Who is Killing the Cats & Dogs of Mertasari? And not just Mertasari - it’s an Islandwide Epidemic....... She got the news in the middle of a jewellery show in the Presidential Suite of the Ritz Carlton, Hong Kong. “WHAT?!”, she yelled. The tai tais dropped the jewellery into their teacups and gaped in astonishment. “Your cat’s dead” said the caller baldly, “poisoned”. That’s how my wife first learned of the death of her beloved Siamese. By the time we were back in Bali we had the autopsy report and the story of what had happened. Krystal had gone out in to the garden at 9.00 am and returned to the house at 11.00 am. Half an hour later she was found dead in our bath tub having foamed at the mouth and fouled herself. Her stomach was full of bones from a fish head. Rat poison the vet said. Two days later another dead cat in exactly the same state was found in the bath in our guest house. We’d noticed this cat before, a handsome tabby, usually about 100 yards or so down the road. We marched off to the café a couple of properties away, figuring that they were putting down poison to get rid of marauding cats. But no, the owner was a cat lover and had lost his own cat a few days earlier. It had been poisoned, he said. His next door neighbours chimed in to say that their 2 dogs had recently died of poisoning and so had a Labrador and another pedigree dog belonging to foreigners in Jalan Pengembak around the corner. The French consul bicycling past stopped on seeing us to say hello. We were now a small group of almost a dozen sharing and speculating on what was going on. The Consul told us that he too had had his dog poisoned. He’d been out walking the dog off his leash in some cleared land nearby. Looking back for his dog he’d seen it on the ground spasming and foaming at the mouth. Fortunately his pembantu was with him and knew what to do. They fed the dog large quantities of coconut oil and it pulled through. A Cynophobic Psychopath strikes..... Meanwhile back in Hong Kong, before our departure, a serial killer had struck, claiming his (no one thinks it could be a woman) 36th victim in a reign of canine terror spanning 15 years. There was now a US$30,000 reward out for the apprehension of, or information leading to, the arrest of the notorious “Bowen Road Dog Killer”. Bowen Road is a bosky pedestrian lane half way up the mountain on Hong Kong-side. It is ideal for a quiet walk if you aren’t run down by an oafish jogger and, of course, ideal for exercising dogs. What on earth motivates a serial dog killer, people asked? In the case of the Bowen Road Dog Killer, had he been bitten by a dog as an infant and never gotten over it? Had he stepped in dog poo once too often and snapped? Was he trying to get back at Foreign Devils, supposing only they loved and owned dogs as pets? Hardly, since most of the dog owners were Chinese and would cheerfully disembowel the monster for doing in their pooches. And how did he do it? What fiendish cunning had allowed him to escape detection for so long, despite the best efforts of Hong Kong’s finest, a hefty reward and the Bowen Road vigilantes? Nobody knew... Bali’s different..... None of the above reasons seem to apply to what appears to be a much larger and much more widespread activity in Bali, as I was to find as I started looking into the phenomena. First off, in Bali it’s clearly not the work of a single cynophobic psychopath as in the case of the Bowen Road killer. Some of our instant roadside group of the pet-bereaved had heard that it was the the developers of several large properties nearby that had been cleared recently for villas and a hotel that had been laying poison, because they didn’t want packs of semi-feral dogs roaming their land. Others speculated that it was Javanese workers encamped in the area, who didn’t like having dogs around them because their culture and religion regards dogs as unclean. Some even thought that the banjars periodically did it to keep the number of wild dogs down. Then of course many of us felt it had to do with people eating dog satay. “Who’d want to eat poisoned dog meat?”, some of us said. The others looked at us pityingly, “it’s not them who eat it“, they said. In the days to come I mentioned what was going on to various people. Few were surprised, though the feeling was that dog poisoning came in geographical waves. One long term Sanur resident said, “It’s cultural. You can’t change it. Don’t you believe though that the Balinese don’t eat dog. Several Balinese friends tell me how as kids they looked forward to a weekend treat of roasted dog”. Mr Fixit, Phil Wilson, was round our place the other day fixing a minor but irritating electrical problem in a jiffy, which had plagued us for years (Deo gratias! Et fixit...), and shared an experience he and his brother had witnessed. Closing up the old premises of the “Cat & Fiddle” late one night they were sitting in the dark enjoying a nightcap. A dog convulsed and died in the road outside, clearly from poison. Having checked it was dead, something prompted them to leave the dog by the side of the road and watch. In another 30 minutes a pickup van had driven up with two men in it. One got out, slung the carcass in the back and drove off. Sinister news from Upcountry..... More sinister news came from Ubud. Noticing an advertisement in Bali Advertiser asking people who had had dogs poisoned to contact an organisation called Bali Street Dogs and having read an earlier article in Bali Advertiser about it, I called a friend, whom I know does truly great work in this field with a group of other dedicated women. The problem is big. She and some friends had just come from releasing over 50 dogs crated in appalling conditions (six inch nails sticking into the crates) an hour North of Ubud. The men doing it had cut up quite nasty. My friend has sufficient standing and length of Bali tenure to tell then to get stuffed. Others of the group had to pay them “compensation”. Compensation for what? I asked. It appears there are groups of people licensed to round up street dogs. They then ship them off in bulk to Java to be sold as meat or thrown to pit bulls for sport, I was told. There is no law about the treatment of dogs apparently. Nor any oversight as to what purpose these dogs are put to by these “licensed” gangs, obviously. What’s the difference? I don’t eat meat. I don’t like eating other sentient beings, by which I mean my fellow mammals. On the other hand I am not on a mission to compel other people not to do it. It’s a personal choice and that, I reckon, is how it should be. If you eat a cow or a pig why not a dog or a cat? People can and do have them as pets and their respective levels of consciousness are not markedIy different, if at all. I also recognise there are cultural aspects to all this. But then again it wasn’t so long ago that it was culturally OK to be a slave owner. It still goes on, but I don’t think anyone seriously maintains it’s OK. I adore cats and I like most dogs. I help them whenever I can.... if it’s convenient. And that’s the thing. It takes very special people to take it on and they deserve the active support of anyone who claims to care about animals. One woman I know, who loves animals big time has actually chosen the job of going round slaughter houses in an effort to encourage more humane killing. I’m in awe of such people. Copyright © 2007 ParacelsusAsia You can read all past articles of Alternative Voice at BaliAdvertiser.biz send page
Posted on: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 05:38:41 +0000
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