio was too silent for him to write well and resumed writing standing at his typewriter in the house.  Even on the ground floor, one could see the Havana panorama laid out in the distance.

Many animal rights proponents would sneer at Hemingway, the hunter.  He hung heads of buffalo, gazelles, and antelope he had killed on safari on the finca walls, sometimes several in a room.  Yet the finca abounded with pet cats and dogs.  Papa would mourn the deaths of any of his dogs, and he was said to be even fonder of his cats than his dogs.  He established a little cemetery for some of the dogs.  Descendants of his dogs and cats still live on the finca grounds, fed and cared for by the attendants of the property, now a nationally protected museum.  Cuba has restored Finca Vigia to the showplace it must have been when Papa lived there.  No expense was spared in the restoration, and every item was cataloged, removed, stored, and eventually put back in the same place when it was necessary to construct a new roof for the house a few years ago.

Papa, I loved your writing, hated your hunting, marveled at your Cuban home, and snapped a photo of your little pet cemetery.

Les Inglis

Vegan Abroad

I've been trying to be a vegan for 25 years now.  That means eating no animal based foods.  It sounds simple, but in reality the western world is stacked against vegans. Restaurant menu selections by and large contain meat or eggs or some dairy product that vegans forswear.  Years ago Charlene and I became vegans at the same time, setting off a project of reading food package labels, seeking vegan recipes, and gambling on strange ethnic restaurants.  We learned to ask for special preparations when nothing vegan appeared on a menu.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining.  We long ago left the learning phase, and now we've found a number of suitable restaurants, and the meals we have at home are wonderful and cause no animal suffering.  It's when I travel I find the most mealtime challenges.  First of all I'm placed well back on the learning curve of finding a suitable restaurant.  When traveling, you take what you can get.  Also you don't know how adaptable the chef is if you are thinking about asking for a substitution.

But on my trips to Cuba, I have pretty well solved the problem of what to eat.  And the solution was easy—it was in the restaurant in my hotel.  Guests in most hotels are a captive audience it not being convenient to leave the hotel to grab the first meal of he day.  My hotel, the Presidente in the Vedado suburb, lays out a magnificent breakfast spread.  Its large dining room has a well stocked buffet line with just about anything you might like for breakfast.

The buffet line starts near a griddle cook who, on any given day, might be cooking pancakes, fried eggs or French toast.  It then progresses right to left past a steam table loaded with large pans of hash browns, home fries, even mashed potatoes, buscuits, cooked veggies like cabbage or onion, and hard boiled eggs.  You name it, and if it is eaten for breakfast, there will be a tray of it sometime during the week.

Beyond the end of the tray line and placed around the dining room are tables with cereal, oatmeal, fruit, breads, sweet rolls, and even sliced cheese.  To drink are coffee, hot chocolate and different fruit juices.  I have to pick and choose to stay vegan, and usually I'm pretty successful clinging to my dietary life style in the hotel dining room.

At lunch time we guess at restaurants and the selection isn't as grand for a vegan.  But fortunately, the beans and rice dishes I love are ubiquitous in Latin America, and  Italian and Chinese restaurants are a sure bet if you want to avoid meat.  In general when I'm going to Havana, I know I won't be hungry because of my culinary proclivities.

One feature of eating well in Cuba does bother me.  Being a tourist destination for Canada and Western Europe, Cuba supports a well developed system of supplying restaurants and hotels.  They offer nearly everything one might desire in the way of food, and the tourists consume it with gusto, whether vegans, vegetarians or animal eaters.  All this gustatory largesse is bought and paid for in CUC's, the Cuban convertible currency.

Ordinary citizens can't usually buy food priced in CUC's.  They can't afford it.  Their salaries are small and paid in the old Cuban Peso (moneda nacional or MN), worth a fraction of the CUC.  Ration books supplement the citizen's larder, but offer less than enough to last a month and a very limited selection of foods.  The typical family cook shops in food stands placed in the neighborhoods by farmers who haul their fruits and vegetables into town every day.  It is forbidden to raise beef for domestic consumption, but beef can be had for the tourist and anything else he might like.  The hapless citizen can see the rich life of the tourist, but he can't partake.

During World War II the Nazis occupied Norway and the domestic meat industry faded away, leaving the citizens an unappealing diet of plant foods and grains.  After four years of this meager fare, doctors discovered Norwegian citizens were showing lower rates of heart disease and cancer.  Norway's experience may suggest that Cuba's seemingly unfair dual currency system and the simple fare it forces Cubans to eat may well have a silver lining in improved health of the citizens.

