THE survival of street animals is singularly grim, illustrated by strings of quandary.

There is the crisis of identity, space and place. Theoretically, street animals are not wild and not equipped with the right survival skills to stomach the wilderness.

Neither are they voluntarily accepted or welcomed into homes, nor are they observed as completely domesticated. Their dwelling then, is the streets in cities all over the world.

Subsequently, there is the crisis of role. The two predominant ilk of street animals are cats and dogs.

As distinct from equines and animals employed for the production of food and clothing, cats and dogs are unperceived as useful commercially.

Hence, their lives are discounted in a society that appreciates things in a manner corresponding to their utility.

It is often ignored, that they also have a place in the ecological equilibrium and the natural order, and their lives matter like all lives do. Their subsistence has a signification and purposefulness.

Unfortunately, matters become convoluted when they are being deprived of safe existence on the streets and are treated with dogmatism, animosity, unwarranted fears, discrimination, apathy and cruelty.

The two common street animals in Malaysia, are surviving in a very wicked quandary.

They dwell virtually wherever conurbations exist and whenever human communities exist because they mainly feed on human produced waste and garbage.

They are among scavengers, serving as what is known as cleaning agents or bio-bins as they maintain the environment clean.

The conundrum is that in Malaysia and other countries, they are ostracised and expelled from the very communities they need to attach themselves to.

Nonetheless, as opposed to the stray cats, the dogs in Malaysia are surviving in a very harrowing condition. Most of them live in a dejected state and most of them do not die a natural death.

The street dogs in Malaysia have become one category of animal that perhaps nobody wants and are oftentimes reviled to the breadth that they stomach cruelty every day.

Imagine being voiceless, hungry and shooed away with stones or kicks. Unfortunately, this is the plight for most of the street dogs in Malaysia.

From being burnt with acid, to being fed with rat poison to being tossed from roof to being shot at with arrows, they are subjected to cruelty and torture almost every day. This ongoing brutality must be put to an end.

It is the apex of misconception when street dogs are faulted for the deportment that comes naturally to the species. They run after cars – that is an automatic behaviour.

They rifle through rubbish, it is their only meal ticket. They reproduce, that is biology. They bark, that is their elocution. They exist, they did not choose to.

The abysmal injustice remains dog culling. This is when their paltry lives concluded in brutal deaths.

For example, in the course of controlling the population of street dogs, Malaysia has had the “1 Anjing RM10” and the shooting of stray dog campaigns.

However, these programmes and campaigns were discarded and aborted as they gathered massive criticism from the Malaysian public, and animal lovers and animal activists all over the country. 

The trap-neuter-return (TNR) programme, is the most humane mechanism to control the population of street animals.

The animals will be brought to a veterinarian to be spayed or neutered to control their population in the long run, vaccinated to preclude the danger of rabies, ear-tipped (the universal sign that a street animal has been neutered and vaccinated), and then returned to their outdoor home.

The TNR programme is effectively practiced in Turkey. There, hundreds of thousands of street cats and dogs are ear tagged, micro-chipped and treated kindly on the streets.

As of today an estimated 300,000 street dogs live in Istanbul, cordially assimilated into city life.

Moreover, as reported by BBC on April 9, the Turkish government has instructed its local councils to feed the country’s hundreds of thousands of street animals during the coronavirus lockdown as the animals have been receiving less food as they are typically fed by local residents.

Its Interior Ministry ordered the local councils to “bring food and water to animal shelters, parks, gardens, and other areas where animals are found”.

The ministry insisted “all necessary measures must be taken to ensure stray animals don’t go hungry”.

The issues circumnavigating the street animals in Malaysia can be better dealt with if we engage ourselves to the service of the animals.

Nonetheless, the deficiency in effective partaking and like-minded people who would not be fearful to take that additional step for the right cause appears to be a stumbling block.

Our inattentiveness in the plight of street animals albeit such an atrocious setting demonstrates that our cognisance has not evolved yet.

On that account, it is compulsory to have continuous dialogues with the policy makers for mandatory spay-neuter regulations and educating the public on the five welfare needs of animals.

It is important for the policy makers and individuals in authority to be practical and to respond to the urgent needs of the animal welfare people who are after all at the forefront in the fight in favour of animal well-being.

We need to cultivate compassion which can be brought forth through empathy; putting ourselves in their position and try to imagine their ill-fated existence.

When I was travelling in Hyderabad back in 2011, on various occasions I witnessed street animals, let it be a cat or a dog, being taken care of by homeless people.

And I thought to myself, may we all be tinged by the madness of compassion. – May 20, 2020.

* Suzianah Nhazzla Ismail reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.