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Projects Manager:
Yevgeny Ilyinsky | 
President of organization:
Svetlana Ilyinskaya
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Vice-president of organization:
Aleksandr Kulagin |
Autonomous non-profit organization
“Center for Animal Welfare Legal Protection”
117463, Yasnogorskaya street, 21, building 1, office 105,
Moscow, Russia
Tel. +79160267778
E-mail: petln@mail.ru
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Briefly about ourselves
Preparing a write-up on our work is not easy. The effort takes time, and this is something we don’t have, for the time being. Therefore, we shall confine ourselves to a little confession: late in the 1990s, we gave up our professions that we erroneously had regarded the purport of our lives, a vocation, and a useful and not immoral occupation (against the backdrop of what is happening to animals): our fields had been art and science.
We got to thinking over how we can help animals because we realized that the situation is abnormal, and nobody seems to be taking action to reverse the existing situation. We began by doing something useful for veterinary and propaganda of cat neutering. We shall not go into detail of this work here. What we did at the outset was very little, but we thought that was far more important than producing most brilliant pictures in history, which we renounced at the time.
We were picking up homeless kittens (by dozens at a time) and were finding persons willing to adopt them. We believed this could be done at odd moments, as if this was our hobbyhorse. We realized we were wrong, however, when we found out what infection is like. Naturally, we never intended to waste or efforts on Sysiphean toil, since we are convinced that the work without results is useless.
Then, we began neutering cats. In 2002-2003, we neutered two thousand homeless cats with our personal money. We had a vet doctor visit actions, who sterilized as many as 100 and more cats in a matter of 4-5 days. Prior to the actions, we drove in our car (Volga station wagon), visiting guardians in all corners of Moscow, trying to locate and trap homeless cats, after the cats were sterilized we kept them for a while at our place and took them back to their guardians. In this manner, we kept temporarily up to one thousand cats after the sterilization operation at our place. We would keep each cat would be for one week, minimum.
In providing a temporary shelter for cats, we made use of all expedient means to prevent infection. Before letting the animals in, we would wash thoroughly, treat it with a special solution and temper, using a superpowerful ultraviolet germicidal lamp each object or article of clothing a cat might touch. Wee had 10 germicidal recirculating (operating in the presence of man or animals) lamp in the room, where the cats were kept; the lamps operated round the clock.
We built ourseves a “rack” with cells in which the cats were placed. The rack was so designed as to allow easy washing of the cells interior. The idea was to accommodate the cats without making the rack crammed, for the cats to feel as if they were in little homes each. Still, we found that portable cages were much easier to wash (see photo), therefore, the rack served us for two years only. In our last actions, the cats were kept in portable dog (see photo).
We used absorbent paper instead of spreading. The paper was laid folded in several layers to make the spreading soft for the cats. The paper was replaced every day, therefore, paper requirements for each action were a little under 1 ton.
Occasionally, we encountered absolutely wild cats. There were literally ready to tear one to pieces and dash for freedom. One had to put on a helmet-mask on one’s face to place a plate of meals in the cage of such a cat. To be able to handle such cats, we made mittens ourselves from old winter high leather boots, because the cats would bite through even “most professional” trapper’s mittens or mittens made of the “overalls”. We devised our own (for thick bite-proof mittens) procedure of treating absolutely wild cats: at first, one person snatches with a mitten any front paw, the cat bites that mitten and starts chewing it (but not bites through!), and in such position the man (the mitten in cat’s teeth) takes the cat out of the cage, while some other person does all necessary injections and cleans the cage. The classical veterinary technique of a hold: holding the hind paws with one hand, while seizing the scruff of the neck with the other hand does not work here, because it is impossible to hold such cats by the scruff of the neck.
Some wild cats would allow to be held by such technique only once: for making an anaesthetic injection before the operation. Having seen that the cage door is being opened slightly, the cats were strong and adroit enough to ram the cage grating and dart out of the cage at a speed of an ice-hockey puck (a person has even no time to react!). Such cats could only be kept in one transportation cage, until the time when the cats were released in a basement. The paper spread was replaced through a slot under the cage door. The water would be poured in the drinking trough from a spray-bottle through the grating.
Most cats, however, were tame and tender, maybe even more tender than home-grown cats.