Les Inglis

Roaming vs Homing

This chapter isn't about a Cuban animal—it's about an American cat.  Before I knew its name, I thought it was a female because it was small (almost dainty) and soft and sweet and adorable.  A grey and brown short (although not very short) haired cat with a hint of tiger striping, she looked the part of a lovable little feline girl.

Steve, my next door neighbor, caught me puttering around the yard to ask if perhaps we were missing one of our cats.  I said no because I knew none of our six ever leave the house, and, if one ever did get out, it would set off a fusillade of searches, calls, and emotions beyond imaginable limits.  Telling me this little stranger had been around for a few days, Steve led me into his front yard and pointed out the little beauty standing in the bushes near his front door.  I crouched down to call it, and it came right to me without hesitation and asked for some caresses.  Steve isn't a pet person, and Charlene and I are, so his hope was that we could tell him what to do with the cat.  I mentioned two really good cat shelters not far away, but I could tell he was hoping we might become involved, so I said I'd get Charlene to come over and look at it.  I thought if she sees it, we'll certainly become involved.

Sure enough, she saw the lovable little ball of fur and said, "I'll get a carrier and we'll take it up to Marty."  Marty is our vet who runs a large practice.  We've had luck before placing cats in crates in his waiting room where hundreds of pet lovers pass through every day.  Marty is happy to help out to get animals adopted out into the local community, and I suppose one more pet cat in the area can't be bad for business either.  Well, come to think of it, we've been the beneficiaries of Marty's willingness to try to place pets—Marty first showed us our beloved border collie, Danny, at his office after his former master had passed away.

The transport duty fell to me, and we put the cat in a carrier in the front seat of my car.  At the vet office Marty's Chief of Staff, Tawnya, helped me out.  I asked her if she would check for a microchip and told her I'd stick around until I knew if there was one.  Fifteen minutes later Tawnya appeared smiling with the news thee was indeed a chip.  She offered to make calls to the chip maker to identify the owner if I cared to wait for the results.  "Oh and by the way, this cat's a neutered male," she said.

Meanwhile Charlene had been on the phone to neighboring pet owners.  One had reported another neighbor's outdoor cat matched the cat's description.  Charlene phoned me with what she had learned, and said she'd called the possible owner (Marjorie, who lived several houses up the street) and that she had found the owner.  The cat's name was Tom.  As I was hanging up the phone, Tawnya appeared with the owner's name and address and phone number from the chip maker neatly written on a sheet of note paper, so Tom and I got back in the car and drove to his house.

Charlene was already in their driveway as I pulled up, and I set the carrier down in the grass by my car.  Marjorie, while happy to see him back at home was not surprised Tom had been roaming.  "I tried him in the house, but he likes to scratch the furniture.  Go ahead, let him out of the carrier on the grass"  So Tom, unfortunately for him and possibly for some of the birds in our area, is an outdoor cat.  He gets good food, vet care and love, but he can't come inside with the family.  Seeing how people friendly this cat is, I thought it's a shame he can't live inside, perhaps only for the lack of a scratching pad or post.

The Humane Society of the US never recommends letting a cat roam outside—it's bad for the cat and bad for wildlife—lizards, birds, chipmunks and many other animals.  The cats themselves can get fleas, ticks, and suffer in fights.  It's just not good practice.

Sweet little Tom.  At least next time he shows up in Steve's yard, Steve will know he really isn't a stray, and he's not starving.  And the next time I won't be as tempted to take him into our already large brood.

Les Inglis

Small World

When you hear the word, Caribbean, you think of a large body of water south and east of the Gulf of Mexico, but when you visit the Caribbean, you think of a chain of islands that define the northern and eastern limits of the Caribbean.  Those islands, some huge like Cuba, and some tiny like St. Thomas, are where we vacation, dance, drink, swim, surf, and listen to steel drums and Bobby McFadden impersonators.  Oh yes, and some people go to educate themselves.

This year the Caribbean Animal Welfare Conference (CAWC) was held in Port of Spain, Trinidad, the most far-flung of Caribbean islands.  Trinidad is at the extreme southeast corner of the Caribbean Sea.  In fact, on a map it doesn't even seem like part of the chain of islands, being well separated from the rest and, at its closest part less than 10 miles from Venezuela on the South American mainland.  But enough about geography.

