Pawsitivity in a pandemic

CHENNAI: Nothing about a global virus threat and government-issued quarantine could be termed ideal. But our need to look at the brighter side seems to have manifested in full measure. We are rediscovering the pleasures of exploring the forgotten terrace, bumping into birds we had only seen in science textbooks and our birdwatcher friends’ Instagram pages, and figuring out that board games with the family will keep us from killing each other. People with pets report all these perks and more.

Who let the dogs out?

Srinath Mohan’s two dogs — Caesar and Duke — are among the luckiest. With his house located in a barely occupied gated community near Sriperumbudur, his Rottweiler and Doberman are Animal Kingdom- ing the mini forest available to them. With all the humans staying indoors, Srinath and his far-spaced neighbours are letting their dogs out, giving them a chance to run free, hunt quails and battle snakes. Well within the city, Yoga Pragadesh’s Chocky has turned his master’s huge garden into his private training grounds. A young and active mongrel, the kid has been all play and no rest for his doctor parents. Tug of war seems to be their activity of choice. But Yoga has no complaint. The shortest six months is when you watch your pup grow to be ten times bigger. Bengaluru- based Ranjitha Grace is drinking in these moments with her six-month-old Beagle, Mia. With both working parents now home all day, Mia is a ready-to-burst bundle of joy. “Right now, we feel like she is managing us. Every time we are bored, we just wake her up from deep sleep just to cuddle her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she soon begins looking for personal space,” Ranjitha jokes.

Care for exercise?

Exercise, naturally, seems to be the primary concern. Lack of physical activity has been linked with depression in dogs too. But many are making do with the limited space available to them — be it the living room or the parking space. Shawn Varghese’s 10-year-old desi lab, Phoebe, is a rescue who can’t walk much. “She had osteoporosis. I had already finished her medicine course a month ago. Now, she only needs regular exercise. I make her walk around the parking space and in the lane outside the house,” he explains. But things have not been all that ideal everywhere; medical emergencies seem to creep up just when you have the least means to deal with it. That was the case with Chennai’s Ipshita Paul and her new pup, Cleo.

A few days into the lockdown, Cleo was not eating well. While Ipshita realised that a visit to the pet was turning out to be inevitable, she had no idea that the task would prove to be an obstacle course. “We couldn’t get a cab. We got a little excited when the apps showed cars and autorickshaws being available. It was only when we tried to book that it put out the announcement that it was temporarily unavailable. Then my roommate, Revathy, managed to get an autorickshaw driver she knows to help us. Most of the vet clinics were closed. Searching online, we found that only two were open — one in Padi and the other in Mylapore.

We did have to pay the autorickshaw driver well above the fare,” she recounts. It turned out to be indigestion as he had been eating plastic lying around the house. But all is well now, as long as he is fed the medicines and stays off the plastic diet. On the regular side of needs, food and regular availability of it is quite the cause for concern. Kochi’s Bindu Benu has been rationing her one-and half-year-old Labrador Pearl’s meals. “We only feed her biscuits in the morning; we save the meat and rice for the evening as there’s a shortage and we don’t know how long this lockdown might last,” she reasons.

Stepping up for strays

Malini and husband Mukund, who have been fostering and feeding street dogs in their vicinity since 1999 (the vicinity being Koyambedu since 2003), have had more mouths to feed during lockdown. “Every day, my husband and I go out and feed about 25 of them on our road. We also give on-sight treatment, and all these dogs are sterilised and vaccinated annually. Now, with all the restaurants shut, these kids don’t get any scraps to eat. So we have a lot of hungry mouths to feed — an additional 20-25 dogs a day,” she explains. While they are having trouble running around to source the materials and keep up the feeding practice, they stick to the routine every day; for the extra hungry mouths that have joined the brood since the lockdown, they are buying huge quantities of Pedigree and Marie biscuits. Vijay Balaji, a fellow street-dog feeder, works in Ambattur — an area that is home to a large number of the city’s unwanted dogs.

What was normally 25 dogs has now increased to 50-60; and that too just near the Old Town bus terminus. “If there are a thousand dogs in Ambattur, we are able to feed only a hundred of them. We were feeding the dogs equally in the beginning but then we increased the rations for the weaker ones and lactating mothers. There are people stepping up and volunteering but there’s only so much you can do and resources are scarce too,” he points out. Vijay relies on regular suppliers for the meat he needs to ke e p up his feeding programme. When movement is severely restricted and resources are hard to come by, even little contributions count, he says.

People can begin by cooking a little extra food and feeding the few dogs in their street. He advises that they use gloves and masks as a general hygiene practice, emphasising that they do not have to worry about coronavirus transmission through dogs. Vi j ay and like-minded people like him are working with the police to arrange for feeder passes to be issued, to make things easier for those volunteering for this activity. But, if you were to work in the vicinity of your home, you won’t need one. The situation is not very different in Mangaluru, says Shawn. If people don’t take the street dogs into consideration, we’d be looking at man-animal conflict and the dogs turning aggressive by the day. Thankfully, there are many who step out to feed the hungry mouths, he says.

By the shop

Another pressing problem in Shawn’s area was animals locked in at pet shops. Animal Care Trust, a local NGO, swung into action and (with the many homebound volunteers) took to addressing their needs. “First, we compiled a comprehensive list of all the pet shops, along with their contact details. The next day, follow-up calls were made to the owners to check on the absolutely clueless, caged animals. To some relief, many owners had taken their pets home for easy feeding and care. The problem was with the birds and aquariums, which cannot be moved easily. With the help of the police, the shop owners have managed to check on them every couple of days.

It is a relief that the pets in these shops are being given food and water every day during the lockdown,” he narrates. Even as the pandemic and the consequent lockdown has brought with it a whole host of troubles and forced people to adapt to the new way of things, animals are not far behind, says Malini. “Here at home, I have three rescues, who are generally very playful. Now they sense that there are extra demands on our time and they are keeping to themselves, sleeping out and behaving very well. Even the ones on the road are not any different.

We have changed the food that we are giving them. First day, they smelt the food and knew it was different but realised they were too hungry to skip it. Now, they have understood that they would go hungry if they do not take the food on offer; all of them are polishing off the food,” she recounts. If animals can sense as much and adapt this well, perhaps there is still hope for us.

When cats win
Meanwhile, the cat-people are just sitting back and watching their cats grow bigger. Speaking about her cats Midnight, Milkyway and Meadow, Manasa says, “COVID or not, they live a king’s life with
enough freedom to catch prey, climb up trees and frolick around the apartment. They get more attention from us, now that we are home all the time, and their waistlines seem to be better for it.” Now, isn’t that the ideal quarantine?