Crux

WAITING for the veterinarian to arrive for Saturday appointments reminds the husband and I of the times we waited with other parents for our sons to be dismissed from pre-school. 

To be first in the queue, we are early birds and end up chatting with other early birds. Just as I once learned tips from using bright hues for body stamps (blue is cool; yellow is sissy) to holding 10-minute sanity breaks for student and parent to survive supervised homework, I rediscover the Filipino as Fur Parent during the intervals preceding vaccination, spaying/neutering, check-ups, and other interactions with the vet. 

From these myriad waiting lessons is a standout: people’s usual reaction to the “asong Pinoy” (or “aspin,” meaning “mongrel”) we have brought to the vet’s clinic. “Hindi ‘yan aspin; may lahi ‘yan.” 

The intent of the speaker seems to be to compliment our dog or cat (“pusang Pinoy” or “puspin”) by observing that it looks far from being a “pure native” and shows traces of a foreign breed, implying a better bloodline. 

“Lahi” in Filipino refers to race. We take the compliment as a backhanded one, a distressing expression of the deeply ingrained bias disparaging local dogs as “askal (“asong kalye (street dog)” or “asong gala (strays)”. 

Too often, “stray” dogs and cats are blameless victims of families that move away and leave behind their pets, without a thought for the animals’ sustenance and anxiety from abandonment or dislocation. 

These “strays” are not only rendered homeless; their offspring are also doomed by human cruelty. Unspayed females mate with uncastrated males and result in unwanted litters.

The overriding motivation behind our, so far, five cat spayings and neutering of a sire or a male aspin is a commitment to end this vicious cycle of irresponsibly allowing dogs and cats to uncontrollably breed and then blaming the animals for threatening public safety and health.

Breaking this cycle means not just planning and budgeting for expenses in engaging a private veterinarian but also involvement in ensuring the animal safely fasts for at least eight hours before surgery and administering medicine for 7-10 days to hasten the healing. 

The crux of the matter in responsible pet ownership is reversing the racist mentality that only the more expensive imported breeds of dogs and cats deserve veterinarian care. 

After a fellow fur parent pleasantly asked me if we had intentionally cut off the tail of our puppies (born stumpless like their aspin sire and dam), the husband and I reinforce our belief that, whether puspin or aspin, the Pinoy deserves our best, not the scraping of the dregs of humanity.

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)

* First published in SunStar Cebu’s November 21, 2021 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

Home

 

         WHEN ants are on the move, pay attention.

         Days of incessant rain made me see my neighbors, the anthill, in a new light. 

         I used to think summer requires that I scour the ground with my sight before setting foot in the garden. Silang in Cavite is blessed with rich, dark soil and lush water, the inspiration perhaps in the naming of many of its 64 barangays: Anahaw, Balite, Banaba, Biga, Ipil, Narra, Langka, Munting Ilog, Puting Kahoy, and Yakal, to name a few.

Where flora thrives, the insect world is not far behind. Silang is home to many creatures other than land developers with a penchant for Italian names and homeowners leery of Metro Manila smog and crime.

I realized this during the first summer when indescribable pain shot up my legs after standing too close to a trail of ants. Hopping in pain, I landed on a nearby spot and, hopping, howled again. 

Our garden is plotted on a superhighway grid in heavy use during summer for ant traffic in food.

Weather is no determinant, though, for ant aggression. I corrected myself after a typhoon recently swept over our place.  

When the rains fell for hours and then days, the ants were again on the move. When the wind shook the sodden bamboo, it pelted angry ants. When the rains puddled on the ground, the ground crawled with seething ants. 

Pain from a creature so small, it reaches sensitive and hard-to-reach body parts in the blink of an eye, comes for the outsider of the anthill or the colony. Home is the barb of the sting.

Home is not always warmth, refuge, shelter. Home is contested ground. At some homes, predators do not lurk under the bed or haunt dreams. They walk among their victims.

Last Sept. 3, four puppies were found lined up in a grassy lot in Barangay San Miguel in Samal (Igacos). Aged about two to three months, the puppies were beheaded.

SunStar Davao reported that barangay officials and a resident offered reward money for those providing leads to enable the authorities to apprehend the perpetrator. Bantay Hayop Davao called the malefactor “worse than an animal”.