After the operation, when the cats were still under anaesthetic, we would tattoo them by inscribing the letter “X” on an ear, would treat them for mites and fleas, would cutout plicas. Several times we performed neutering operations on Persian breed cats. These had to be clipped closely to the skin because their wool was very much like felt, and if it had not been clipped, moist eczema would have begun, in which case the cat would have died without proper treatment.
Nearly 40% of the cats had all sorts of injuries or diseases that had to be attended to during temporary accommodation. After the operation, all cats were treated (healthy cats underwent preventive treatment), injections were given. In the course of treatment, most up-to-date adjuvants and antibiotics were used. We gained extensive experience , when we chose the kittens whom we also had to treat on our own, since the level of skills of our veterinaries is very low: they prescribe treatment in accordance with a standard scheme, and they have no information on the results of treatment, because the owners do not report the death of pets to them (if the pet is dead, there is no point visiting a veterinary). Therefore, veterinaries do not learn from the mistakes they make, unlike people who themselves save the animals , moreover, they do not search for new effective drugs and treatment procedures.
The entire work involved in temporary accommodation, preparations for temporary accommodation, treatment of cats, assisting the veterinaries during an operation, trapping of animals was done by the two of us only.
This was terribly hard work: virtually, we had no time to sleep during the action. But the most difficult part was not so much the hardships involved in the action, but giving the cats back to the guardians and releasing the cats in the basements: we knew in advance that most of the cats would die in the near future. It was most difficult to part with the cats to which we had already been attached as if they were our own. Sometimes, we learned of their death before a month expired after we parted with the cats. We can tell you about the manner in which our cats were dying and what a horrible death it was. This can be the topic of a separate story. Most of the cats died as a result of attacks by stray dogs (even the wild cats that had not yielded to us proved not adroit enough to escape the dogs’ teeth).
Part of the cats had to be released in awful conditions, where they had lived prior to neutering. Some of them did not have normal guardians, sometimes there were no guardians at all. We used to joke with a sad smile, when seeing cats to be quite content with their small home in the rack, saying that the cats must be thinking they are in paradise. The cats were warm and had food every day. It was not uncommon that when we released cats, they would not go, rubbing against our feet, jump up in our arms. We had, literally, to run away from the cats. Sometimes, the cats would run after the car.
In all, we neutered the cats of around one hundred guardians. We had a number of most active guardians who neutered closed to 10 cats with us. Here are some of them: Tanya, Valentina Vassilievna, Galina Aleksandrova. Our last action was carried out in March of 2003.
In 2003, we began to work had to bring about changes in the legislation relating to animals. It was then that we realized it was impossible to obtain any quality professional assistance in no field in this country. From legal to web-design. For this reason, we have to learn and do everything on our own. Yet, the situation is particularly hopeless with journalists and government officers and, come to think of it, with people who would like, in good faith, to look into the homeless animals problem.
Our organization never had and still does not have any sponsors, except ourselves who earn money doing something else during the time “free from” animal welfare. This money s use, for example, to pay for the publication of our articles in the press and for many other things. Nobody ever rendered services to us free of charge.
A brief account about our activity since the year 2003 may be the pages of our site “ANIMALS PROTECTION TRIBUNE".
The problem is that not all are interested in solving the problem of homeless animals in Russia. There are people and organizations that parasite on the problem. They pretend not to understand that our publications are aimed at providing the rationale for the government to appreciate the dire need for solving the problem of homeless animals.
The aforesaid people and organizations seek to preserve the problem in a subacute state. They organized a number of activities in order to slander without any proof the data on the adverse impact of homeless animals. And because some journalists do not find it necessary to look into the gist of the problem they are writing about, there appeared a number of amateurish publications in certain media.
In winter of 2005, the enraged proponents of the Moscow neutering program and of free habitation of dogs organized an outrage campaign against us. Fantasies of all descriptions about our organization were spread, short of accusations that allegedly we had given euthanasia injections to all our cats in our home animal shelter, and that this cannot be checked, because our house had allegedly been broken and cleared and nobody knew where we had moved. However, both the cats and the house are still in place.
S. and E. Ilyinskys, August 2005
Photos dated 2002.
S.Ilyinskaya nursing cats after neutering, 2002.
The year 2000.
Ye. Ilyinsky, Jim, Dika, Zaichik, Tuchka I, Tatosha, Kruglik, Chunya near the house
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Center for Animal Welfare Legal Protection 
