Honouring Gerald Durrell by ripping off his title
By Ellerine Diengdoh
Now, I come from a family that doesn’t just like animals. We hoard them. Lovingly. Compulsively. It is not a hobby. It is an illness.
Growing up, my sister and I lived in a household where the number of paws always exceeded the number of legs. The pets were mostly strays. The rest were just freeloaders who never left. We named them, fed them, nursed them, educated them (emotionally, not academically), and often wondered who exactly was in charge. It wasn’t us.
The ringleader of this animal circus is my mother (now a retired nurse), who has always been the unofficial zookeeper of every neighbourhood we’ve ever lived in. She believes it is her divine duty to rescue every living creature within a five-kilometre radius. She does this with such zeal that she occasionally ends up rescuing animals that are — how do I put this gently — already rescued. As in, owned. As in, wearing collars. She once returned a dog to its owners with a lecture on responsibility. They thanked her. She did not apologise.
Every other month, we try to rehome a new litter of puppies or kittens. It’s a routine now. Our neighbours have watched this ritual unfold with a mixture of admiration, pity, and silent dread.
At one point, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of creatures sharing our oxygen supply, I posted a whatsapp status that read: “We have too many animals. I need to bring the numbers down. Does anyone want to adopt my mother?” I thought it was funny. Everyone else thought I was deranged. I received three angry phone calls and 7 messages in twenty minutes. Apparently, suggesting the rehoming of my mother was monstrous. That, ladies and gentlemen, is my mother. A one-woman animal welfare department with no budget, no day off, and absolutely no sense of when to stop.
Now, while all of this makes for an entertaining domestic series, it points to a much larger, much less charming issue.
Take a walk through any locality in Shillong and you’ll see them — the abandoned pets, the accidental litters, the confused little pups dumped near a meat shop, like someone’s going to swing by and say, “Ah yes, just what I needed with my pork today”. We treat animals like fashion accessories. One day it’s, “Oh my God, look at his floppy ears !He’s soooo cute . I can’t even!” A few months later: “We don’t have time any more. Maybe we’ll just let him out and he’ll find his way.” Find his way where, exactly?
Meanwhile, the abandoned dogs do what dogs do. They adapt. They form packs. They howl at night. And then we complain.
We complain that they bark too much. That they chase schoolchildren. That they dig through garbage. But if your solution to an animal problem is to yell at someone feeding a starving dog — or to call for the municipal department to make them “disappear” — while ignoring the person who left their “designer pet” on the street, then perhaps the problem isn’t the menace. It’s the reflection in the mirror.
Let me offer some unsolicited but terribly necessary solutions:
1. The Great Pet Census
Every household must declare the animals they own. This data must not be verified by the owner. Who will, of course, lie. But by their neighbours. Who will tell you everything. Because they know. Because they’ve heard the 3 am howling. Because they’ve stepped on the landmines.
2. Real Penalties for Abandonment
You leave a dog on the street? Excellent. You now get to clean every poop from Don Bosco to Ïewduh for six months. With a spoon. Wearing a shirt that says, “I have Commitment Issues”. You must also attend a 12 Week mandatory course titled: “How Not to Be a Garbage Human”.
3. Mandatory Spaying/Neutering
If your dog isn’t spayed or neutered, you must either pay a fine, book the snip or babysit six unadopted puppies every weekend. They will be trained to pee exclusively on surfaces that cost more than your monthly rent. You will host them until further notice — or until you’ve aged five years and started weeping at the sound of a bark.
4. Dog Ownership License
You must pass a quiz before you get a dog. Sample questions:
a) Can you spell vaccination?
b) What is a vet? Is it short for vegetable?
c) What is your plan when your dog stops being cute and starts shredding your furniture?
d) If your dog barks at 3 am is it:
*Calling the neighbourhood watch?
*Practising for a singing competition?
*Just generally annoyed at life?
Failure to answer correctly results in a lifetime ban from owning anything with a heartbeat.
5.Rethink What It Means to “Own” a Pet
If you own a dog but it spends 18 hours chained to a gatepost, or locked in some godforsaken room or terrace, you don’t have a pet. You have a hostage. Dogs are not props. They are sentient, drooling, emotionally needy creatures who will love you unconditionally and then destroy your sofa. If you cannot deal with that — buy a cactus!
The truth is, Shillong doesn’t have a stray dog problem, it has a stray empathy problem. The dogs didn’t stray from home, we strayed from basic human decency. My family does its bit, but we can’t carry the whole city’s conscience. So, if karma is watching, may we all come back as the puppies we so thoughtlessly abandoned. May we find ourselves chained, hungry and cold right outside our own gates. With my mother, nowhere near to save us!