Does evil have gradations? If so, worse than the creature that killed the puppies is the puppies’ owner, who, despite denying any involvement with the beheading, “ordered the puppies to be thrown as they were infested with lice,” reported SunStar Davao.

Section 6 of Republic Act No. 8485, also known as The Animal Welfare Act of 1998, prohibits and punishes cruelty to or neglect of all animals.

Many people open their homes to rescue and adopt homeless asong Pinoy (aspin) and pusang Pinoy (puspin). The San Miguel crime changes everything.

For outsiders, home is the barb of the sting.

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)

* First published in SunStar Cebu’s 12 September 2021 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

Happy ever after

DID I get the vax?

To the question asked by the vet’s assistant, I answered that the three aspin (asong Pinoy) puppies were due for the fourth and last jab of the 6-in-1 vaccine, which also protects them from the canine parvovirus.

The assistant clarified that he was asking if the husband and I were already vaccinated for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19). 

Being a guardian of dogs and cats has a way of creeping and taking over one’s life. When the husband and I started to rehome Noki’s puppies, we followed the advice of my sister, another guardian who minds other people’s dogs, to rehome after 12 weeks. 

Prematurely separating a puppy from its mother traumatizes through forced weaning and deprivation of its canine family. In the first three months, a puppy is not just nursed by its mother but also socialized by her and its siblings. 

Twelve weeks also cover the basic deworming and vaccination program that protects the puppy during its first year. 

Since our lot is less than 100 square meters, with delineated dog, cat, and plant zones for everyone’s sanity, we see it as our responsibility to match each puppy and kitten with a “furever” family.

When prospective guardians see the puppies and ask “anong lahi (what breed),” the husband and I answer, “lahing Pinoy”. 

Within our spheres of influence, we push the stance that breed is not important. All dogs and cats, even those with feral ancestry, deserve kindness and respect. 

Life on the street is not fit for any animal. Life with some folks who think they want a pet can be as deadly. We screened guardians for red flags: this person will NOT eat our puppy; feed the puppy to its pet snake; groom it to be a bait dog for dog fights; or chain it to guard their home, expecting the animal to eat air while they get a tan.

We dismissed prospect no. 1 because she never visited us and the puppies. Expecting the puppy to be handed over the fence, this entitled creature probably equated it with a pinch of salt cadged from next door. Salt melts away; what would have happened to our puppy after she outgrew her novelty?

Prospect no. 2 met us and brought home a puppy. He passed her on to his 70-year-old grandmother to feed and look after. On the third day of failing on his vow to update us about our puppy, the husband searched for the man’s house and took back our puppy.

Our neighbor ticked the boxes: not only did she visit us and talk about her furry companions while it drizzled, she took the puppy into her arms and asked her if she wanted to go home with her. 

As of this writing, we have yet to visit Ikog and her new mom. Meanwhile, Ikog’s old mom is asking God for a genuine happy ending.

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)

* First published in SunStar Cebu’s June 13, 2021 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

 

House of women

I HAVE long been inducted as a furlol, acting as a “lola” or grandmother to grandchildren of different species.

Five days after giving birth, our “aspin (asong Pinoy)” Noki left her young to my watch to run, dig in the garden, and bark at startled passersby.

The three puppies, veterans now at nursing and napping, have come to resemble fat spitting Cebuano chorizos rolling and snuffling on the kitchen floor. When they squeal, I leave my work even though I am certain I locked the door and double-checked to make sure that the other aspins and “puspins (pusang Pinoy)” do not slip in while Mother is enjoying her “me” time.

Newborn kittens slip out soundlessly from their mothers, latching on then curling to sated sleep with preternatural composure. Kitkat, unblinking veteran of four litters and counting, reminds me of women lying in darkened, too hot rooms, forbidden to rise except to rinse in a medicinal bath of leaves as one heir after another slips out.

Puppies come with acoustics. They arrive with a wet sucking sound, as if blowing a raspberry at my attempts to be of use to their panting mother (labor started the night before and the puppies appear two to three hours apart).

At less than a week, the puppies’ flipperlike limbs, so pink as to be translucent, wiggle and hint of dreams stuttering like old movie clips behind still furled eyelids.

