Meet Marshmallow and Snowy Moon!

One of the great pleasures of having written The Divine Feline: A Chic Cat Lady’s Guide to Woman’s Best Friend, is the beautiful cats and their guardians I have met from around the world. Marshmallow and Snowy Moon are two Instagram stars from Lebanon @marshmallowpaw.

Looking at this pampered pair, it’s clear how much they are adored by their lovely cat-meowmy, Carol. It’s hard to believe that they are survivors of the terrible conditions on the streets of Beirut.

In the 1970s and 1980s over a million residents had to flee the city due to the civil war and, heartbreakingly, many left their cats behind. This led to an explosion of cats living on the streets, and continued breeding has created a crisis situation. While individual compassionate residents, like Carol and her family, as well as animal charities are doing their best to help, the high number of cats living on the streets means the animals are in constant danger of starvation, disease, motor-vehicle accidents, and unfortunately, cruel people.

Marshmallow was a stray kitten who was constantly abused by a group of children. (Hello, irresponsible parents!) He sought shelter in Carol’s fiancé’s bakery. Carol wanted to keep him but due to objections from her family about having a cat, she adopted him out to a family that turned out to have dreadful children as well. Carol managed to retrieve him, but only after he had suffered wounds and had been left in the boot of a hot car for two hours. When Marshmallow recovered from his ordeal, Carol promised that she would protect him forever.

Snowy Moon also came from the streets. He was living with his mother and siblings next to Carol’s father’s place of work. Carol’s father was kindly feeding them but unfortunately Snowy Moon’s mother was killed by a car, and Snowy Moon was attacked by a stray dog. Snowy Moon needed urgent and very expensive surgery, which a kind-hearted donor agreed to pay for. Carol’s family originally told her she could look after Snowy Moon until he was better, but then she would have to find someone to adopt him (they had already reluctantly accepted Marshmallow into the household). But it soon became clear that Marshmallow, Snowy Moon and Carol had become an inseparable trio, a fact Carol’s family couldn’t deny. (I mean, look at the boys, they are adorable! Who could resist!).

All around the world, there are cats living precarious lives on city streets. In Australia, we don’t have a civil war as an excuse. Currently animal shelters in Sydney are inundated with cats and kittens, simply as a result of irresponsible people not desexing their cats.

Over 250,000 healthy cats and kittens, dogs and puppies, are euthanised in Australian pounds every year simply because they are unwanted

No matter where we live in the world, we can help our local street cats by:

💗 Getting our own animals desexed (neutered) and encouraging friends and family to do the same.

💗 Adopting cats from shelters

💗 Following our local cat shelter/animal charity on social media and sharing photographs of animals looking for homes

💗 Foster caring for a cat shelter

💗 Volunteering to help manage street cat colonies through a cat charity

💗 Donating to your local shelter – money, towels, blankets, food (call them first and ask what they need)

In The Divine Feline: A Chic Cat Lady’s Guide to Woman’s Best Friend, I list other ways we can all help save street cats.

Proceeds from the print copy go to helping The World League for the Protection of Animals, NSW, which runs a no-kill cat adoption centre in Sydney.

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