‘CAT MAN’ STARTS ANIMAL CLINIC
Syrian runs shelter financed by crowdfunding campaigns
AT an unlikely cat shelter in rebel-held northern Syria, Mohammed Alaa al-Jaleel gently holds a feline patient on her back as an ultrasound probe is rolled across her pregnant belly.
In a time of war, she is one of hundreds to have received medical attention at the makeshift animal clinic here, an oppositionheld town in Aleppo province.
“If you want to show mercy to people, start by showing mercy to everything else,” said Jaleel, who runs Ernesto’s Cat Sanctuary — named after his favourite cat.
Jaleel, who grew up in Syria’s second city Aleppo, has been mad about cats since he was a boy.
As a young adult, he would drop by the butchers on his way home from work as an electrician to ask for scraps to feed street cats in his neighbourhood.
When war broke out in 2011, he put down his tools to become an ambulance driver to help ferry the wounded, but never stopped bringing food to the cats.
As the war raged on and cat lovers fled the city, Jaleel was left with 170 cats to feed and a new nickname: the Cat Man of Aleppo.
With the help of donations from friends and social media fans, he set up his first cat sanctuary in the city.
But in 2016, the regime ramped up its deadly bombardment of Aleppo’s opposition-held neighbourhoods as it sought to regain control of the whole city.
“We started fleeing from neighbourhood to neighbourhood until, in the end, we escaped the city altogether,” Jaleel said.
Determined not to leave them behind, he and fellow feline fans saved 22 of the city’s cats.
After fleeing Aleppo, Jaleel set up his second shelter early last year and housed 18 of the 22 smuggled cats in the animal oasis.
“The cats don’t just stay in just one house. They swap with each other and sleep in all of them,” Jaleel said, referring to rows of marble cubes with cat-sized entrances.
But the shelter, financed by online crowdfunding campaigns, does more than provide meals.
It also serves as an animal clinic with its in-house vet.
“We treat all sorts of animals here for free: horses, cows and even chickens.”
During an inventory in January, he and his colleagues discovered they had handed out 7,000 medical prescriptions for free in less than a year.
Mohammad Watar was blown away when he brought in his cat for treatment.
“There are no vets where I live. I asked people and they pointed me to the sanctuary.
“I was so surprised to find this kind of thing existed during this war we’re all living. I saw them treating all sorts of animals. It’s really beautiful.”