Nora Garcia, Aniplant's President, traveled 1600 miles from one end of the chain to the other to attend CAWC earlier this month to take part in lectures and seminars on whales, turtles, farm animals, animal shelters, and sterilization.  CAWC is sponsored and produced by three main organizations, Humane Society International (HSI), World Society for Protection of Animals (WSPA), and Pegasus Foundation.

Years ago as a late teenager, Nora had attended CAWC with her adoptive mother, nationally known Cuban singer/songwriter/author, Maria Alvarez Rios, the woman who encouraged Nora to make a career out of helping animals.  Unfortunately, Cuba then was entering a long period of economic problems, and travel in later years to CAWC became prohibitive.

This year, thanks to substantial assistance from HSI and The Aniplant Project (TAP), Nora's expenses for herself and one other Aniplant Director were donated, and she could bring her substantial experience with large sterilization campaigns to the conference.

While at the conference, Nora ran into a friend she had first met in 1962 at another CAW conference with her adoptive mom.   These two ladies are roughly the same age and were born in the same small town in central Cuba.  The meeting was a surprise to both of them, especially after more than 50 years.  Here's my translation of Nora's email account of this grand coincidence:

I saw a friend from the year 1962 who lives in Puerto Rico.  Incredibly it became evident that my parents and hers knew each other.  We were both born in Caibarien in the center of the island only a block between our houses, and we are almost the same age.  She knew much about me through your blogs, and she was so surprised to meet me personally.  It was very emotional—they called us "The Cubans."  She is President of ALL SATO RESCUE in Puerto Rico, and we are much alike—thin, active, dedicated, and with much love for the animals, especially dogs.

Nora

I've long had a theory that love of animals is an innate characteristic of human lives.  It's born into us, and if it can't be found in an adult, it was probably lost by action of the person's environment.  But absent such a loss, one could say, "once an animal lover, always an animal lover."  I think the paths of Nora and her friend in Puerto Rico certainly lend weight to this idea. Frankly I'm impressed with this story of two girls who liked their dogs and grew up to make parallel careers out of helping thousands of them.

No wonder I like animal lovers so much.

Les Inglis

Best Friends Forever

One of the toughest problems for dog owners is that dogs live only a fraction of the time people do.  That means in the course of a lifetime a dog lover might have to face the passing of several "best friends." 

Ten pictures of our dogs hang on the walls of my study as I write this.  Only one of these very special creatures is still alive.  The ten do not include dogs I had as a child or before Charlene and I were married.  That's a lot of goodbyes, and each one hurt as if it were a son or daughter.

There is no right way to manage your pet's passage onto another plane.  Sometimes they pass quickly with no forewarning, and sometimes they decline slowly over a long time of building grief.  Sometimes a veterinarian predicts the end, and sometimes he offers a hopeful medical strategy to keep the pet alive.  Many, if not most, of us will reach a long way to keep our pets alive and healthy, but also most of us would question commissioning heroic veterinary feats just to postpone the end of a terminal struggle.  Who is such a postponement for?  The pet or its owner?

Over the years Charlene and I have faced the mortality of our animal companions, and I must say that going through these struggles has not made us experts in managing the end of life passages, except perhaps to reinforce what most of us know—make the most of today for tomorrow may never come.

But let me tell you the story of Booster, my friend Davis Hawn's service dog.  Davis found Booster as a scarred puppy inside his pickup truck when he went to claim it from an impound lot.  At that time he wasn't particularly a dog lover, but something about that little puppy struggling to live struck a chord with Davis, himself a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder.

They bonded and became inseparable.  Davis began to learn more about training dogs and eventually won a Master's Degree from Bergin University in training service dogs.

Booster became educated too, and today he helps Davis with everyday tasks.  Among his many talents Booster can, on command, go to the refrigerator, open it, retrieve a Coke, and bring it back to Davis.  But most of all, they are inseparable companions, which Davis lovingly demonstrates by signing his letters:

                        Davis and Booster

                        We are a team.

After an email friendship, I finally met Davis and Booster at an HSUS conference in Orlando.  Booster was very popular among the conferees as Davis put him through his paces.  It seemed like Booster could understand English, but I had the feeling that Davis understands dog language too.  Surely they are a team.

Our spinning planet shuddered a little one day recently when Davis found a lump on Booster's head.  He was told Booster had developed a tumor that had penetrated his skull and was growing inside the brain cavity.  If he was to be saved, surely radical measures would be needed.  Quickly educating himself in such matters, Davis found two vets and treatments that could possibly help Booster.  First a vet in Canada had come up with a way to take cells from the tumor to make a vaccine that would fight the spread of the disease.  The second vet believed he could kill the tumor by a series of targeted radiation treatments.  Davis opted for both approaches.

