Since our move to Nicaragua almost two years ago, we have discovered that this little country is equal to, if not better, in both health care and dentistry as anywhere we've ever been, including the United States. Both are certainly more affordable. Incredibly affordable, in fact. However, as far as the veterinary sciences are concerned, they are woefully lacking.
Carol believes part of the problem is that they haven't got adequate facilities and equipment and she's probably right. Personally, I believe that the deficiencies also include an overall lack of concern and compassion by the locals here toward animals of any kind. Believe me, it's tough to be an animal in Nicaragua.
Nobody gets a free ride. Many horses are underfed and wormy, spending their days hauling around little carts with huge loads on cobblestone-like streets. Others haul large buggies full of overweight tourists. And nowhere around this town have we seen even one watering trough. These poor nags apparently spend the whole day under our tropical sun without a water break.
Dogs aren't exempt either. Besides the many street dogs who have to scrounge around town everyday for food of any kind, those that are domesticated aren't necessarily domesticated as pets, rather as living, breathing alarms or body guards. We hear dogs being beaten all the time in order to "teach" them to be protective of house and master. Occasional dogfights can also be heard.
We understand the situation with the street dogs used to be much worse but through the efforts of a wonderful lady named Donna Tabor, great strides have been made to lessen this problem. Donna has been here for many years and is the "go to" person when it comes to any questions regarding animals.
Not many of the locals keep cats as pets. Instead, the town supports a notable population of "roof" cats, so named because they exist on the roofs of the houses of this old town. They pretty much keep the rodent population under control because that's about all they have available to them to eat. And they live on the roofs because the dogs control the streets. Because our place is so open to the outside, we have a couple of "roof" cats, a yellow tom we call Tom and a black-n-white we call Sylvester, who pay us frequent visits in order to access the cat food we leave out for our two Costa Rican rescued felines, Mina and Flaco. They're quite bold about it, too. They come right up the stairs, help themselves to a good meal (Mina and Flaco apparently consider them both to be good friends) and leave by way of an open window. Tom likes to piss on something on his way out, something we wish he would reconsider.
After Sophie died, Carol said, "no more, the heartache is just too much when we lose them," and I pretty much agreed with her. We stuck to our guns for about six weeks when one day we got an email from one of our friends here in Granada, telling us that someone had dropped off a little kitten on her front stoop, she already had too many cats, was afraid that they might harm this little one, were we interested in another adoption?
Carol said, "No, no, no, no," then walked over and picked it up. It fit in her hand. It was a 'she' as best we could tell, only about three weeks old, if that. Whereas Sophie made her name clear to us early on, this one took a little time. We had to bottle feed her a special formula, along with 'meat' baby food, for the first several weeks. She could barely walk when she first arrived but as the days passed and she grew stronger, the day came when she declared her name. "Look at her scoot," one of us said and "Scooter" it was. And is. She's about ten weeks old now, eats regular cat food with the other cats, has adopted Flaco as her big brother (Mina is an old sourpuss, she barely likes us) and is the delight that a good kitty is supposed to be. We don't see her as a replacement for Sophie -- believe me, Scooter is her own little cat -- with a different personality altogether. We'll not forget what a special little cat Sophie was -- and she was -- and we'll learn from our experiences.
