{"id":198268,"date":"2019-05-06T19:22:59","date_gmt":"2019-05-06T23:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=198268"},"modified":"2019-05-06T19:22:59","modified_gmt":"2019-05-06T23:22:59","slug":"de-la-calle-an-animal-rescue-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/cuba\/de-la-calle-an-animal-rescue-network\/","title":{"rendered":"“De la Calle,” an animal rescue network"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Lis N\u00fa\u00f1ez moved to Guanabacoa, in November of 2017, she did it with six cats. They were, are, part of her “family” and they walk freely throughout the house and they\u2019re “never going to leave,” those which “chose” her and which she chose. But a year and a half later, they aren\u2019t the only ones that are keeping her company.<\/span><\/p>\n

A year and a half later, Lis has more than 50 cats in her care. The figure, just hearing it, impresses. She reached it little by little, deliberately. When she bought the house \u2015when she had her own resources to do so\u2015, she did it with the intention of turning it into a shelter, for sheltering wounded and abandoned animals in the street. And so it has been.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hers is one of the shelters that form part of “De la calle,” a collective project dedicated to animal protection in Havana, which she shares with other independent protectors and who currently have the support of the U.S. <\/span>Ocean Doctor<\/span><\/a> organization.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lis N\u00fa\u00f1ez wasn\u2019t born in the Cuban capital, but in Cabaigu\u00e1n, in the center of the island, and since childhood she felt a special connection with animals. She studied law in the capital with the “utopian idea” to specialize in environmental law and promote the approval of the first animal protection law in Cuba.<\/span><\/p>\n

Still in Havana\u2019s university, she founded with several friends an environmental group, which they called “Saltamontes” (Grasshopper). With them she participated in artistic performances and public interventions with an environmentalist message and approached the Museum of Natural History, in search of knowledge and legal support.<\/span><\/p>\n

After graduating the situation changed. While her group was losing members because “that\u2019s life,” she persevered in the cause of nature. Suddenly, she found herself rescuing animals and taking them to the places she rented to live in for more than 10 years, despite the grumbling landlords.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reality and maturity led her along this path.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I came from doing a lot of environmental work, but thinking about the big ecosystems, the forest, the sea, problems such as pollution, the greenhouse effect, the extinction of species. That was my mentality and that of Saltamontes,” she tells me while preparing her cats’ food. “But when the group began to decline, I began to look more at the city. I realized that I was not in the forest, or in the mountains, or in the sea, and that I could do a lot where I lived.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Lis barely practiced as a lawyer. She joined new projects and organizations such as Ocean Doctor, took courses and began working as a producer of events “to pay the rent and buy food,” hers and the animals she started to pick up.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first was a dying dog, “a retriever puppy a couple of months old, with something tied around her neck in the shape of a cross, perhaps as an offering,” she says. “I couldn\u2019t leave her like that, I rescued her and I saved her. Since then I couldn\u2019t stop. There came another, and another, and another, until today.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Lis<\/a>
Lis N\u00fa\u00f1ez feeding several of the cats from her shelter in the Havana town of Guanabacoa. Photo: Otmaro Rodr\u00edguez.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The difficulties and limitations with the place she rented, where she managed to have several rescued animals \u2015dogs and cats\u2015 at the same time while “trying to seduce friends and colleagues to adopt them,” drove her to create her own shelter, to strive to achieve it.<\/span><\/p>\n

“One day I realized that I needed a place of my own so as not to disturb anyone, a place that was for public welfare and for the protection of animals. I never thought I could have the money to do it; but I worked hard, I saved, and finally I was able to buy the house. I still have a lot to fix, to build, but it’s already taking shape.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The shelter, the network<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although she also has some dogs, Lis’ shelter is for cats. It was the part she assumed as part of the “De la Calle” structure, where other protectors deal directly with dogs. She did it out of “affinity and responsibility, because cats are special beings, but many people prefer not to discover it.” <\/span><\/p>\n

It is not, however, a place for animals to stay forever.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Before starting this project I spent time informing myself and I knew that even in the first world, where there are more resources, legal support and awareness, shelters are not sustainable,” she explains. “In addition, there is the problem of space. So a flow is necessary, which is how it works in many places: keeping the cats while they grow up or recover from the causes for which we brought them here. “<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea, she affirms, is “to give them love and food, cure them, sterilize them and, when possible, give them up for adoption, and if not, to release them in controlled colonies, which we follow up on the network and feed them.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Lis<\/a>
Lis N\u00fa\u00f1ez in the kitchen of her house in Guanabacoa while she prepares food for the cats of her shelter. Photo: Otmaro Rodr\u00edguez.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the shelter, located mostly on the roof of the house on Candelaria Street, near the Guanabacoa Park, cats are organized by age. In one part are the injured and sick adults. In another, which Lis calls “gatera,” there are “the young ones,” many of them already at a fertile age and ready to be adopted or released in a colony once they are sterilized.<\/span><\/p>\n

The kittens, picked up after being abandoned by their owners, for the moment are kept inside the house, and Lis takes care of them. She even usually takes with her the smallest and most destitute to her workplace in Havana and, even, outside the city.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although she eventually receives help from friends and other people to take care of the place, the 31-year-old woman has had to adapt her schedules and her own work to maintain the shelter. However, the most challenging thing, she says, is getting food and medicines.<\/span><\/p>\n

“In Cuba nothing is regular. Right now the fishmongers are out of supply, so I have to go to almost all of them in Havana until something appears, and with that start inventing and stretching it a lot,” she says before taking up to the roof a mixture of rice and fish for the “young ones.”<\/span><\/p>\n

A fisher neighbor gives her heads, tails and fins. The rest, including a sack of rice approximately monthly, she buys in markets and state stores. She also receives some donations, from inside and outside of Cuba, even though she doesn\u2019t have a legal status for it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The same happens with medicines.<\/span><\/p>\n