Areas Covered – Montalban and De La Costa

Team – Denise Wood (CARA), Barbara Greenwood (CARA), Rosemary Yates (CARA), Daemon Becker (CARA), Wayne Davies, Dr Riza Zunio, Dr Lyn Villarba, 2 interns - Daniel Jon Batinga and Miguel Dominic Alidio

Transport – two four wheel drives and one saloon car, 2 drivers.

First stop was the basketball court at Montalban. Last week we established there is a great need for animal assistance in that area.

The day started with a tiny kitten being handed over that had been found by the road side with no mum. After medical treatment and some good food, the kitten was feeling much better and went to a good home. That was one lucky kitten; she would never have survived otherwise. 

The sheer volume of people with animals in that area is astounding. Either for anti-rabies or medical assistance, we treated well over 500 animals that morning. They just kept coming and coming. At one point looking at the registration line I

We did approximately 460 anti -rabies inoculations, gave out well over 300 bags of food and treated at least 50 medical cases.

Next stop was De La Costa. Completely different set up to Montalban. They are still trying to clear the streets; deep mud and water. Area was previously completely flooded, residents still haven’t recovered, devastation everywhere you look.

We went door to door carrying our medical supplies and the small amount of cat food we had left. Unfortunately a lot of the animals drowned in this area, so we didn’t see any where near the amount of animals we saw at Montalban. The houses had been completely submerged up to the first level, some houses were still empty, the owners had obviously not yet returned. We trudged down the streets asking people if they had cats or dogs, we treated as we found them. We saw a stray wet hungry dog, but he wouldn’t let us approach, we left food for him to find. We saw a dog that obviously been owned at one time because he had a collar on, he ran up to us hopefully when we called and we gave him food, he was too cautious for us to treat medically though. We fed three very hungry cats who were fighting for priority of the cat biscuits with a very skinny chicken – all of them so hungry. One lady explained she had had three dogs but after the flood only one made it back to her house. Can’t put into words the grim sights we saw, it poured with rain the whole time we were there, just adding to the mud bath.

We treated approximately 20 dogs and 1 cat, fed any animal we came across on the streets.

This project has been made possible with the support of the International Fund for Animal Welfare http://www.ifaw.org