Minding the sleeping newborn of our rescued cats and dogs clenches something inside as bliss from watching these creatures dream is tempered by a clear-eyed realization of the world awaiting those eyes when these finally open.

A descending order of priority guides many Filipinos in choosing home companions: purebreds are valued more than abandoned strays; dogs, desired more than cats; and males, preferred over females.

Not helping the female of the species are the fees charged by private veterinarians: spaying is twice more expensive than neutering, with the actual cost depending on the weight of the animal and presumably the amount of anesthesia to be used.

In our household, the kitchen is the busiest as a revolving-door nursery. Two months after Kitkat and her four kittens moved out, first-time mother Noki moved in. Rem, Noki’s sibling, has yet to “show” after mating. Kitkat’s daughter, Wiggy, is safe inside the house for now, but spaying is looming as an option.

One too many birthing to book and only one kitchen-cum-nursery. Fortunately, I dislike cooking.

While Noki took a break to just be a dog and dig up dirt, we checked her puppies. Cheers, I greeted her when she returned to take over the furlol: Your girls are hangry (hungry and angry).   

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)

* First published in SunStar Cebu's February 28, 2021 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, "Matamata"  

Guardians

WE keep house in Silang for one male human, a sire (male dog that has fathered puppies), three dams (two Aspin [Asong Pinoy] mothers who gave birth to their first litter and a Puspin [Pusang Pinoy] on her sixth litter, we guess), a young cat, five female puppies, and four female kittens.

And the bitch: Me. 

After I recently grilled a prospective guardian, the husband described the experience: terrifying.

He was probably describing the third degree our friend, in making his request to adopt a puppy, did not expect to be subjected to. 

I probed with the sensitivity of a “mambabarang” sticking pins to a victim’s lookalike doll: as a child, did you care for a dog? Do you know puppies quickly outgrow cuteness and become dogs, eating, shitting, and peeing all day? If you are a plantito, do you know what happens to plants around dogs? How strong are you about picking up your butt and taking a dog for walks every day?

Or the husband may just have been muttering “terrifying” to himself: will she ever let go of those puppies/kittens?

Six enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) periods ago, our Luzon co-existence was unexceptional. We fought like cats and dogs at times but, generally, stayed within our private domains as civilized primates. Then we adopted an abandoned litter of four puppies and the idiom “fighting like cats and dogs” will never be revisited with the old naivete.

More than a year later, we have become what the husband refers to with a lot of heartfelt hope: a pet placement agency. Admittedly, we are running out of space and barricades to keep our extended family in reasonable quiet and non-aggression. Yet I insist we rehome by seeking families who will welcome the puppies and kittens and commit to them as family members for life. 

I am wary about the widespread bias that an Aspin makes a good guard dog after seeing too many chained, caged or left without food or water to discourage intruders while a family is away. Assisting as “mananabang (midwife)” during the birthing of our dams, the husband and I expect no less than the valuing of each life.

With her three puppies emerging after two-hour intervals, Noki’s process, from nesting to birthing, lasted for more than 24 hours. She refused food, water, and toilet breaks for nearly a day to nurse her girls. Rem was unsettled by the crowning of the first of the two puppies; she had to be fed by hand in between births. In the middle of giving birth, a bloodied Kitkat emerged in answer to the calls of the husband, upset that she did not show up for a meal.

So while we still have a roof left to share, the husband and I take rehoming slowly but surely. He, the optimist; I, the bitch. 

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)

* First published in SunStar Cebu’s April 25, 2021 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

Tse

       

        IMAGINE God as a viewfinder documenting the night of a typhoon.

The viewfinder takes an establishing shot of a village. Cars parked on the street. Darkened houses.

The viewfinder zooms in and under a parked car on the street. A dark shape under the still warm belly of the car engine.

Close-up: meet Tse, aspin (asong Pinoy) with a mongrel’s universal features: sheath of fur of undetermined color under the dirt; wiry build; and intelligence behind streetwise eyes.

Tse does not first mind when the rain falls and water seeps into the dry spot under the car. 

It takes her mind off a growling gut. For dinner, she licked a few cans before the woman came out swatting with a broom. 

