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”

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”

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 placid ones

THE BIBLICAL injunction to let sleeping dogs lie does not count on Udo, the family aspin (“asong Pinoy”).

When he first arrived about a decade ago, we lined a small box with the younger son’s unwashed shirt in an attempt to quiet him. He was given away from a litter of pups born from an unsupervised coupling between a Labrador and one of the local bitches.

During the drive from the dog farm in the south of Cebu to our home in the city, the black ball of fur ate and sniffled from my son’s lap. Except for the whites in his eyes, he was black all over. Black muzzle, black paws, black pools of misery reproaching those who tore him away from his mother’s side.

That was probably what made the superstitious stay away from him. All that presentiment of darkness.

Or perhaps it was just the noise that he made that first night. A low prolonged thread of keening that dogged and found us wherever we tried to escape in our small home. Thunder, rain, the dark, and sleeping alone made Udo notch his wailing even higher, seemingly beyond human endurance.

When he finally quietened down, we discovered he had overlong ears that flapped, twisted, and upended when he became engrossed: wolfing down pan de sal, chewing shoes, and sitting down with us for meals even though limbs and tail untidily spilled from chairs too quickly outgrown.

The puppy that once kept the whole household awake has become sedate in his senior years. Each time I come home, I find his long dark shadow almost always stretched on the floor, beside my chair.

He still rouses a shadow of the old friskiness when he hears the breakfast rustling of the bag containing hot pan de sal. But even before night has fallen, Udo is a dark comma curled beside our bed, sometimes snoring but no longer yipping puppy dreams.

One thing remains unchanged: a keen hearing in those silken socklike ears. Deep in sleep, he will suddenly leap up and bark in a frenzy when he hears what he alone can hear: someone familiar approaching our home and pushing, predictably minutes after he sounds off the alert, the rusty gate we have never been able to oil properly.

A dog they say ages seven times faster than humans. I doubt that. The disorder that makes one sleep longer than usual afflicts not just aging pets.

Every day, I take in the news. I follow the killings that take place daily, the bodies that go unremarked.

Occasionally, an odd detail catches the eye, a body swinging from the bridge greeting early risers. Or a child catching a bullet like a common cold.

The proverb to let sleeping dogs lie means to let things be. Rise only for the ones you love. That is what the family aspin does while I prefer the long sleep.



(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)


*First published in SunStar Cebu’s July 28, 2019 edition of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”