Lucy Irvine Foundation Europe

When you hear desperate cries for help coming from a trash can, open the lid and see a tiny face, eyes bulging with fear, sinking and rising among kitchen waste, soiled diapers and composting weeds, you might say its instinct to reach in and grab a scrabbling paw to lift the kitten to safety, same as you'd reach out to save a drowning child. But it can't be a universal human instinct because someone else threw the kitten in there to die.  Since recorded history began and no doubt before, humans have exerted control over populations of cats while simultaneously using them to control populations of mice and rats. It's common to hear of newborn kittens being drowned, so common it's become an almost accepted practice even in advanced societies, although birth control via sterilisation is by now quite widespread among more educated cultures with access to veterinary clinics and cash.   The Roma enclaves where we work in rural Bulgaria can't be described as advanced socie...

The past week brought good news and bad news, joyous arrivals and sad departures.  Calico, fighting several diseases as an inpatient at the vets, finally couldn't fight anymore. She died as she'd come to us when Ilia, our Roma helper, found her struggling to breathe on a rubbish dump. She was a frail wheezing bundle of delicate bones in his arms then and I carried a similarly fragile bundle to the vets on her last journey. But between those painful moments she had several years of reasonably good health and contentment at LIFE. That's what I must remember when I think of her. Kirichko, an inpatient for months in equine hospital for corrective surgery on his knock-knees, has been back with us for over a week now. He's not fully mended, as we'd hoped, but one leg is a lot straighter than it was and he's taller and stronger than the wonky-legged baby we sent away. We can tell he's experienced some pain as he's less ready for cuddles now and more ready to ki...

Cats have been close companions to me since I was a child. A parade of old feline friends pads across my mind: Big Puss, the massive Tom my father brought home; Perdita the lost one we found; Charlie my first ginger brought by a coalman to the highland cottage where my sons were born. Only when I was on desert islands were there no cats on my bed. When I moved to Bulgaria I took Misty from Scotland with me -  not something I'd do now, given the hordes of unwanted cats here, nine alone in the caravan I've lived in since my Bulgarian house burned down; 20 plus in other vans dedicated to cats, more in a crumbling barn and a small waterless kitchen beside the ruined house.  Pimple, the black kitty pictured, is the sole survivor of a weak litter born locally last year to an ailing mothercat . I bottle-fed her like a baby and she slept curled under my chin. By now, she's a sultry debutante and has left my caravan to join the Ruins Kitchen gang.  This week she was spayed. That...

The Lucy Irvine Foundation Europe (LIFE) works to improve the welfare of dogs, cats and horses in Roma communities and we reach out to people in need, too. I've known Ratka for years. In 2009, she drove a horse and cart into my property the day after my house here in Bulgaria burned down.  She'd come to offer help by taking away rubbish and old iron. One man's rubbish is another man's gold... Her husband and 2 of her 8 children, teens then, sold scrap iron and she'd "recycle" into cash much else I wouldn't use again, too. We could say such a person is an opportunist. Under the guise of helping she was after gain. It didn't matter to me. My front yard was strewn with blackened and stinking piles of crockery and clothes hurled out of second storey windows from which the glass had blown out. I wanted to be rid of those ruined belongings and thanked her for taking them.  I noticed how thin her horse was; how listless the dogs were that followed her car...