Dog No. 39

With Belgorod and Kursk Oblasts Under Fire, Volunteers Have Been Rescuing Animals Left Behind

In these complicated times, when you write about something happening to pets – say, in a social media post or an article – people inevitably come after you. “You don’t have anything better to write about? People are suffering, while you…”

Even so, I try to pay attention to the things that people who care only about people have no time for. Or, perhaps, find too painful.

Who, Where, Why?

I’m watching some short videos sent to me by volunteers in border communities that are now closed off due to shelling. It’s actually a good thing, I think to myself, that I write about animals and not human tragedies. My eyes don’t linger as long on the destroyed homes or on the beautiful, lovingly crafted gates decorated with drawings of cute little fawns and clusters of grapes. My gaze barely pauses at the sight of a burned-out car.

I hear a volunteer offscreen speaking with an elderly woman who is still living in one of the houses:

“Are you going to leave?”

“I’ll leave when they take me away.”

“But when in the world are they going to do that?”

Then a cat’s cry diverts my attention from the old woman shrugging her shoulders and from human pain. At least that pain has some meaning for those who are experiencing it. The cat, on the other hand, doesn’t understand a thing. He lived with chickens, geese and ducks. He hunted mice and exchanged them for homemade sour cream, butted his round head against people’s hands. His life was destroyed along with his owners’. He’s had teeth knocked out, and his head shakes. One side of his jaw is swollen, and he can’t eat due to the constant pain. They catch the emaciated cat and place him in a carrier to transport him somewhere. Who? Where?

I guess I’ll have to write about more than just animals.

An Endless Stream

“I’ve got no time for an interview.” I hear these words over and over from the border-zone volunteers I try to speak with for even a couple of minutes. For most of them, a Moscow journalist – even one from the animal protection community, even one who is concerned and offering help – is an unnecessary burden, plus they all want to stay under the radar. The volunteers are already dealing with a seemingly endless stream of animals needing to be evacuated, and yet the money for food, medical treatment and transportation to safety is barely trickling in – and only from their own fundraising. Ever since the war came to Belgorod Oblast, they’ve been working with a group of local residents to evacuate pets left in the border towns of Solovyovka and Petrovka.

The bulk of the locals have left their homes and scattered in all directions. Only a few were able to take their pets with them; a huge number of cats, dogs, rabbits and other living creatures (some no longer living) remain in their yards. That’s where the animal rescuers are heading.

They start by calling out, asking if anyone is home. If there’s no answer, they walk right in. But many of the dogs and, especially, the cats don’t run right into their saviors’ arms – instead, they hide. Calls of kis-kis-kis (basically, “here, kitty, kitty”) fill the air as volunteers attempt to entice the animals with sausage and fish.

You could say that, for the hungriest and most interested, it’s their lucky day. They’re going somewhere, like the shellshocked cat Peter. He’s from Petrovka, and all he’s got left from his hometown is the name that links them.

“There are millions of cats there,” says Anna, one of the volunteers. (Her name has been changed.) “They’re young, they’re grown up, they’re pregnant. Pedigreed, mongrels, all kinds – they’re all running around. Sometimes we carry them out in nothing more than shopping bags.”

Some of the volunteers have managed to organize small transfer stations for the rescued animals. They’re located at the homes of sympathetic people who take charge of their futures: they take photos and videos, write short histories and contact the animal rescue community in search of volunteers, shelters and animal support groups in big cities who can help settle at least some of the rescued pets. That means meeting them on arrival, bringing them to shelters or foster homes, getting them vaccinations and medical exams plus treatment if necessary while at the same time putting out word about these creatures in need of a temporary or permanent home.

At the transfer stations, cats sit in cages in garages with jury-rigged heating systems or in unused banyas while dogs are kept in crates literally stacked on top of each other. Things get harder as the cold weather came on: you have to heat whatever space you’re using and stuff the crates with straw and hay for insulation. Everything depends on getting the animals rehomed quickly. But no sooner has a place been found for one, than another shows up needing the same.

“Good afternoon.” Anna is too busy to speak on the phone with supporters in Moscow – she sends voice messages instead. “You said you would take three or four. I’m hoping four, if possible, we’re completely out of room. And one of them is pregnant. Do you take them if they’re pregnant?”

As If The Aerocats Weren’t Enough!

