Exhibit features timeless bond between humans, animals

DOG TALES A P300 or P500 donation at a cafe in Makati comes with a free beverage and allows you to save the life of a cat or a dog. —MATTHEW REYSIO-CRUZ

Loila, a scavenger at a public cemetery in Pasay City, nearly lost the dog she treated “like a daughter,” Ating, to a cancerous tumor in 2015.

Today, a snapshot of Loila with a healthy, cancer-free Ating licking her face is one of several photos capturing the timeless bond between humans and animals that are on display at a Makati City coffee shop.

The photo installation titled “Dog Tales” was launched on April 26 by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), in partnership with Local Edition Coffee and Tea, a café and art space.

The exhibit which will run until May 24 features just a few of the thousands of dogs and cats Peta has helped since 2015 through its Kapon/Ligation Immediately, Please (KLIP) program, where the animal companions of Metro Manila’s “poorest of the poor” are spayed or neutered.

Donate now, drink later

Customers of Local Edition’s branches in Perea, Makati City, and Serendra, Taguig City, have a chance to both enjoy the soul-stirring photos and donate to Peta’s KLIP program.

Every P300 donation comes with a free cup of coffee or tea while for a P500 donation, customers get a large drink of their choice.

Most of the photos, like Loila and Ating’s, are set against the backdrop of Sarhento Mariano Public Cemetery in Pasay City, where many of the program’s beneficiaries live.

This includes Bunso, a caramel-colored dog whose guardian was jailed in the midst of the government’s brutal antidrug war.

When his owner became a free man a year later, Bunso was patiently waiting for him at the cemetery parking lot.

“We provide free ligation and “kapon” to the companion animals of our countrymen who really can’t afford [it] but really love their animals,” Jana Sevilla, Peta campaigner, told the Inquirer in a recent interview.

“We have an overpopulation of homeless cats and dogs and to help with the problem, the only solution is through spay and neuter,” Sevilla added.

Spay and neuter (or kapon and ligation) are surgical procedures that disable animals from impregnating and getting pregnant through the removal of their reproductive parts.

Aside from increasing the life expectancy of dogs and cats, the procedures also reduce the number of unwanted animals which end up neglected or abandoned.

By simply presenting a Certificate of Indigency, owners can have their pets ligated and receive basic veterinary care from Peta for free.

Funding needed

“This is the first time that we’ve done a fundraising event because we really need funding to be able to continue [the KLIP program],” said Sevilla, who vowed that the program would continue until strays no longer “suffer and struggle to survive on the streets.”

It is also Peta’s first time to join hands with Local Edition whose manager, Jackie Arceo, told the Inquirer that “helping animals is close to my heart” and that the café was rooted in helping out communities.

Before the KLIP program started in 2015, Peta had already been rendering free services such as veterinary care and rescue operations to nearly anyone who would ask.