By: Areeba Chaudhry
“The love for all living beings is the noblest attribute of a man”
People throw this word around so much that it seems to have lost its original meaning, there’s a big difference in being an animal lover and a breeder, a poacher, a trophy hunter, or simply a breed lover. Being an animal lover actually means selflessly loving every living being, being kind to them regardless of their breeds or appearances. Be it a cute little furry fellow or a big intimidating and vicious one. Most of us claim to be just that yet we choose to look the other way when they are exploited when their freedom is traded for our entertainment and when they need us the most. The result of our ignorance is their misery.
The breeding of exotic breeds is one of the gruesome results of our preference for pretty looking animals. This is a practice that doesn’t only deprive the local breeds, abandoned, lost, and injured pets of their potential homes but also subjects the exotic breeds to a lifetime of torture where they are used for only one purpose and that’s breeding. Some of them die early, some suffer from unimaginable diseases and others are discarded like trash when they are no longer able to serve their purpose. Their babies have ripped away from them at an early age, bottle-fed and sold to the very first buyer who offers a hefty amount for them. All the while strays die from extreme weather conditions, lack of food, inadequate medical attention, spend their entire lives searching for a shelter for themselves and their offspring, they helplessly watch people kill their babies, torture them, crush them under their cars and throw them away, The reason? Well because apparently some “animal lovers” prefer Persians and huskies over homeless, starving animals desperately in need of a home, so of course they have got to buy them.
Pet markets are the best places to find animals like parrots, rabbits, cats, dogs, dead ones, sick ones, starved ones, stolen ones, and birds with clipped wings, etc. Animals classified as pets are usually very sensitive especially the ones with multiple coats of fur and the exotic breeds, they are supposed to be kept at certain temperatures, given certain types of food, and not meant to be locked in small bird cages but in pet markets, they are exposed to the extreme weather, given low-quality foods that are bad for their health and kept in small cages where they can’t even stretch their bodies and are often forced to relieve themselves there too. These animals are sold to any buyer who is willing to pay a certain sum of money without any background checks whatsoever and that’s exactly how they fall into the hands of other breeders and sick sadists who like to torture them just for the fun of it.
Recently, thousands of animals died in pet markets due to the lockdown. The shop owners in the Tollinton market threw animals into the sewers where so many died, some were seen wandering on the roads in the search of food and some were lucky enough to be rescued. The same happened in the empress market Karachi where animals were kept in even worse conditions, most of them were found dead by the time rescuers arrived, many suffocated, many starved to death, many died because of the unbearable stench of death in the shuttered shops but only a few people spoke up for them. Now we all know what happens in these markets so isn’t it better to feed a few strays and provide shelter for them with the same money we use to buy exotic breeds from? Isn’t it better to rescue an animal in need of a home and save numerous lives instead of buying an imported breed just to show it off? There are so many animals both local and exotic breeds that need saving, that count on us, why not rescue them instead of buying them and letting this vicious cycle of torture continue? Buying pets has been proven unnecessary and cruel, it is true that there are a few sahih ahadith that forbid the selling and buying of cats and dogs but there seems to be a lack of consensus among the Islamic scholars about it.
However, most say that it is somewhat permissible but only if necessary. The hadith says:
“Abu Zubair said: I asked Jabir about the price of a cat and a dog; he said: Allah’s Messenger(PBUH) disapproved of that.” (Muslim 1569, Book of Musaqah)
Many people prefer keeping birds as pets and the rose-ringed parakeet also known as the green parrots makes up a majority of these pets, they are snatched from their homes, their mothers, bred, and forced to give their little ones up. Usually, their wings are clipped to prevent them from flying away before they are sold for a few thousand. Why? Well because most of us have this very healthy passion of keeping winged creatures in small cages surrounded by their own feces, kept away from nature just so that we can talk to them, feed them and supposedly take care of them so why should they feel the need to fly and have freedom when they get all these luxuries?
Also, who cares that they have small bodies and wings just for the purpose of flying, that God made their wings for a reason? Almost all of these parrots that are born into captivity and into the hands of breeders never get to fly, not even once in their lives, they never get to make their own nests or live with their partners in the wild. Keeping exotic birds like the Australian parrots as pets make a little sense since they can’t really survive in Pakistan on their own but actually paying someone to rob the freedom of a living being that can survive better on its own, what kind of love is that?
Another very common act of animal cruelty that takes place in many parts of our country is freeing captured sparrows. In big cities, vendors with nets full of panicked and scared sparrows are a common sight, these vendors usually take a small amount to “free” the birds that they have no right to catch in the first place and call it a good deed or sadaqah. However, what I fail to understand is how people think that taking away a living being’s freedom only to set it free for some money is a good deed. The good deed or sadaqah is when you empty the vendors’ cages, set the poor birds free, compensate the vendors, make sure they will stop torturing the innocent creatures, and help them find an alternative source of livelihood. Freeing one two or even a dozen birds won’t help, the vendors will capture them again, if not them then they will find other ones and this will keep going until someone actually puts a stop to it.
I used to be one of the people who think buying animals is harmless years ago too, didn’t know about the horrors these animals face so I bought a cat from a breeder and was told that he used to feed Me-O to his cats because it’s the cheapest cat food available. Most of the vets state that it's similar to giving slow poison to your cats. It causes fatal and very painful diseases like renal failure, liver diseases, UTIs, etc. and causes quick deaths in cats with sensitive stomachs but this was just one breeder with a few cats. Most of the breeders feed low-quality harmful foods to their animals, the animals do not get adequate medical attention and suffer all their lives which is exactly why this is not harmless and needs to end.
Do spare a few minutes and think about these animals and how it would feel if someone snatched us away from our families and took our freedom away. Will we let that happen to a human?
I don’t think so. The least we can do is raise our voices for them. Empathy for humans automatically develops once you start feeling the pain of these innocent creatures, you don’t need to turn a blind eye to their sufferings just because there are millions of humans suffering out there. Every living being feels pain, sorrow, and anguish. If you choose to ignore the pain of these vulnerable beings then you are no better than all those tyrants who take pleasure in hurting both humans and animals. Empathy is what makes us humans and we don’t have the right to complain about people not speaking up against the tormentors of humans when we do the same to other living beings. We can’t keep ignoring the sufferings of these beings and then think why our sufferings aren’t ending. The only way to put an end to their misery is to stop buying them and start rescuing the ones in need, to save the injured and abused ones, to raise our voices against the cruel breeders and pet markets, to rescue the ones suffering in pet markets and at the hands of breeders, to feed the strays, to offer them a shelter to spend the nights and to get your pets and the strays neutered so that they can live healthy lives and don’t end up with breeders. An abandoned/injured pet loses the fight to live and dies, their spirit breaks every time we decide to buy an animal instead of adopting or rescuing them.
(Image from here.)
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