A home sweet home for animals

A home sweet home for animals

Hridhya Menon M K

            “Man is the only creature that consumes without producing... Yet he is the lord of all the animals”. – George Orwell, Animal Farm.

            Do we think that we are the one and only owners of the earth? Do we have the notion that only we have the right to live? Then we are wrong. Open your eyes and look at the animals, our fellow creatures. We are dependent on them for many things as they are on us. They too own this earth as we do.

“We are a family...”

            With this in mind, People for Animals (PFA), a group of animal lovers work together to provide shelter and comfort to animals which are wounded and in need of a helping hand. It was Maneka Gandhi who came up with the idea of such a group in 1994. And now it has more than 150 units in the country. PFA have setup shelters for the hapless animals; the only such shelter in our state is at Valyarathala in Thiruvananthapuram.

            The shelter is situated in an area of about one and a half acres and its inmates include dogs and cats of various breeds and an ox. Some were born stray and some were deserted by their owners. “The one who were ill-treated are given special care at this place and they now lead a life together, happily”, says Sulochana, one of the care takers at the Thiruvananthapuram PFA shelter. The canines never quarrel with one another. There is love and peace among them and they stand as a family.

            The Thiruvananthapuram shelter of PFA is now ‘home sweet home’ for hundreds of animals. They have shelter, food, medicine and complete freedom. They are no more orphans; there is someone to take care of them. Adoption programs are also conducted by the organisers so that special care can be given to some.

            Never forget, we are also part of the animal kingdom, the only difference between is that the animals don’t know how to cheat but a man knows.