These four – including the shellshocked Peter – are taken by Moscow volunteers from a group formed several years ago to help so-called “aerocats” rescued from an old factory building in Moscow once run by aircraft company MiG. Of the 263 cats they removed in 2022, more than 60 are still in need of homes: it’s become much harder to place them than it used to be. Even so, the volunteers were unable to ignore the plight of the abandoned pets from Belgorod and Kursk.

Volunteer Irina Beyden continues the story of Peter, the country cat who unwittingly became a resident of the capital. “They caught him outside, it’s all on video. Peter and a cat called Sprat – who, luckily, we managed to find a home for literally right off the truck – were living in the same yard.”

The cats and dogs spent more than 20 hours traveling from Belgorod to Moscow in the unheated trailer of a semi. Shelter staff were there to meet them. I and some others who got together spontaneously on social media decided we could easily take three. It turned out to be four, and we were glad – one more soul saved.

A volunteer helping hand over the cats and dogs warned us that Peter was stressed out: he hadn’t eaten, drunk, or used the litter box for several days. All the cats were taken immediately to a veterinary clinic for quarantine, a medical exam, and spaying or neutering. The vet thought Peter might have been injured, by a fall or in a fight. They removed two damaged teeth and treated an ear infection.

Besides Peter are two more new “aerocats.” Timka, a kitten found on the site of a fire, was the last one volunteers were able to catch and push into a polypropylene sack – they’d run out of carriers. George, a beautiful black cat, is, thankfully, in perfect health despite the stress he’s experienced. He spent the entire quarantine period sleeping and eating, eating and sleeping, having taken the crowded enclosure for a room in a five-star hotel.

As soon as his bad teeth are removed, for the first time since he’s come to us, Peter gobbles up an entire package of food. Now that his pain is gone, he turns out to be very affectionate, cuddly and eager to groom himself. Surely Peter’s owners will come looking for him, we say to the local volunteers – after all, there’s even a chat in nearby Kursk Oblast for evacuees hoping to locate their pets. The answer: no, the neighbors said everyone left and told them to keep the cats forever if they wanted them.

When you dig a bit deeper, though, you understand that, among refugees from Kursk and Belgorod Oblasts, there is a wide range of stories related to people and their pets. Some saved themselves but couldn’t manage to make arrangements for their animals, some spared no effort in finding a home for their pets, and some started looking for their animals once they were at least somewhat settled in a safe place. But most evacuees are still living in a state of limbo.

“A Chance” for Strelka and Lazarus

“When all this is over, I’m going to write an article about how I saved my dogs,” says Viktoria, who is from Lgov, a town in Kursk Oblast.

But for now, she’s got too much on her plate. She’s working constantly, and you get the sense that, like almost everyone immediately affected by the war, she finds it uncomfortable even to talk about the problems facing animals. “Plenty of people still haven’t been evacuated, so who’s going to get worked up over dogs and cats?”

Before the Ukrainian military advanced into Kursk Oblast, Viktoria’s family lived with their dogs in Lgov. Then they were forced to leave, and they and their relatives had to rent accommodations.

“First we found a place in Kursk, then in Kurchatov,” she says. “It’s almost impossible to get a rental when you have animals. The conditions in the shelters aren’t the best: bunk beds in a gymnasium, with men, women, the elderly and children all mixed together. And they don’t allow pets.”

Even when they were still in Lgov, Viktoria’s five dogs were severely distressed due to the sounds of explosions – they would howl, whine, hide underfoot and run away – and she and her family decided they had to do something. She approached a Kursk shelter called The Right to Live, which was sending animals rescued in Kursk Oblast to Moscow. The shelter agreed to post a notice requesting a temporary home for the dogs, so they could live in a calm environment.

The dogs were supposed to be driven to Moscow, but at the last minute no car was available. Viktoria was lucky: some young women helped her, agreeing to take three of her five dogs. They found an animal taxi. It wasn’t cheap, but everyone chipped in.

“They took the dogs in their cages from the shelter at 11P.M., and by 7A.M. they were already being picked up by people in Moscow,” Viktoria recalls. “Belka went to [a different] Viktoria’s family, where she’ll stay permanently. Layma went to Yana, who’s deciding whether or not to keep her. Tishka is staying with Alexandra’s family, but will probably need a new home, since Alexandra is always at work.”

