Animal Awareness Day, Centrepoint, Faculty Of Medicine, Universiti Malaya
AnimalCare 
Oct 17, 2013 
AnimalCare, NGOs 
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We wish to thank the Department of Parasitology of Unversiti Malaya, Dr Veeranoot Nissapatorn and the organising committee of Animal Awareness Day for inviting us to participate in this event and for raising funds for us to enable us to continue our work in helping street animals.
Here are some photos from today’s event:
The UM students were on hand to help us with our things.
Our first sale of the day!
PAWS brought rabbits and cats for adoption!
I was so tempted to take two rabbits home, but I doubt my cats would welcome them.
The event started with a speech by the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Prof Adeeba.
And the Head of the Department of Parasitology, Prof Rohela.
Our booth.
I was invited to share with the audience about what we do.
Dr Reuben Sharma talked about the various ways to rescue and handle animals properly and correctly. I learnt a lot from this talk. Besides cats and dogs, Dr Reuben Sharma even covered birds, snakes, turtles and primates. He emphasised repeatedly that we are the “bridge” between an injured animal and the vet, and he taught us how to be a good “bridge”. There is so much to be learnt even in basic first-aid alone, for example, when do you flush a wound with water and when you must not (or you might drown the animal). How do you handle injured birds and what do you feed them for the first 24 hours? Contrary to what I’ve heard that it is difficult to save birds, many injured birds stand a good chance of being rescued and saved. We must know what to do. Turtles with fractured shells also stand a very good chance of healing.
It was good to hear that by doing the correct procedure, many animal lives can be saved and have been saved. Dr Sharma is a vet in UPM.
Education is the key. Compassion alone is not enough, knowledge is very important. Experience too. A very, very informative talk.
Dr Sumita Sugnaseelan talked about pets and their human owners. I found this extremely enlightening and wish every pet owner had the privilege of listening to this talk.
One point which particularly had me nodding in agreement was when she mentioned that most of the time when owners brought in their so-called “disobedient” or problem-pet, it was actually the human owner’s problem and not the animal’s. It all boils down to humans expecting their pets to behave in a way they want without proper understanding of their pets’ nature.
Anthropomorphism…again, in ways that cause harm and injustice to our animals.
She also emphasized that very often, humans do not give their pets a fair chance (to be who they are), and these so-called “problem-pets” are cast out on the streets, adding on to the stray problem. Unfortunately, humans do not like to be told that they are at fault, so very often, her task is to counsel the human as discreetly as she can.
Humans! Yes, they (we?) are the problem. I’ve met my share or pet-owners (especially dog-owners) who say their dogs refuse to “listen to them”. I’m often tempted to say, “And who says your dog is supposed to listen to you? Your dog has a mind of his/her own, you know. He/she is not dumb.” I’m sorry, but pet-owners are not going to like this, but sometimes we need to examine ourselves – why are we so obsessed with getting our pets to behave EXACTLY the way we want? Are we power-crazy? Are we so starved of attention and recognition that we have to get these poor, defenseless creatures to pander to our deprived ego? And do we take it out on our pets because they are defenseless, smaller, at our mercy, so to speak, and therefore, easy to control and bully? Are we being fair to them? Do we really LOVE them as we so claim?
Dr Sumita talked about scent-marking from alpha cats. Cats will spray urine to mark. That’s just the way they are (hear, hear!). But humans have this compulsive behaviour of cleaning, cleaning and cleaning. So they go on a cleaning frenzy to get rid of the cat’s urine scent by using strong detergents like Dettol, etc. and this would only result in the cat spraying even more. Or worse, it creates stress for the cats. A sterile, scent-free environment makes the human happy, but may be very stressful for the cat.
I hear you, Dr Sumita. I just wished others would too and accept that when we keep animals, there are adjustments to be made in our lives. Otherwise, don’t keep them, right? Have a sterile, lifeless, furless, loveless life only with fellow-humans and see what you might miss out in life – the absence of companion animals who are often your best and most loyal friends.
And the next time someone comes to my room and says it smells of cat, I will be tempted to say, “Sorry, this is their room, not yours.”
Dr Sumita talked about the history of how animals came to live amongst us. Animal companionship started roughly 15,000 years ago and contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t our ancestors who adopted the wolves and big cats (who then got domesticated as pets) but it was the other way around – these animals adopted humans when nomadic humans left food scraps around when they migrated from place to place. These animals followed them and the human-animal companionship developed from thereon.
Then, during the period of 1470 until 1750, in Medieval Europe, people (usually women) who owned cats were considered witches and were drowned. Imagine that…I would have been drowned many times over if I had lived in that part of the world during that period.
Having animal companionship started in ancient civilisations like Egypt and China where owning animals was a privilege of only the noble class. In ancient China, the dogs of the noble clan even had their own maids-in-waiting. Many of our pets still have their own maids even today, don’t they? Yes, us!
She also mentioned that cartoon characters and movies can be quite detrimental to the wellbeing of animals. For example, during the Harry Potter craze, owls were being imported to the US because suddenly, everyone thought it was fashionable to keep owls as pets. Then, Finding Nemo found people buying clown fishes where clown fishes should belong to the sea, not in an aquarium. And 101 Dalmatians had people getting Dalmatians as pets without properly finding out the nature and requirements of a Dalmatian. I spoke with Dr Sumita later and we discussed that even during the Rabbit Year (by the Chinese Zodiac), people would buy rabbits as pets only to discard them the following year.
