Cats & Dogs

Dogs and cats, like nearly all animals in Egypt, have their purpose and place within society.

Cats are generally accepted in and around people's homes as a means of pest control - which in turn means they feed themselves from their catches!  However, they are often shooed out of the house if a woman becomes pregnant, as it is believed that the cat coming into contact with the pregnant woman can cause a miscarriage.  So for all intents and purposes the cats are wild/feral and manage to survive quite well.

Dogs, again, have their uses.  Families will feed them scraps to encourage them to stay outside the house, and in turn the dog is expected to protect the home and family.  However, due to the general fear and lack of understanding, these dogs can also often be chained up outside the house, or if they get too close to another house stones will be thrown at them to keep them away.  Dogs will hardly ever be allowed inside the homes as they are deemed dirty.

There are also many wild packs of dogs which roam the farmland and survive, as most wild dogs do, by catching small prey or scavenging from larger animals that have died.

The locals do not agree with neutering, as they feel that all animals should have the right to procreate, and to do this would be 'against God'.  It therefore puts the Government in a difficult position.  The Government have to concentrate most of their energy on ensuring that the tourist industry is cared for, as this is where the majority of Egypt's income comes from.

Feral/wild animals will often group where food is, and this is normally close to people, (much like foxes coming into citys in the UK).  In places like Luxor, this means near the hotels, ancient sites and cruise boats.  The Government get concerned when the numbers of animals start to increase and they only understand one way to deal with this and that is culling.

The sad thing is how they go about this.  The most common way is to lace pieces of meat with strychnine and scatter these around over the most over run areas.  However, this is not just done in the tourist areas, but also in the surrounding villages causing further problems.  For example, young children playing in the street amongst the cats and dogs, could easily pick these pieces of poisoned meat up! 

The other way the Government cull is to shoot the animals, but this often just results in the animals being maimed, and suffering a slow and painful death, as bad as poisoning.

This is not only a problem in Egypt but a worldwide problem,  the only thing that we can do is to help to try and explain to tourists that by feeding the cats and dogs they are exacerbating the problem.

Why do ACE not have a spaying and neutering programme?

Not only would the set up of this, to successfully make a difference, be very expensive, and labour intensive, which we do not currently have the resources to do, but the majority of cats and dogs in Luxor are free roaming.  This means that most of these animals are owned and someones property in the eyes of the law, but are just free to roam and feed themselves.  This means that we cannot just collect them up from the streets to spay and neuter them as this would be against the law and we would be prosecuted.

How do ACE help?

We often help with the birthing of cats and dogs, infectious diseases spread quickly and indiscriminately and currently it is very difficult for us to diagnose these problems which wipe out huge numbers of animals, whether they are loved pets or true strays.  We hope as we grow, we can increase our diagnostic facilities to help with this, amongst other things.

We do our best, to help all we can, and reduce and eliminate suffering whenever we see it and have the opportunity.  But it not easy, especially on limited funding, and there can be some very tough days.