Basmah: From KSA to USA with love

Born c2004 in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

While living in Saudi Arabia in 2005-08, I regularly fed a yellow tabby who lived in a culvert near home -- one of countless stray and feral cats who eke out a living in the streets and jebels of the Kingdom. One day I noticed a flash of white darting from bush to bush -- a newcomer looking for kibble.  Hunger won over fear and a small white and black female crawled toward me. Having seen all manner of desperate conditions among the animals of that land, this one surpassed them all: Her face was half shattered, maggot-ridden and with one eye dangling. The tom ran her away.

In minutes I was back with an open can of fragrant tuna inside a pet carrier. Determined to catch her, I placed the carrier by the bushes where I last saw her and hunkered next to it in wait. Surprisingly soon, lured by the scent, the ravenous cat darted into the carrier and I slammed the door.

Basmah-Pastora born in Dhahran, KSA 2005.
"From KSA to USA with love"

The injuries, two veterinarians agreed, were due to a crushing blow with a blunt object, like a club. The right cheek, mandible and teeth, nose, and eye were severely compromised. The other eye’s vision was but 20% due to an old lesion.  She was also emaciated and in a state of panic, making euthanasia seem like a welcome release of her pain.  But, wasn’t death what the cruel attacker had intended? I would not abide. And so I persuaded the Kiwi and the Scottish veterinarians, expatriates like us, to go for broke to save her. Four hours of reconstructive surgery later, she was, against all expectations, alive.

Elusive and nearly blind she had nowhere to go but to our temporary home abroad, where two large, behaviorally challenged dogs – one Okie and one Saudi -- already lived. The process of socialization has been glacially slow, but at that magic moment when she first let me touch her ever so briefly I felt we had come as close as possible to avenging her without the deserved eye-for-an-eye justice.

Basmah (L) and best friend Pertinax in Houston

Basmah (Arabic for “smile,” because of her sardonic countenance) was on her way to a life few animals in her homeland enjoy. Now she is thriving in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

The moral to Basmah’s story is that companion animals can and should always go with their people. Even from half-way around the world it takes only a health certificate and current inoculations by a licensed veterinarian at the point of origin; the paperwork required by the embassy of the country of destination; the money to check pet carriers as luggage; and understanding that animals trust, fear, hope, hurt ... like us.

Too many people move lifeless chattel at great expense while leaving their loving companions behind. It is unethical; it is messed up. No animal left behind, please!

Basmah has come a long way. Now she can even key in characters I don’t need while I write these lines.

(Written for Vol. 4  [2013] of “Tails of Love”, a photo album of The Humane Society of the Ozarks, Fayetteville, Arkansas.)