Bella was spotted by a dumpster in the Al Jafiliya area scavenging for food, eating rotten chicken bones. She was covered in filth and the whiskers on the right side of her face were missing. When I knelt by her to have a closer look, she softly meowed, but didn’t even give me a look.
By the time I went home to get her some food and returned, she had already disappeared. When I checked with the watchman of the building nearby, he said she had been hanging around the area for two weeks.
She had to be rescued as she is a Turkish Angora, a long-haired cat, that cannot survive the summer heat. I was pretty sure she used to be someone’s pet. When I went looking for her the next day, she was being chased by a neighbour with a stick. However, the minute I called out to her, she came running towards me. How does a cat that has been failed so many times by humans remain so trusting and sweet?
I got her groomed professionally and she was so relieved to have the matts and dirty hair shaved. She made all of us laugh with her antics.
At the vet’s, I discovered she was microchipped, weighed only three kilograms, which is quite underweight for a three-year-old cat and had small wounds all over her body. After tracking down her previous family, I learned that she went missing from her home in the Mirdif area about a year ago. How did she end up in Al Jafiliya? We will never know. I suspect though that someone picked her up or stole her from Mirdif, kept her for a few months, and dumped her in my area.
Her previous family is unable to take her back due to various issues and she needs a home where she will be a forever loved. She has had a tough year and now she needs to be taken care of.
She is very gentle, loving, dainty and a total lap cat. Bella just wants to be loved. She will sleep by your side all night, if you let her. She is still jittery and afraid of new people, but she will open up with time. Please open your heart and home to her.
For more details, get in touch at binkittycollective@gmail.com.
— The reader is a member of the Bin Kitty Collective, a Dubai-based animal welfare group.
