In the devastated neighborhoods of the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, volunteers slip through the rubble to bring back animals left behind by their owners who left in a hurry under the bombs. “Enter, save and leave,” summarizes Maggie Shaarawi, vice-president of the Animals of Lebanon association, who goes to the southern suburbs, today deserted and still shelled by Israeli bombings. “People had to evacuate in a hurry. Their cats, stressed by the bombings, hid” and could not be taken away by their owners, she says.
This week, Ms Shaarawi and two other volunteers traveled to the suburbs to collect eight traumatized cats, at the desperate request of their owner, in an attempt to catch Fifi, Leo, Blacky, Teddy, Tanda, Ziki, Kitty and Masha.
At full speed, the three volunteers managed to bring the terrified felines out of their hiding places and rounded them up. As they prepared to search another house, a strike rang out, forcing them to flee. “This is the first time it has fallen so close to us. We were lucky to escape alive,” says Ms. Shaarawi.
Recovering animals from bombed houses is not easy; fear “transforms cats into tigers,” says Ms. Shaarawi. Sometimes volunteers don’t arrive on time. This week, they found one of them stiffened by death, its white fur turned black in the dust of the bombing. The other two were nowhere to be found.