They weren’t sure what to do with the puppies; Strelka and Lazarus had nowhere to go. Yekaterina, director of a shelter called A Chance, in Sergiyev Posad, a town northeast of Moscow, replied to a despondent social media post: “I’ll take them, bring them in.” A search for homes for both puppies in Moscow and Moscow Oblast soon yielded one for Strelka, but Lazarus is still waiting.

Local chat groups are constantly being updated with information about dogs and cats who’ve been evacuated from the cities and towns of Kursk Oblast that are caught up in the fighting. Volunteers are pleading for people to claim these animals. This is good for the ones who managed to live long enough to catch the attention of concerned individuals. Many weren’t so fortunate.

“No live cats have been found – there are lots of cats along the roadsides, but they’re sadly all dead,” wrote volunteers from cat-rescue organization Kotospas on November 10 on Telegram after bringing supplies from Moscow to shelters in Belgorod. The total number of domestic animals killed in Russian border regions since February 2022 is unknown.

Kursk from Kursk

“I’ve never been told to put a dog down as many times as I have with him,” says Irina, a volunteer from the private shelter Homebody, which took eight dogs from Kursk Oblast. “Staff at one of the best animal hospitals in Moscow insisted that he wouldn’t live more than a couple of weeks. And now look how handsome he is, all dressed up and standing guard like he means it!”

This strapping dog in a stylish suit barely resembles the emaciated animal at death’s door that Homebody agreed to take in because no one else would.

I remember the second post about him almost word for word: “A little guy just made it here. He’s in critical condition, he’s dehydrated, and he’s got worms. We named him Kursk. Please wish him health and strength – he waited for help for at least two weeks, survived a blood transfusion, and made it through an eight-hour journey. But he’s at the end of his rope.”

Irina, who is a veterinarian by training, repeatedly rejected advice to euthanize the dog, though she is in full agreement that an animal shouldn’t be allowed to suffer if it can’t be saved. But there was nothing wrong with Kursk that couldn’t be fixed: he was extremely weak and had multiple lesions and parasitic infestations, but those are things that can be treated.

Kursk fought for his life for two and a half months. He was helped not just by vets but by people – including shelter volunteers and supporters – who helped pay the huge clinic bills and buy him expensive medication, diapers and food. Posts about him went up regularly, and it was always terrifying to open a message with the hashtag #kurskthedog. “No news from the clinic, so he must still be alive.” “His condition is serious but stable.” “They spent four hours draining liquid from his abdominal cavity.” “He’s asking for turkey and liver.” “He got up on his paws.” And then the long-awaited message: “He’s looking for a home.”

“A strong, handsome dream of a dog, a real hunter,” Irina writes. “He’ll happily go chasing things in the forest and then sleep on the sofa.”

But Kursk is not the only one like this in the shelter. Eight dogs came to Homebody from the war zone, and every one of them needs care, food, attention and, ideally, a home. It’s the same in almost all the private and nonprofit shelters in the Moscow area: just go on any of their social media pages or websites. And if you ask how to help these animals and volunteers, you’ll get the same predictable answers: adopt or foster a pet; pay for an animal taxi; donate money, labor, transportation, publicity, medicine, or supplies. Each shelter publishes a list of its current needs, and all their websites have a “support” button. They all emphasize the same point: “When you take in one animal, you save two: the first, and the one we take in its place.”

Making Changes

“I’m sitting in the car – I need some peace and quiet.” That “slipped out” of one Belgorod animal rescuer when she arrived home after work – yes, volunteers still work like everyone else – and stayed in her car to record a video for her Telegram channel. She and her friends had sent dozens of animals to Moscow and other cities, many of them with numbers instead of names: dog No. 39, cat No. 15. Dozens more are waiting at a transfer point, including those unlikely to be taken in due to injuries, age, or paralysis. The dogs need to be walked. The cats need to be talked to. Then you go to another animal shelter and do it again. And winter is coming – you’ve got to think about making sure all the shelter spaces are warm enough.

The post inevitably draws the usual comments: “We make our own choices in life” and the eternal “It’s people you should be helping.” But it’s the words of Viktoria, whose dogs were taken to Moscow and given a second chance, that keep ringing in my ears: “It’s unbelievable how people helped us.”