Category: Experiences
Three strays of Bucharest
Posted by Alina on October 15, 2009
This is about two incidents a few weeks ago.
As we left Bucharest by car for Piatra Neamt, a neighbour was fussing outside, bending her back awkwardly and peering under cars. She said she was looking for some cats. We waved her goodbye, while Goran Bregovic’s music blasted from the player.
We were firmly heading through traffic. Trams were tinkering by, cars were weaving through. When the music stopped, I heard it: a very faint meow from somewhere very near. Without thinking, I opened the glove compartment. But there were only crumpled papers and tapes. The meowing filtered through again, distressed and imperative.
“We have a cat in the carâ€, I said. “I really have no idea where, but there is oneâ€. I caught Rupert’s hand in midair, as he was reaching for the player, attempting to put the music on again. “Noâ€, I said, “don’t, listen, you will hear it. We must stop to free the catâ€. By now the crying of was for all ears to hear. He said “Nonsense. How can there be a cat in the car?” and didn’t want to stop.
We crossed a busy junction and double-parked hastily near a hairdresser’s. I rushed out, looking at the wheels, trying to figure out where the silly cat was, desperate to find it alive, worried sick that she may be mauled already. Rupert was more clever than me on this one; he opened the bonnet. And there it was: a tiny ball of grey fur, sitting on the dusty water bottle. She had stuck eyelids, with puss around them. We stared at it, eyes bulging, while passers by burst into laughter. And then a black fuzzy head pushed its way up from among the guts of the engine: a second kitten. I watched in astonishment, waiting for more cats to pop up and – why not – snakes and doves and a few curly dogs doing jumps. A car engine turned circus hat. We must have been quite a sight, just over the road from the government building, in a busy area, with doors ajar, the bonnet up, and two kittens meowing on top of the engine.
We must say now that we abandoned the two kittens. They were from a pack of five which were dumped near our block the day before. They must have climbed up the engine just before we drove off. I apologetically explained to people frowning at us that they were not really our kittens.
A woman who initially lectured us about abandoning animals outside her building understood our explanation and helped us find them a nice enclosed area, near rubbish bins, with the company of older cats, and a few nice hairdressers to feed them. I felt terribly guilty about it. But we simply couldn’t take any more cats. Weeks earlier we took a stray kitten to Piatra Neamt and it gave the kids a skin disease. That cat which we grew to love caused tremendous hassle to my mother, who had to disinfect the house, the alleyways, boil sheets and towels, keep dirty clothes in a sack with formaldehyde for three days before washing, as advised by both the vet and the dermatologist. Not to mention that all the cats that my mother feeds had to be given preventive treatment, in case they were about to catch the same disease and spread it further.
Rupert tried to console me saying we actually saved them. We could have found them dead. They could have ruined the car, could have caused us an accident. Indeed, looking from that perspective, we were not heartless.
A week later, as I was preparing to get the tram to work, I witnessed a car running over a small brownish dog. The dog was badly hurt, but while yelping in the middle of the road, a second car drove over its belly and the thump it made and the image I saw stayed with me for the day and brought a flood of tears. A nice beefy driver, running a truck, stopped in the middle of the road, took the dog and put him on the pavement, near a lamp post. I went to it and I cried my eyes out was peeing and its eyes brimmed with tears. There was no good me squatting there, while the dog was in agony. But I just couldn’t help it. Its belly was sinking down with every breath. It didn’t make any sound. It seemed resigned and sad. I summoned Rupert to bring a vet. He cycled off to the closest clinic and the vet told us to take the dog in. We put him on a plank of wood and covered it with a kitchen towel. The dog was still alive. But its belly seemed like a wobbly balloon filled with jelly.
The vet said the dog had an internal hemorrhage. Its head did not look too good either. It could not be saved, he said. And after he administered a lethal injection, the dog died and we took him back on the plank and Rupert dug up a small hole in our garden for the burial. Two neighbours watched sympathetically and nobody commented that burying a dog there, in the vicinity of blocks, might not be in line with health regulations. Luca was taken downstairs, on one of his very few outings while having his leg in a cast, and he moved his little palm along the dog’s fur and gave it probably one of the few signs of tenderness that stray was ever shown. Then Rupert put the dog to rest, shrouded in our kitchen towel. I went to work and life carried on, without a small dog, to whom we will never have given a home, while alive, but we could only offer a grave.
2 Responses to “Three strays of Bucharest”
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October 16th, 2009 at 2:15
The sludge was actually quite comfortable (i was having a similar dream, or maybe i was thinking about what the dog was feeling like in his final moments). The kittens fared better at any rate… I was thinking you were going to take them home. make a nice nest for them somewhere, then spend the rest of your life clearing up their poo. we know: that’s all we do now with our monsters. which reminds me, where are they? Hiding in the chemical cupboard i think. Love your story by the way.
October 16th, 2009 at 15:32
Oh dear, oh dear. It reminds me of two white tiny baby cocker spaniels I saw a few times on a rubbish dump on my walk to the beach in Montenegro. Each time some workmen asked me if I wanted to take them home. The last time I saw them I said ‘no I can’t, I have just rescued one puppy and it’s costing me a fortune to get him back to Scotland, inoculate him travelling several times to Dubrovnik for the pleasure and then organising a place for him to stay for a year before he could be allowed into the country’ all this in my almost non-existent Serbian language.
I rushed from the scene and avoided going that way again but I still remember them vividly and can’t imagine why two perfect little spaniels would have been dumped there.