(Via Elisabeth)

Yeah, different mentality – dogs have it slightly better but not a lot.

You often see at the airport people shipping dogs and cats out – it is difficult and at times heartbreaking.

There is a British woman locally who does what she can with food and the like – she told us she is getting through 40Kgs of dried food a month – we always buy her a stack before we leave – scraping at the edges really, but, you feel you have to do something.

I think I could not live in a culture that treated animals so indifferently as you’re talking about in Crete. I know enough about myself to know that would be very hard indeed.

I was fiddling in the 2′X6′ patch of dirt I call a garden, it contains an orange tree and a Hibiscus along with numerous other smaller plants – I was picking away when I was hissed at, on closer examination I saw one of the local cats along with kittens that were that small they must have just been born, one was pure white. I went got some food in case mum was exhausted and went to bed – more food was left first thing – I went to check mid morning to be told by my neighbour that the kittens were gone. I asked where – I was told in the rubbish!

I rather hope that my neighbour who is a gentle charming man at least killed them first – I suspect not.

He was probably doing the mother a favour who is partially disabled anyway – she would have struggles, the kittens would have struggled and been pregnant whilst still kittens. The trouble is, well, not the trouble – this is Crete, they don’t see them in the way us Brits and Americans do – it somehow seemed okay and yet at the same time was terribly upsetting.

The mother looked for them for a few days but no seems okay – no doubt she will be pregnant again in a few weeks and so the cycle continues. 35 Euros to get a cat spayed – on the whole no one is interested.

I felt the urge to share – for what it’s worth.

I am a guest in a household possessed of three resident cats (Archy, Betty, and Veronica), two visiting cats (Mo[zart] and Jada), and a part-time resident dog (Raleigh).

Perhaps the victim in the photograph had jeered, “Ginger cat! Ginger cat!” one time too many, promoting the ginger to fight back against ginger-bullying.