The only fly in the ointment was the vaccine vet's schedule had no opening for Booster for a few weeks, but if the radiation were begun, the tumor material to be used for making the vaccine would be damaged, making the vaccine less effective.

Not to be diverted from helping his best friend, Davis opted for yet a third procedure.  First they would harvest robust cells and send them to the vaccine vet.  Then radiation in several sessions would kill the tumor.  Finally, when the vaccine vet's schedule permitted, the harvested cells would be used to make a vaccine.

All that has now happened, and Booster has come through with flying colors.  He has had his first vaccine application and an agenda of several more is scheduled.

Booster is one very talented dog, but he's a lucky one too.  In Davis he has a companion who just won't give up.  Davis is no starry-eyed optimist.  He knows a relapse could happen in the future, but he tells me, this is the first time in history that Booster's type of tumor cells have been applied this way—and it happens to be a remarkable success.  Booster, who has been the subject of countless news articles on his service dog skills, is now famous in veterinary medicine as the living demonstration of a new cancer fighting technique.

That's quite a career for a 95 pound Labrador retriever even if he's smarter than the average dog.

Les Inglis

Something in Common

The other night I watched a TV special discussing life in Cuba.  For many years travel to Cuba from the US had been complicated by books full of rules, regulations, restrictions, licenses, and authorizations.  As a result, US citizens stay away from Cuba in droves.  As intriguing as the island might be to US tourists, most decide it isn't worth the effort and travel somewhere else.

That's too bad as the island offers a large measure of things to see and do as well as its own rich history, architecture, music, and dance.  50 plus years of repressing interaction between Cuba and the US have only served to make Cuba and its culture more interesting.  The TV special I saw illuminated the many differences between life in the US and life in Cuba.

For an animal lover like me, one striking difference is the number of dogs one encounters on the streets—that is, dogs without any noticeable owners.  Now, to be complete, I have to say this is a Latin American and a Caribbean thing.   Cuba has fewer strays and homeless animals than say Honduras, but all the Latin countries have far more than we are used to seeing in the US.  Still, in Cuba few houses have fenced yards for their pets (or any yards at all for that matter), and it is common to allow your house pet to roam outside for its bathroom breaks.  Also the use of collars and leashes is rare in Cuba.  Even owners on a walk with their dogs depend upon the dogs staying with them while they stroll.  Thus, some of the possible "strays" one sees on the street are actually family pets and have homes.  I have learned not to consider the absence of an owner as evidence of homelessness.  That is to say, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  Rather, I look at the dog's condition.

For me, the best evidence of homelessness is the condition of the dog.  Underfed, ribs showing, lethargy, mange, etc. are far better indicators of homelessness.  On the TV special I looked carefully for street animals, I spotted two in the background of views of other subjects.  Neither of these two showed any of the signs of neglect, and I concluded these were someone's family dogs.

The TV special had sent its cameras and reporter into the home lives and family lives of the Cubans, making evident the relative poverty widespread in Cuba.  Salaries are miniscule and ration books supplement them, but ration books aren't sufficient to provide all the needed food.  Many Cubans have sidelines, and everyone uses every opportunity to earn a little extra money.  One wonders how a person in pressed circumstances can possibly have a dog in his family, and yet pets are perhaps as common in Cuba as they are in the US.  Dogs eat leftovers and scraps, slaughterhouse offal and viscera.  Chicken necks, pig stomachs, kidneys, and whatever else can be purchased cheaply.  Commercial pet food does not exist except in a few tourist stores at unaffordable prices.

Nora Garcia, Aniplant's President, presents two radio shows and one TV show each week.  She teaches animal care, animal health and humane practices.  In a country where radio is as important as TV is here, she has a large cadre of followers who tune into Radio Progresso every Saturday at 9:30 am.  Many times I've seen her stopped on the street by passersby to respond to their questions about pet care.  These experiences help me to conclude the typical Cuban loves animals as much as the typical American.  They care for and love their pets and support them despite meager resources.  They show up at spay neuter clinics for sterilization, knowing it is the long term solution to stray animals on the street.  Even if they can't personally rescue all the strays, they help by neutering their pets.

For all the differences in our lives and theirs, a love of animals, however differently expressed, is something we have in common with our island neighbors to the south.

Les Inglis