Tse! Tse! In a wink, Tse jumped out of the trash bin, followed by rolling cans and cursing. She checked out the houses that placed scraps on the sidewalk, but in the steadily falling rain, no reused ice-cream containers were left out.

She avoided streets where dogs were leashed or caged near house entrances. For such well-fed lives, these mutts had the ugliest tempers, barking and straining to get at the interloper. Sometimes, Tse traded insults with the enraged dogs but tonight, she focused on looking for a dry place.

Tse could smell the chill in the air. It was going to be a long night of waiting for morning and the old woman who came to collect kitchen scraps from house to house. After emptying the leftovers in her canister, the old woman threw away the plastic bags for Tse and the other strays to fight over.

To beat the competition, Tse bolted down the bags without chewing. At first, she was terrified by the bag swinging from her anus but then learned to drag her bottom on the ground to remove it. 

The first time she met a dog whose owner stopped for it to do its business on the street and then scooped the stools in a bag, Tse looked hard at the dog as if it had sprouted wings from its bum.

These ruminations abruptly ended when the water level on the street rose. Tse scampers from under the car. Rain and wind are companions on the street. 

Floods are death.

A lifetime of stepping around traps directs Tse to run for higher ground in the streets plunged into chaos by the cutting of power. People shouting. Dogs still chained and caged, baying. And the waters rising. 

Tse runs past her enemy, the huge black dog chained to the gate where she made the mistake once of peeing against. The dog’s helpless howling follows Tse when the flashflood tags and lifts the aspin, not gently at all. 

Tse’s thought as the dark swirls: where are those wings when you need them?

(In memoriam: if we cannot evacuate with our animals, release and give them a fighting chance to survive.)

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)

* First published in SunStar Cebu’s November 15, 2020 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column

The taming

WHEN I remember the eunuch cats of Bonifacio High Street, I realize we can still be drawn to the very things that upset us.

The first cat was lolling on a makeshift platform used by men working on the landscaping. It was a tom, as big as a dollhouse.

Yet, it allowed me to scratch its exposed stomach, an inverted yolk, white in the middle and yellowish at the outer ring.

On our way to a bookstore to pick up my books, my son and I had started from the Burgos Circle where there seemed to be more dogs than humans taking in the sun that Monday morning.

The dogs of Burgos Park are cosseted and urbane. They have no fear of humans.

These pets are as close to the otherworldly and the exotic in my world.

Where I grew up, the barbed wires enclosing the house we rented was ineffectual for keeping our menagerie of nine or so dogs safe in a neighborhood where any dog was free meat fueling several rounds of drink and feral singing.

After our guard dogs went the way of the ten little Indians in the nursery rhyme (“… and then there were none”), my father finally decided to keep small dogs who slept with us, locked away from the world with teeth, to borrow an image from Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House”.

The cats that suddenly showed up in our home were thin, fierce survivors who waited and waited, moving in to finish the meals only when the dogs napped or were shut in for the night. They melted away in a blink but it wasn’t long before I convinced my father to bring home a kitten from a cousin’s cat’s litter.

There is no lack for cats that no one wants. When I was younger, I brought home abandoned kittens: in my knapsack from school, in a shopping bag someone left on the side of a busy road, where I plunked into my shirt the mewling blind creatures that poured out like tomatoes about to be squashed into red paste.

The world jokes about steaming cats into buns. Feral survivors nurse on this mean teat. Most of the strays we feed at home never lose their wariness. In this country, a housebroken cat is often a dead one.

The Bonifacio High Street tom, complacent and suave, was odd as ferals go. We entered another promenade that hosted, years back, a community of cats. After a five-star hotel opened nearby, the cats were relocated, like absurd Third World artifacts.

I found just two strays napping on the benches that day. Neutered, enormous, and slack from human benevolence. Ignoring the signs that warned people about feeding and petting the cats, I scratched between two pointy pairs of ears, two furbellies.

A cat rolls on the ground and exposes its belly to a human it trusts. My prayer is that those cats will live not to regret this.


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)


*First published in SunStar Cebu’s November 10, 2019 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

Dog’s life

THE DOGGY lives I observed at the Burgos Park are enviable. I am a human on a park bench, wondering what great acts of compassion I must do to be reincarnated as a Yorkshire Terrier, a Samoyed or a Bichon Frise living a condo-park-pet spa existence.

