Kathy's Big Heart for Animals

Kathy’s Big Heart for Animals

Last Saturday, May 2, 2015, we went to a friend’s farm in San Marcelino, Zambales and Kathy was thrilled to introduce her young daughters to not only farm produce – practically all the vegetables mentioned in the Tagalog children’s song, “Bahay Kubo,”  but also to different farm animals –goats, bulls, turkeys, peacocks and peahens, geese and goslings, ducks and ducklings, hens, roosters and chickens, and one carabao. I’m sure I missed out on naming some of the animals, but Kathy could name them all.

When Kathy was young, our home was a veritable zoo.  

We had a dining area that opened up into an atrium, which had a macopa tree. Hanging from a branch of that tree was a cage, which was home to Pinoy, a Palawan parrot (local name: pikoy) that was a gift from our friend Leslie Murray. Roaming freely in this semi-open space were all sorts of animals that we had acquired at Kathy’s request or insistence – rabbits, parakeets, turtles, chicks, dogs, and a stray cat who bravely came into our house, leaving outside about a dozen not-so-brave ones who only came to feed, but not stay.

Once (or twice) I had wanted to give away the birds – both the parrot and the budgies – because their food (bird seeds) dropped to the floor and often attracted mice and rats.  One day, I saw a big rat on the ground below Pinoy’s cage, and I screamed for Jun, our maintenance man. My scandalous instructions for Jun to kill the rat brought Kathy rushing to the atrium. “No, mama, please no – that rat is my pet.” “Your pet?” I asked, incredulous. “How can a rat be your pet?" I asked again, refusing to believe.  “Watch him. He will eat with our cat and dog,” and with that, she put food on a plate. True enough, there they were, forgetting about the historical feud that has kept these animals traditional enemies for, I don’t know, time immemorial? Needless to say, Kathy won her plea, and the rat was given a reprieve on life.  (I don’t know what enticed it to leave its safe haven – probably better food, or an attractive female rat, at our neighbors).

We brought home a rabbit for her from Silang, Cavite when we were coming home from Tagaytay. Having learned about their procreative ways, we only bought one, and not two. (Or maybe we got two, but I don’t remember anymore, but for the sake of this narrative, let’s say it was just one). It was going to be a gift for Kathy. I don’t know how long the rabbit lived, but for all its mortal life, it roamed freely – climbing over the roof, or being brought into the children’s room, which was on the second floor, overlooking the atrium.  But as we are all mortals, one day, while Kathy was in school, we found that her rabbit had died.

We panicked. We worried how Kathy would react to this sad news. John quickly dispatched one of the boys to Cartimar (pet market) to buy a rabbit that was the same color and size as the one we’ve just lost. When the new rabbit came, we were convinced that Kathy would not know the difference. A few minutes after she came home from school, she was in tears. She was asking about her rabbit. “There’s your rabbit, playing” her papa said. “No, that’s not my rabbit!!” Kathy insisted. “Why do you say that,” John asked, trying to keep up with his cover up story. “Her eyes are different,” Kathy sadly declared. John tried to insist that it was the same rabbit, and that maybe the color of her eyes changed because she fell from the roof, but you could tell from Kathy’s sad face that she wasn’t buying her dad’s story. To his credit, John let it go at that, and just said, “I’m sorry, Kathy.”

All her books as a child were those about animals.  She especially loved horses.

Once, she was upset with us, and we found her trying to attach a bundle of a few wrapped clothes to the end of a pole – like in illustrations of children running away from home. She said she was leaving home and would build her own house, and we may not join her in her house. I asked her where she was going to build her house, and she declared, “At the Zoo!” I think she was four years old. I don’t remember how we got her to give up that wild idea.

At another time, we had a shoot for the Ajinomoto calendar, and it showed a pretty female model with a few day-old yellow chicks. After the shoot, Kathy pleaded to have the chicks as pets but we agreed to her keeping only one.  We did not expect that a chick could survive living in a studio, but we were surprised that it grew to be a rooster. But a studio in the city is not quite the ideal home for a rooster – or a rooster is not the ideal pet for a studio in the city, and so we asked a carpenter who worked with us to take it to Bicol, with Kathy’s permission, of course. Kathy only consented to have the rooster relocate to Daet, Camarines Norte, with the promise that the rooster would finally be happy to be roaming around freely in the province. 

To go back to Pinoy, the Palawan parrot. It actually lived a few years with us. Our plans in 1992 to build a car studio meant that we had to give up the atrium. That meant that Pinoy would no longer have a home. John convinced Kathy that keeping him in a cage was not a good idea anyway, and that setting him free was the best thing for Pinoy. Kathy agreed, and Pinoy was helped to fly away. What we did not expect was that this bird, kept in a cage for many years, had lost his ability to fly, and what was even more tragic was that it was Kathy who, when she was alighting from her school bus, saw his dead body sprawled on Bautista Street. We were filled with guilt and horror, but could not do anything but to cry and grieve with her, and consoled her by promising that Pinoy would be flying freely in parrot heaven.

I suppose that parrot heaven is a place in Kathy’s heart, where she kept memories of him alive. When she was a college freshman, she joined an essay contest sponsored by Cathay Pacific for which the prize was a one-week wilderness experience in South Africa. She wrote the story of Pinoy, but from the parrot’s first-person account.  The essay, together with a presentation of her photo portfolio (as suggested by her dad), won for her one of the five slots for the trip to South Africa.

