> Tonight I'll send some information about the terrible world the
> animals would fall into if left behind here in Ethiopia.

Ok, it's time for us to picture this scene from last year:

I was in my car, a couple of cars back from an intersection, waiting
for the traffic to clear up so I could go across. On the right side of
the street, across the intersection I saw a young dog playing around
a man with joy, scampering around and around him, doing the play bow,
and sweetly and exuberantly expressing her enthusiasm and affection
for him. He was watching coldly and then carefully aimed a huge kick,
striking the side of her head with his big boot, sending her reeling
across the street and down. She got up, head to the side, and staggered
off. I noticed she had distended teats, so she was nursing pups. I
glared at the man, he saw me and laughed his stinking head off. I still
am still filled with pain and regret that I didn't have the nerve to go
get her, hunt down her puppies and take them all to my vet.

The second story has a happy start and end, with a bad middle. It's
about one of my own cats, Alula, who was born here. With his mother, I
raised him up from an infant along with his sister and brothers. They
and their mother lived in my bedroom, and I spent hours with them every
day. They'd been born up in the ceiling of one of my neighbors' sheds,
and when she wanted them out of there, they squealed and cried, so one
by one I put them in my shirt and brought them into my bedroom with
their mother. As you can see from these photos, they were darling --
and healthy.

<http://s1144.photobucket.com/albums/o492/celebrateoften/Alula%20as%20infant%20then%20kitten%20then%20teen%20then%20adult/>

My housemates did not want any more cats in the household. Though I
was the one paying most of the bills, I wouldn't simply dictate my
will and, though I was so attached to them, I foolishly foolishly
agreed to let them go to new homes. I gave Alula to a woman who was
working for me, Teberre. She and her son Haftom were delighted and
very surprised that I gave them precious Alula.

One of my housemates, Ababa, and Teberre developed a feud, and Ababa
fired Teberre. A few months later I went to Teberre and Haftom's house,
thinking to take Alula to be neutered, since they were complaining that
he ran away from home. It turned out that they were keeping him tied
by the neck and were giving him only carbohydrates to eat. He was
skeletal, as you saw in those photos.

I never gave him back. The vet had said he would have died shortly.
Over some months he recovered, but he is food-crazy and steals
anything he can get hold of, even bread. You can see how well he
recovered, in the last photos.

Notice that this happened with people who loved him. They simply did
what most people here normally do with kittens. Tie them up and give
them only carbohydrates. They also cut off all of his whiskers --
Haftom said he though that was good for cats. When Teberre came to
visit some months later, Alula ran away from her.

I do not know of one household that I have visited that had a kitten
or puppy that lasted more than a month. This includes middle-class
people, not just poverty-stricken ones like Teberre and Haftom. Of
course clearly there are exceptions, but I have not seen them. Bad
statistics. Almost noone uses vets -- again, this is not just the
people in poverty.

Most dogs in the city are kept on short chains or closed up in tiny
metal kennels. Their function is to act as burglar alarms. Often
they are deliberately underfed so they will be "strong" guard dogs.
Sometimes they are terrorized in those little kennels -- people strike
the kennels with sticks.

Over and over and over, wherever I lived in the city, I would hear a
dog who'd been newly tied up or confined. At first the dog would cry
out, clearly asking for help. Then the cries would become cries of
misery. Then the cries would cease.

Here in the countryside I have not seen this sort of dog confinement.

Most of the dogs here and in the city have no owners. They are better
off in a way, but they must scavenge. In the city they are constantly
being run over. They are everywhere. They begin as optimistic little
darlings but soon, faced with a life of scavenging and gratuitous
abuse from people become sad. A large number have broken legs. Plenty
of people think it is sport to try to break dogs' legs with stones.
When a neighborhood gets too full of homeless dogs, the government
comes and poisons them with strychnine -- a hideous death.

I was driving one night when I saw a dog get hit by a car. I pulled
over and was going to go get him -- he was screaming. A young man came
shouting up to me demanding money for the dog. I shouted back at him,
but wasn't brave enough (at all) to get out and get the dog. It was
simple intimidation -- the dog was not his.

I have seen at least 4 dogs get hit by cars and two cats. One day I
was driving in the "Mercato" a heavily populated place. Traffic was
very heavy and crowded. I saw a dear looking dog working his way down
the street between the rows of traffic. I thought he was trying to get
to the other side. His mouth was stretched back and down with that
expression of fear and stress. I am so sad that I couldn't/didn't find
a way to stop and go get him.

People always ask me why I don't find Westerners to take my pets. This
is why: 99.9999999% of foreigners stay only a few months to two years.
Most of them take in dogs and/or cats. When it is time for them to
leave, most of them can't find homes for their animals -- the "market"
is saturated. The lucky animals that find homes are in the same
position again within, maximum, a couple of years. Eventually they do
not find homes.

The best solution is to find Ethiopians who know how to take care of
housepets. They are few and far between and, again, they usually
already have as many animals as they want to care for.

Ok, that is enough. Please help me to get my animals home to the US.

[Posted in FML 7650]