Barbara Hollands

was quite an ordeal to catch them. There was a lot of swearing from all of us and the owners ended up being scratched.”

Leibach has inadvertently been scratched and bitten many times in the district he covers, which stretches from Butterworth in the east to Hamburg in the west, but blames himself for the time when a dog tore his hand open.

“We collected a dog stuck in a drain, but when we got back to the SPCA, the dog got away and I caught it and it bit me right through my hand and I had to have it stitched up. We tend to be more careful with big dogs, so it’s the smaller dogs that end up biting us.”

Dogs and cats make up the bulk of his mercy trips, but reptiles and livestock have also required his help.

A massive leguaan once jumped into a police van before he could trap it.

“It was about two metres long and was rocking the van back and forth. The policemen were too afraid to drive the van and had to call another policeman who drove to the [East London] Abbotsford causeway where we released it into the wild. I have released snakes into the wild too.”

Leibach is one of four inspectors at the SPCA and, while he usually works alone, sometimes call-outs require teamwork.

He and his colleagues recently removed 26 neglected pigs and piglets from a farm near Cove Rock. They were so thin – only a few centimetres wide – and two were already dead.

“The owner said he had been sick in hospital and had been dying himself.”

The pigs are now plump and healthy and housed in the deeper reaches of the shelter while the law takes its course.

It is the legal side of the job that the public are frequently unaware of, explains Leibach.

“I can’t just go onto a property or I will be charged with trespassing and I can’t just remove an animal or I will be charged with stealing. And I’m not allowed to have a criminal record in this job.”

Depending on the severity of the complaint, Leibach must leave three written instructions for compliance at potential offenders’ addresses before he can apply for a warrant from the magistrate.

“If the case is very severe I can do it after one warning, but I have to write an affidavit and go to the magistrate and show photos and convince them that I have been reasonable with the owner before they will issue me with a warrant to remove the animal.

“Some people give you flak, especially on Facebook. Everyone demands that the animal be taken away, but often what they think is bad is not actually that bad in the eyes of the magistrate. For instance he will say that a dog is thin because it has puppies. But people

Leibach is usually the one performing the rescues and recounts an instance when he responded to a call to a West Bank home where he was met with 56 cats. Their owners had become overwhelmed and wanted them gone