De la Salle University, which is where she went for college, required their students to do community service, and her class was assigned to render community service at a home for battered women. That was a bit too much for her tender heart, and she asked her teacher, if she could render community service at the Manila Zoo instead. Her adviser agreed, and not only did Kathy work at the Manila Zoo, she even organized a volunteer group. But doing volunteer work at her dream place was not without heartaches. She was disheartened by the lack of commitment and enthusiasm about their work by zoo workers, and lack of encouragement from the zoo management. One day, she came home looking really discouraged and even exasperated and unburdened to her dad. She had wanted to introduce behavioral enrichment programs for animals that she had learned in South Africa, and she kept being told that Manila Zoo animals were too old for enrichment programs. John decided to visit the zoo to try to convince zoo vets and officers to implement Kathy’s proposed program.  They threw back the challenge at him and asked him to choose the animal with which he would like to work. He chose the elephant, but that’s another story.

Before Kathy had graduated, she had a group of zoo volunteers organized and their organization incorporated as a foundation, successfully getting companies to donate materials, pledge support and sponsor programs at the Manila Zoo.  She and a friend, Kitty Arce, co-founded MyZoo Volunteer Group Foundation, which at some point had more than a hundred seriously committed volunteers.

The test of their commitment came one day when they were told that the Zoo was planning to put down a sick foal. They named him “Orion” and offered to nurse him to good health, even providing him shelter in the volunteers’ office. The volunteers found a way to convince a top equine doctor to look in at this foal.  Volunteers took turns in watching over him 24/7, which meant that some volunteers had to spend the night at the zoo. Kathy was there every night – which became a source of serious concern for me. It was not too bad during the first week of this foal’s confinement because it was still summer vacation and not a few students volunteered to stay on health-watch. But after a week, summer ended and school started, and only Kathy was left to spend the night at the zoo. I sent the maid to accompany her, then the maid and the houseboy, then her papa. Also, Kathy and I looked for a guard dog to accompany her at the zoo. We went on a search for a German Shepherd, but as we went from one kennel and breeder to another, she fell in love with a black Labrador puppy. I argued that a Labrador was a friendly dog, and Kathy argued that Filipinos don’t really know the breed, and could be frightened by any big, black dog. And so it came to be that we took in Lucas, and we all fell in love with him.

Let’s go back to Orion. The equine doctor finally had to break the sad news to Kathy and her group of volunteers that he could no longer be saved.

Kathy and her student volunteers continued to work during their free times at the Zoo, but graduating from college and entering the workforce offered them very little opportunity to continue. Kathy had gotten too busy with work at the zoo (and other activities that divert the attention of young people, such as music – she was photographing popular rock bands, and sports – which for her then was hockey) and was not going to graduate on time.

We offered her a proverbial “carrot” - a trip to South Africa for finishing college, no matter what course she would finish.  It was probably the “call of the wild,” – all the animals she once knew, met and fell in love with at the Johannesburg Zoo – that enticed Kathy to focus on her studies, and to aim to finish her university education, which she finally did.

We were about to live up to our promise of sending her back to South Africa when Cathay Pacific heard of it, and offered her a free ticket. So the money reserved for travel was used to buy her an Apple laptop. One of her best friends whom she met during her “Wilderness Experience” offered her accommodations at the Johannesburg Zoo.  We gave her enough pocket money for a month’s stay in South Africa, and she was all set to relive and extend her wilderness experience.

Again, this calls for another story, but suffice it to say for now that one month became extended to five months, and Kathy came home completely enamored with South Africa, where she claimed she found her “soul.”

Fast forward – she worked with us as an industrial photographer while photographing her black Lab, Lucas, her yellow lab, Ginger, and once a while, friends and their pets, and borrowed animals from Manila Zoo. Then, she met and fell in love with a Dutch engineer, John (like her dad)  whom she met while photographing the Malampaya facility, off Palawan.

Fast forward even faster to 2015. Kathy is 35, married and has two young daughters. When she got married, she brought Lucas (her black Labrador) and Ginger (her yellow Lab) to join her household, and when John’s dog in Holland died, they acquired another dog, a Belgian Malinois, whom they named Anouk. They have also adopted our African lovebird, and paired him off with another African lovebird from a family friend. Fortunately or unfortunately, both birds are male.

During our fun trip to the Zambales farm that we visited recently, our granddaughters were letting out shrieks of delight when they mingled with the geese, ducks and chickens, just as their mother did years ago. When Gaby grabbed a gosling, Kathy pleaded to allow Gaby to keep it. Our host said yes, but her husband and I agreed that the gosling might prefer to grow up as a goose or gander in a farm.  Kathy’s heart for animals prevailed, and asked Gaby to release the gosling to remain with her family in the farm.

As for me, while I knew that geese is plural for goose, I learned that a group of geese on the ground is called a gaggle. That’s a lesson on goose, geese and gaggles (is there a plural for gaggle?) that I learned just now from my daughter who has a big heart for animals, and is my resident expert on animals.

Kathy's Postscript: Kathy CG Punch line. We were going to name the gosling Ryan.... Ryan Gosling. Ha ha ha. From the ajinomoto shoot we got a pair of ducks. The chicks were from a studio shoot. One dozen. I was horrified they were talking about frying them and eating day old chicks. Til his dying day Tang Quinong swore the chickens were nicely retired in his farm.... We got the rabbits from the Philcomsat shoot, papa and I saw them by the roadside on our way home. We had a pair but missy kept killing the babies. Bugs, the grey one, was the one who had an impostor.  at one point we had three dogs and 19 puppies. Six parrots. Two dozen parakeets. A dozen chickens. Two ducks. Two rabbits. A frog and a rat.... I also had pet mosquitoes but they didn't live long or do much. Dengue wasn't even heard of back then. It was a zoo. I wish we had a horse, but that's why Orion was special. Now we have two dogs and two birds.... I wanted two geese, but John didnt know how we could move if we had to with farm animals 

Kathy CG And a pet earthworm before I hit 3rd grade and learned girls shouldn't be playing with earthworms