What I Liked Most at the Book Fair

Veronica Vega

HAVANA TIMES — On February 14th, Valentines Day, or the Day of Love and Friendship, I met a group of people at Havana’s Book Fair who are doing a noble job: PAC City Animal Protection

I found out about them from a leaflet a HT colleague sent me and thanks to the adoption network they’ve created on the internet, I was able to put Pangur up for adoption, a pussycat I took off the street.  Now, they are helping me to spread the image of a puppy my son and I saved after he was hit by a car.

They have a stand in the Children’s Room, where there are posters with the slogan: “A book and a pet, friends for life.”  There is a mural with photos of dogs and cats who have been rescued, healed, deflead, and are waiting in transit homes which charitable souls offer, while other sensitive souls provide them with a permanent home.

The PAC is made up of young people who reveal great enthusiasm, professionalism and love for their work. It is a non-profit organization; all of the services they offer are free:

– Stray animal rescue

– Adoption campaigns

– Defleaing and deworming as well as sterilization campaigns

– Medicine donations

– Ads for missing animals

And everything else they can do so that animals in the city of Havana (and in the future, all over the country), have not only the bare minimum to survive but the protection and respect they deserve.

They are an example of how the determination to do something good can stir the forces, which are innate to every human being and are the essence of our moral and spiritual superiority when compared to other species, in society.

In “The Gospel of the Holy Twelve”, edited for the first time in 1902 by Reverend G.J.R. Ouseley, there is a Jesus whose message of love and compassion extends to the animal kingdom, a detail which hasn’t been very widespread but which enhances and compliments Christian heritage:

“Be ye therefore considerate, be tender, be ye pitiful, be ye kind, not to your own kind alone, but to every creature which is within your care, for ye are to them as gods, to whom they look in their need.”

We wish these messengers of love and friendship, who work every day of the year, success so that Cuba is a better place for every living being on this Earth. While animal suffering exists (which is our responsibility becase it was man to domesticate them and incorporate them into civilized life), we can’t talk about human wellbeing.