Four hours after midnight, I woke up on a working Monday and was on the road in an attempt to cut down a two- or three-hour commute from the outskirts of Metro Manila. Bleary-eyed, I waited for the Bonifacio High Street shops to open at 11 a.m. so I could pick up the books I reserved.

I felt far from frisky, worlds apart from the rarefied plane bearing these beautiful creatures.

Yet, what struck me most that I am in an enclave that hardly resembles the Philippines was not this green oasis circled by the signposts of Western prosperity but the insouciant sociability of the dogs.

They are unlike the dogs I have been used to, commuting around urban centers and even living in gated communities for decades. There are two kinds of dogs in the country: the dogs that are part of families and those that are on their own.

I know the barely human specimens that have an instrumental regard for the family AsPin (asong Pinoy), chaining a dog and leaving it behind for weeks as if it were a burglar alarm with fur.

Most Pinoys, though, love their dogs. They may not afford vet services to spay, neuter or regularly check their pets. But the Pinoys I respect give their AsPins these minimum needs: sustenance, shelter, and family.

The dogs of Burgos Park gave me pause, though. Like humans, dogs enjoy meeting other dogs. A walk means opportunities to explore with their noses, roll in the grass, and carry out no. 1 (pee) and no. 2 (poo) as nature demands. The dogs’ caregivers and walkers picked and bagged their waste, keeping that park habitable for the humans and other dogs sharing the space.

These dogs’ existence had other trimmings, too. The perks—the humane leashes of extendable length that allowed a dog to wander to their doggy heart’s desire without being separated from their humans, the knit sweaters, bright socks, and treats randomly given for acts of obedience or state of cuteness—made a dog’s life definitely better.

It showed in the animals’ coat and the spring of their walk, the alacrity with which they accepted and did not shirk from strange hands petting them. While watching the uniformed guard of a snow-white Akita obligingly snap dogfies with the smart phones of enamored ladies and gents, I spotted a little cat cross the street. A motorist slowed down to let the stray cross without accident.

In Burgos Park, fractal humanity—which deals out cruelty as often as kindness—is at bay.


[Photo source: YouTube]


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)


* First published in SunStar Cebu’s November 3, 2019 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

Note to a detainee

I AM awful with my biases. For instance, I think dogs are virtue incarnate and cats are all wiles.

Every night, brushing my teeth before going to bed, I hear the clinking of the chained dog of our neighbor. I have never seen this dog. I have seen the other dogs owned by our neighbor but not this particular dog.

Yet, this unseen dog is more real to me as a character than the other dogs I sometimes see chasing each other or dozing in our neighbor’s porch. When I was gingerly brushing the sore gums cushioning a wisdom tooth the dentist had scraped until all my toes and more had curled from the tension, I talked to the dog in my head, soothing it as it dragged its chain from one spot to another in that cramped space beyond our kitchen windows.

Who would put a dog in chains to guard a washing machine, a clothesline, and a family of birds that raise a racket every morning in their nest beneath the eaves? The neighbor we share a wall with.

Sometimes, I tell the dog his is not such a tough job. He could be sniffing for hot meat or banned drugs without any hope of retiring on a government pension. He could be dodging mean cretins on meaner streets. He could be padding around in nappies, tutus or some such indignity.

Every time, that softly chinking chain always overpowers the alibis I line up in the kitchen window like imaginary biscuits I toss down to the dog I cannot see but I can hear. I think all dogs should be free to run, explore with their nose, roll in the dirt, and make those disgusting mini-pools with their lolling tongues.

My sister’s late dog had very short legs. Whatever the season, my sister woke early to carry out Sonny because her bladder became full to bursting overnight but she could not run fast enough to reach the backdoor without accident.

I never asked my sister why she didn’t let Sonny just sleep in the garden. Or why she and her daughters take Angel, the dog that came after Sonny, to the park to sniff and meet other dogs.

Rescued and fostered for a while with a family that kept other dogs, Angel had to adjust to being the only dog when she joined my sister and her daughters. She buried bones all over my sister’s lawn, hiding her hoard from imaginary rivals.