Here’s where education is truly needed. This calls for responsible pet ownership. Owning a pet is very serious business. It is a commitment for life and should not be done on a whim or fancy. Owning a pet, is it a right or a privilege?
Should any organisation be interested to invite speakers, PLEASE….invite Dr Sumita. This is about the best talk on responsible pet ownership I’ve ever heard. Dr Sumita is a veterinarian and an academic with a PhD in her field of expertise.
A piece of good news from Dr Sumita is that the Ministry of Education has plans to introduce Animal Welfare as a subject by itself from kindergarten until secondary school. We hope this will happen real soon and perhaps then, street animals in this country may finally see the light of better treatment as the awareness and understanding grows in our country. Hopefully, children will then go home and educate their parents.
Dr Suresh spoke about the benefits of a vegetarian diet, especially its health benefits and how it helps the eco-system.
Dr Suresh ended his talk by asking everyone to go vegetarian once a week. He said the talks today started with me talking about caring for strays, and it ends with his urging us to spare the lives of animals at the slaughterhouses. It’s the ultimate, he says, don’t eat them, please.
We hear you, Dr Suresh!
“Go Meatless Once a Week” is our slogan too.
However, if I may digress, it’s ironical that our moderate stand of urging people to go meatless once a week does NOT catch on well with strict vegans and vegetarians. Some find it offensive (even though we explain that we go on a moderate path to encourage people to start foregoing meat once a week). They believe that going meatless once a week isn’t even right. When you want to do it, do it all the way, they said. It should be strict vegetarian or veganism, it should be not eating meat at all. Then, vegans will say vegetarians aren’t good enough. And vegetarians will say lacto-vegetarians or pescetarians aren’t good enough, and the list goes on.
So, never mind…we say, “Go meatless once a week”; we know our intentions are good. It’s just a pity if we happened to offend certain people. It’s just like feeding community animals offends our neighbours. Whatever you do, you cannot please everyone all the time. If you try to, you’d go bonkers.
I can’t please everyone in running AnimalCare and even applicants who receive our funds talk behind my back. So…never mind. We just do the best we can, as long as our intentions are good and we can sleep peacefully at night.
But back to the event, kudos and three cheers to Dr Veeranoot for the excellent line-up of speakers. I learnt SO much. We have experts in our country, folks. And what’s best is that these are Malaysians who come from our culture, so what they say and advise is very applicable to us, our animals, our way of life and our environment.
We received a few contributions (please see below for list) – Thank you very much!
A candid group photo.
Bayer
Vegetarian food for the day.
Lester and Tracy at their booth. Jenny was there too. They manned their own booth selling their Running Man souvenirs.
Lester contributed his sales to AnimalCare – thank you, Lester, Tracy and Jenny.
None of the rabbits got adopted, but two cats did.
Furry Friends Farm
Old friends chatting.
Connie, AnimalCare’s most reliable volunteer!
Without Connie, I won’t be able to manage any event alone.
U R My Pet House donated dog and cat food to us. We donated the dogfood to Lester. The catfood will be given to Maslinda.
Books!
MDDB
Yes, I was so tempted to take some rabbits home…
Reena and Kalyai, the emcees for the day.
A cat adoption!!
Be our guest! It’s Iranian vegetarian fare.
U R My Pet House
Our Young Icon of the event!
Thank you very much, Dr Veeranoot and team.
Our heartfelt thanks go to:
University of Malaya
Malaysian Society of Parasitology and Tropical Medicine
Dr Veeranoot Nissapatorn
Through Chin Xiao Teng
Premier Diagnostic Bhd Sdn
ID Laboratories
My TACG Bioscience Enterprise
Through Lai Meng Yee
medigene Sdn Bhd
SYARIKAT T&T TRADING
Through Goh Xiang Ting
Accuflex Sdn Bhd
Ho Yew Fei, All eights Malaysia Sdn Bhd
Ms Sum Siew Peng
U R MY PET HOUSE SDN. BHD
Ms Amy Lim, Subang Pet Products
Staff volunteers:
En. Mohd Afiffudin bin Mohd Ali
En. Mohamad Sazali bin Jamil
Student volunteers:
Anitamalar Devi Ragavan, Arutchelvan Rajamanikam, Chitpon Padunglerk, Chong Ko Si Ong, Choy Seow Huey, Dhurga Devi, Gaythri Thergarajan, Goh Xiang Ting, Hany Sady, Hemah Andiappan,
Jonathan Liew Wee Keut, Kalyani Raman, Lorainne Angal, Mira Syahfriena Amir Rawa, Lorainne, Mohamad Azlan bin Abdul Majid, Nanthiney Devi Ragavan, Narong Jeturas, Naruemon Onnoi, Nithyamathi Kalimuthu, Nontawat Leerach, Reena Leeba Anak Richard, Siripakorn Prakobkeaw, Subashini Onichandran, Thulasi Kumar, Tung Zhao Xu, Yap Nan Jiun and Vinoth Kumarasamy.
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