‘Cat man of Aleppo’ opens rare animal clinic in war-torn Syria
Al Jaleel had 170 abandoned cats in his care at some point during the war
At an unlikely cat shelter in rebel-held northern Syria, Mohammad Ala’a 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 of animals to have received medical attention at the makeshift animal clinic in Kafr Naha, an opposition-held town in Aleppo province.
“If you want to show mercy to people, start by showing mercy to everything else,” says Al Jaleel. The 43-year-old, who grew up in Syria’s second city Aleppo, has been mad about cats since he was a boy.
As a young adult in the city, 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 his feline friends.
At some point Al Jaleel was left with 170 cats to feed earning him the 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 late 2016, the regime ramped up its deadly bombardment of Aleppo’s oppositionheld neighbourhoods as it sought to regain control of the city.
Before fleeing he and fellow feline fans managed to save 22 of the city’s cats.
“We gave each family two cats in a plastic vegetable basket,” Al Jaleel says.
Al Jaleel set up his second shelter in early 2017 and housed 18 of the 22 smuggled cats in the animal oasis.
Mohammad Watar was blown away when he brought in his cat for treatment after food poisoning. “I was so surprised to find this kind of thing existed during this war,” says Watar.
“I saw them treating all sorts of animals. It’s really beautiful.”