Perhaps missing the other dogs she burrowed with in her foster home, Angel slept on the pile of still warm, spun-dried clothes my sister spent her Sunday afternoon folding. When you name after an angel a dog that comes to you with unknown baggage, you have a bottomless store of optimism that all dogs go to heaven.

Meanwhile, hang in there, comrade beyond the wall.



(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)


* First published in SunStar Cebu’s October 6, 2019 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

Absent ones

WE are only as good as the way we treat the others we view as “lower” than us.

The Golden Rule is often interpreted as espousing the principle of reciprocity: treat others the way we want to be treated.

Yet, reciprocity implies a relationship between equals, as between person to person. The lens with which we “other” the sentient beings we judge to be essentially “different” from us—such as animals— does not only shift the planes that put us on unequal footing but also severs any link connecting us to them.

Nonviolence then, more than reciprocity, demands that we cause no harm, not even when we condescend to “be kind to animals”

In this altered state I left the Bohol Enchanted Zoological and Botanical Garden in the Poblacion of Bilar. I have visited enough zoos in this country to associate the experience with trepidation but cannot also resist the flutter of hope anticipating that the next animal “sanctuary” will turn out to be closer to Mahatma Gandhi’s vision that, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

V., our driver and guide, informed us that the facility was recently opened and is monitored by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The animals—civets, owls, lizards, monkeys, lemurs, tarsiers, butterflies, rabbits, guinea pigs, and a crocodile fish—are placed in enclosures that would have blended in the sprawling landscape of lush trees and brightly hued flowers and bushes were it not for two distractions: the cages and their disgruntled occupants.

Every enclosure has a marker of information worth reading. The Cebuano interjection of “ay, kagwang!,” expressing displeasure or insult, refers to the Philippine flying lemur or Philippine colugo. Feeding and sleeping high up in the trees, the lemur is the object of many human misconceptions, mistaken for the mythical “aswang,” which preys on the unborn, perhaps because it hunts by night and sleeps by day, with upright head.

Ensconced in high branches, the facility’s two lemurs, unreachable and invisible in their resemblance to shriveled jackfruits, may have been the most fortunate of the inmates. The “cutest” attracting the most attention from us—the sleeping civets and the tarsiers, both nocturnal and arboreal—were curled and perched where they were within our importunate attention and pitiless smart phones.

Standing apart from the cage of tarsiers and the photo-frenzy, I noticed a forlorn pool. There was no marker, just fallen leaves, mossy pebbles, and two brown sticks. Or water snakes. Or maybe not.

To survive, animals shut us out. Or must learn to.


(mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)


* First published in SunStar Cebu’s July 14, 2019 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

“Matamata”: Tips from beasts*

SHARING lunch at the cooperative-run canteen, my students and I learned a few things.

Some of us cannot stand vegetables. So we scraped all our leftovers and went to the back of the canteen and near the dorm entrance.

This is a hangout of feral dogs and cats, aside from students taking an alfresco break or making their projects under the canopy of trees.

The day before, we shared our packed lunch with Puti. That day, it was Mal for “malnourished.”

Watching the yellow-coated pooch gobbling leftovers, we saw he had a bit more meat now on his bony frame. That’s how Mal came to be Mellow Yellow, or Mel for short.

Three years of studies at the Diliman campus of the University of the Philippines (UP) showed me how the “feral” tag only describes the animals’ lack of human owners, not their temperaments or proclivities.

At the College of Mass Communication (CMC), where the cats are as territorial about their niches as the tenured professors, some resident divas draw a following among students, faculty, and staff.

A TV network crew once interrupted my study in a CMC gazebo because they were looking for the cat that saved a night-duty guard when it jumped on his lap and broke his nap. He woke in time to prevent an intruder from hitting him with a plank.

For academics, who dwell in their own worlds, feral cats and dogs make the best listeners. They keep silent and appreciate everything from Alinsky to Zero Vector, specially if a bit of sandwich is tossed after.

Animals show us how to listen to each other’s discourse without interruption or eruption.

Marga, the pet of the chief of security, accompanies her chief everywhere in the Cebu campus. When he was in an inter-agency meeting, Marga sauntered in as I pushed open the conference door.

Used to long meetings, Marga made no fuss until the session extended beyond noon. Then she started a low-register whine, pacing back and forth to the closed door.

