In 1997, Mona Khalil lost her beloved cat Leo, who died only one year after she got him home, from a friend's house just after it was born.

Unlike the other cats she was used to seeing around the garden of her grandparents’ house, Leo was a personal experience that introduced Mona to a cat's many needs and fears – beyond lack of food or even affectionate strokes.

Cats, she learned through her year of endless cross-Cairo medical trips with Leo, could get dramatically ill, even if very young.

“It was an experience that got me to look at street cats differently and think about who is there to care for them – not just who is there to feed them,” she said.

These thoughts made Khalil a lot more sensitive to stories of cat abuse and campaigns for street cat extermination that are called for in this or that Cairo neighbourhood once in a while.

In 2007, Khalil and a group of women friends decided to launch ESMA (Egyptian Association for Mercy to Animals).

ESMA came to life after a long process of caring for street cats and dogs individually and “quite randomly,” she said. 

However, one day Khalil was notified about a pregnant female dog being shot. “It was a horrific story with horrific images, and that was the day when we decided that we need to move beyond the incidental care to a more organized style of care,” she recalled. 

The starting point, she said, was an apartment that she had in western Cairo. “We started with cats,” she continued.

“Maybe we thought they were more vulnerable,” she added.

In one month or so, there were about 45 cats who found shelter, medical care, food, and affectionate strokes in this house. “Some of these cats were subject to abuse of different types and some suffered infections or other illnesses,” she explained.

As more cats came to ESMA, it was clear to Khalil and her ESMA partner Bahira Fahmy that more cats needed to get into the shelter.

“We were well aware that ESMA was not the only shelter there, but we also knew that there are a lot more cats that need shelter than there are shelters,” she said.

“We don’t know about the numbers for sure; there is no count," Khalil said.

"Worse is that there are still no laws in Egypt about animal welfare. This means a lot of abuse from people who simply decided to poison cats, or for that matter dogs, simply because they don’t like their presence, or because they are afraid of them,” she added.

Marwa, a 35-year-old translator who lives in southern Cairo, said that she was involved in an independent campaign to food-poison cats and dogs in her neighbourhood “because they are very aggressive and that was scary.”

Mohamed Talaat, a vet, said it is very easy for people to think that street cats are aggressive or harmful. “They are not, they are just so used to being cautious because they face a lot of abuse. So they become protective and unfriendly.”

“There are people who are just afraid of cats and dogs; this is not something we can deny, but this does not justify the extermination campaigns that some people, or for that matter some municipal authorities, decide to undertake,” she said.

Moreover, she added, killing cats and dogs through poisoned food, “obnoxious as it is, is not the most horrifying thing that the cats and dogs have to face on the street.”

Through the 16 years of ESMA, where the 45 rescued street cats have grown into 525 along with 1453 dogs and one donkey “which was left injured and abandoned” on Cairo streets, Khalil went through some horrific incidents where people would take newborn kittens and bury them alive or flush them in the toilet after having killed their mothers.

She also saw cats and dogs whose tails or ears were cut off by “kids who think it was fun to inflict physical injury on animals.”

“When this happens to a cat or a dog, it is very expected that they become so agitated and could have a very tense reaction, yes, including biting or scratching if some other humans try to approach them,” Khalil said.

“Due to lack of public awareness of what street cats and dogs are really about and what they need, people, for the most part, are just not kind to them,” she added.

“Again there are a lot more animals on the street that need care than there are caregivers for animals,” she stressed.

Khalil also argued that it is unfortunate that most vets would not provide free basic medical emergency care for an injured animal for free if the animal is taken to them.

“This becomes a problem because if someone finds an injured cat they might be willing to take it to a vet to save its life, but if they don’t have the money for the vet then the cat would probably end up being left to die on the street,” she said.

“In some cases, we have received calls from people who found injured cats or dogs on the streets after these pets were declined basic medical care from vets who declined to volunteer help,” Khalil noted.

She stated that the trouble is that it is not easy at all for the ESMA team, small as it is due to the limited resources, to be at the place where the injured cat was found early enough to help save its life.

Like the vast majority of the around 15 pet shelters in the city, ESMA’s venue is on the outskirts of Greater Cairo. “It is practically impossible to have a shelter, even a small one, in the heart of a neighbourhood, because many residents would complain to the municipal authorities and the shelter would have to be removed to the outskirts of the city,” she said.

While those officially registered 15 shelters have difficulties fundraising, other non-official shelters cannot even think about fundraising to start with, Khalil said.

Effectively, she added, it costs a lot to treat, clean, and feed a street or stray cat.

Stray cats, she argued, are more expensive to care for because they don’t have the same survival skills and immunity levels as street cats and because they are usually used to eating specific types of food and “not just any food.”

According to Khalil and Talaat, there has been a very significant rise in the number of stray cats, more than dogs, since 2020.

First, this was because of the misconception about the transfer of COVID-19 from cats, and later, because of the “incredible increase” in the prices of cats’ food and medicines.

“This has been ongoing for longer; it started with the first devaluation in 2016 and keeps increasing,” Talaat said.

“The last two years were terrible because I have been getting shy calls from some clients asking me if I can help them find a decent shelter for their cats and dogs because they can no longer afford to keep them,” Talaat said.

He added that “some people just went ahead and put the cats and dogs on the road and left them to their means.”

“Unfortunately, domiciled cats, especially more than dogs, find it very hard to cope with the street life and they are more vulnerable to die because they cannot find food. They cannot get into a good fight with a born and surviving street cat over food, and they cannot eat whatever food is there,” Talaat said.

Khalil said that the surgical contraception campaigns helped to contain the growing crisis of street and stray cats.

Campaigns for adoption, she added, are also helpful in some ways, explaining that there are different forms of adoption. 

One form is for those who wish to take a pet home. Another is for those who wish to adopt a pet by providing some help with its expenses while keeping it at the shelter.

Moreover, some Egyptian expats wish to adopt a pet from Egypt.

Every big city has a large number of street cats; the question is about the awareness and the economic ability of the cities to provide for these cats and for that matter dogs, she continued.

“There exists also the most crucial factor of compassion. Some people would have very little, but they would still give some food, basic as it might be, to street cats or dogs,” she concluded.