Imagine walking down your street. Along the first few meters you lay your eyes upon a cat. She is skinny, filthy, and could have several injuries on her body.
You keep walking.
A few meters later, in a discreet corner, you see a family of kittens ? their mother looks tired, they already have fleas crawling over their body, and you wonder how long they might survive.
You get in your car, turn on the engine and go. It doesn?t take long before you swerve to the right to avoid running over the already bloodied body of an unlucky cat run over by a vehicle.
Welcome to Lebanon. The above description ? however distressing ? is the reality of the streets where we live.
Lebanon is a country with a growing pet culture. Unfortunately, most of our animals are not to be found in the safety and security of a home, but on the streets. They are everywhere you look and usually in bad conditions.
As a start at correcting this huge problem, one of the founding concepts of Animals Lebanon is TNR - Trap, Neuter, and Return. This means using trained people to trap cats which are found on the streets, caring vets performing a safe and easy surgery that prevents them from giving birth, returning the cats back where they live if their health permits, and providing them with food and water so they don?t have to struggle for these basic necessities.
With no background knowledge of TNR, such a policy may seem bizarre. In fact, of projects to reduce the number of animals living on the streets, it is the most effective and internationally practiced methods.
Ideally, we would love to be able to get all these cats from the streets and into homes. Even this would not solve all the problems, not until people stop refusing to spay or neuter their own pets and stop abandoning their pets.
While AL has a cat shelter, and many animals are rescued and pass through the shelter before being adopted, many cats on the streets will never be happy in the shelter or homes. They are feral, they already have an area they call home, and it is our job to make them safe in their own home.
AL believes in solving the problem from the roots - if we decrease the amount of cats giving birth every year, then we will significantly decrease the amount of cats suffering on the streets. TNR is the long-term.
Many people may wonder if it is harmful to perform the spay/neuter operation. The operation is quick and safe, and once done there is less risk for certain diseases. Cats and dogs do not have to give birth to have normal, healthy lives.
One goal of AL is to be able to perform a minimum of 1,000 TNR surgeries in the first year. Just think about it, here are 1,000 animals which are healthier because of the procedure, and so many births will be prevented.
To reach this goal, Animals Lebanon and the Lebanese Veterinary Association have come to an agreement to carryout a widescale TNR program.
Working with a select group of vets, we are able to offer everyone a discounted price when doing TNR through AL. You can either buy a voucher and do the work yourself with our help, or donate vouchers and AL will make sure cats are safely spayed or neutered and returned to their homes.
Please click here to learn more about TNR and how you can help.