My fellow teacher sought to distract her with his packed lunch. Marga ignored him and kept her dignity.

Perhaps we should have dangled research funds. That would have appealed better to Marga’s academic soul.

Though we classify them as feral, stray animals teach humans about co-existence with other humans.

Even in UP Diliman, where our furred brothers and sisters have inspired a Facebook page devoted to the “Cats of UP Diliman” and a Geography student project charting the movement of campus cats that was uploaded on YouTube, there are other humans who think it’s uncool to have corridors smelling of cat piss or worse.

Stray animals are also campus risks because they may bite, spread rabies, or cost the government P7,000 to repair an engine damaged by fur left by cats huddling overnight for warmth.

However, the solution is never to go as draconian as “total eradication”. Twice—in July 2015 and again in July 2016—the UP Diliman community arrived, after consultations and dialogues, at “humane” solutions, such as “retraining” and neutering, to address all concerns, including the safety of humans and the welfare of animals.

Cloud Sarmiento’s post, shared by “Cats of UP Diliman” on Facebook, shows a cat sprawled out in sleep. Beside it is a cardboard sign, with this message: “Wag tularan pusha ako”.


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)

*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s October 16, 2016 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

Survival

NOT all creatures are created equal.

The coffee grounds the husband brought back from a café gave me an idea to fertilize jackfruit trees growing outside the uncle’s bedroom.

These dregs from brewed coffee will fertilize the ground and waft a nice scent for the 70-year-old grandfather of my nieces, who unrepentantly drinks his coffee black twice a day.

No, better save the “langka” tree that’s dying in front of the house, decided the uncle.

I found the tree. Someone had hacked it at the base.

The canopy was still lush. Yet, perhaps of its gaping scar, the tree has yet to bear fruit. The Bicol-born uncle likes to cook jackfruit with coconut milk and black “labahita”.

I started setting aside kitchen waste to fertilize the tree. Fruit peel, seeds, and vegetable scraps placed in our small garden in Cebu makes the thin soil richer and plants grow better without smelling unpleasant and upsetting the neighbors.

Every day, I left peel and seeds from mango, rambutan, avocado, vegetable scraps, and eggshells. I hope it will be good for the “langka” tree, as well as for a relative who wants to relive his childhood in a homecooked dish.

Besides, this means less trash to be collected for the landfill.

Then one morning, I saw a note nailed at the base of the tree. Why do some treat a living tree as a message board?

I read the note: “Lost: PET CAT. Please return to…” Below the appeal and contact information was a photograph of a black and white cat with a collar.

Cats are great wanderers. Polygamous, too. Cats have been walking in and out of my life. I think they take it for granted that their humans will always react intelligently when they show up: skip the questions and have a meal ready.

Some pets, though, never come home.

Like trees, animals face hazards in the city. The greatest threat comes from those who exploit people’s desire for pets.

Recently, nearly 150 birds were abandoned at Magallanes St. in Cebu City. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) took the birds for safekeeping.

Even in a colorless police report, the names of the rescued birds conjure paradise: African lovebirds, hanging parakeets, golden finches, coleto birds, tarictic hornbills, crows and lories.

The news photos and videos are harsh: beating against tiny prisons, frantic wings, bold feathers and small bodies swirl in the mayhem created by an impersonal malice.

Something scared away those who would have profited from selling the birds at P300 a pair.

For other animals, rescue comes too late. The illegal trade of “exotic” animals is a news staple. Blue-naped parrots and mynas go for P3,000 to P5,000 a bird. Someone was given only P100 to feed birds for a week. Nothing personal, just business.

Even before they can be sold to local buyers or smuggled out of the country, the animals die from hunger, stress, maltreatment. Early this July, a DENR team raided a house in Tondo. Only 14 forest turtles were still alive. Carcasses of dozens of endangered animals littered the place. The mynas, parrots and crocodiles were reportedly killed to stop them from making noise. The more “valuable” Palawan bearcats, leopard cats and otter must have been first to be sold.

The treatment of animals as commodities extends to the usual animals sold as pets or stolen from a family to become another family’s pet. With authorities either too busy or too indifferent to care about the “small fry,” it remains to be a personal obligation for us to be ethical in acquiring pets.

Many abused or abandoned animals wait to be adopted from the city pound, animal shelters, and animal welfare organizations. Yet, I see more and more of these handmade posters asking for a lost pet to be returned.

The missing cat looks like a lot of the black-and-whites exploring the neighborhood. But the collar on its neck reminds me that one family can describe with certainty if this cat is a white one with black spots or a black cat with white spots. For its owners, every pet is singular.

I walked away from the uncle’s “langka” tree, thinking how the impersonal and indifferent is king in this jungle.


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)


*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s Aug. 4, 2013 issue of the Sunday editorial page column, “Matamata”

Raw deal

LAST Feb. 5, 2013, the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) ran a story about an elephant, some ladies and a cause.

It’s been days since then. Yet I still remember the story because of the photos and the lay-out. Beside a picture of a rearing elephant was a landscape plucked out of Eden if that virgin paradise were peopled by ladies with a penchant for flesh-colored undies and a cause.

After minutes of verifying that the limbs peeking behind strategically placed placards just strove for an illusion of nakedness, I felt sufficiently curious about the reason behind the collective disrobing to piece together the placards.

This was the declaration: “Naked truth: Mali the elephant is suffering!”

According to PDI, the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) leads an online campaign to sway authorities into returning the Manila Zoo’s only elephant inmate to an elephant sanctuary in Thailand.

Mali, 38, female, formerly of Sri Lanka, has been in the country since 1977 after she was given as a gift by the Sri Lankan government to the former first lady, Imelda Marcos.

Peta claims that Mali is lonely and should spend the rest of her days with other elephants.

Others oppose the move, saying Mali is too old, too settled to compete and survive in
the wild, and too sick to make the long trip.

As Peta feels that not enough people care about Mali, nine commercial models and entertainers were tapped to stir up the public through a “provocative and funny way to draw attention to a very serious message,” said a group spokesperson.

I don’t know how to convert elephant years into human terms. I’m 47, female and revel in solitude. I’m not an elephant. (Will elephantine do?)

I can argue with the Peta claim that Mali is better off in a sanctuary, where she can “do whatever she wants”. After being married for 20 years and mothering for 19 and counting two teenagers, I think a solitary life is more conducive for waking up anytime you want, playing with others only when you want, and seeing the doctor only when you want.

Then again, I’m not an elephant.

I would have wanted the two camps to present findings and experts arguing for the strengths of each of their advocacies. It doesn’t help me understand any better animal welfare, particularly Mali’s, that Ornussa, Geneva and sisters are quick to shed and bare skin.

Isn’t there something about mismatching ends and means, even metaphors?

How does a skin show or a publicity gimmick made at the expense (again!) of women justify pushing a message, even if it is to provide a better retirement for a lonely elephant?

The best advocate for Mali would be Mali herself.

There’s that problem about getting from her a sound bite that’s intelligible for TV. However, various reports have detailed her sorry physical condition.

Shouldn’t immediate vet care for Mali be the priority over retirement?

As a policy concern, shouldn’t authorities and other stakeholders look into improving how our zoos are run, from the standpoint of the animals that were placed there without being consulted or solicited for their ideas about zoo rules?

Shouldn’t we, the animal-ogling public, pause to reflect about our attitude towards animals, particularly this habit of collecting and displaying them in the name of eco-tourism?

On a recent trip to Bohol, I saw how droves of tourists descended on a Panglao “sanctuary” to “appreciate” tarsiers. We all skipped the lecture and briefing; zoomed in, clicked cameras nonstop and yakked while the poor creature clung bug-eyed to the branch where its caretaker had “posed” it. After about an average 15 minutes, spent more for speculating how many august regulars of Senate and Congress had an uncanny resemblance to tarsiers, we allowed ourselves to be led to the shops to buy tarsiers we could finally pinch, squeeze and take home to stick as ref magnets.

Could Peta think of a “provocative and funny” way to make Filipinos see past the carnival and freak show mentality we cultivate about the creatures we share this planet with?

Meanwhile, it would be just as welcome if Geneva and her sisters would keep their clothes on for novelty and still provoke more human-like intelligence and compassion in our beastly relations.


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)

*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s Feb. 10, 2013 issue of the “Matamata” Sunday main op-ed column