A Remembrance by Jerry Hurych
Membership Coordinator & Core Member Since 1997
About six (6) months after I entered Saudi Arabia, on the Visa I am currently on, three (3) kittens appeared at my compound and adopted me after I fed them on a regular basis.
A month later the owner of the compound said "this is nice, today we have three (3) next year we will have twenty (20)."
With that I drove down to the Jeddah Veterinary Clinic in Khobar and spoke to the Manager, Sayed, who later became a very good friend of mine, and asked him the cost of having two (2) male cats and one (1) female fixed.
He gave me the price and when I said I would call for an appointment as soon as I catch them, he asked "are they strays?'
I said yes and he handed me a business card with the name PAWS and a picture of very young kitten sitting on a piano key board and the name DORIS SPENCE with her home telephone number and he said call this lady and she will arrange payment.
What a voyage that business card sent me on.
That card made it much easier and bearable for me to live and work in Saudi Arabia because the people involved with PAWS, trying to make life a little bit better for the local animals, are the best group of people I ever came across.
I still have that card but I had to have it laminated because I wrote a half dozen other names and telephone numbers on it like Doris's husband Alan, George Whitehead, Dorothy Keasey, Bob Peek and Lani Marchal who had the cards made up for Doris and is a retired U.S. Navy Commander.
Every time I run into a problem with the animals I say to myself what would Doris do in this situation? Doris always said put the animals first and your problems will be easy to solve.
Doris made our problems with animals easier to solve because she always would say, almost on a daily basis, "leave it with me!"
Those who had the opportunity to work with Doris will remember that statement of hers.
Doris is still an inspiration to me because I know how much she loves animals as I do but Doris at the age of thirteen (13) became a vegetarian because she cannot eat an animal.
Working with animals whether they be cats, dogs or farm animals is very rewarding and can cause one to be very happy but unfortunately there are sad times also associated with animals especially when one runs out on the highway and gets run over like one of mine did or just disappears and worse when we lose one to old age.
No matter how careful we are, we must remember animals are unpredictable and can cause unexpected heartache.
People will say when that happens just adopt another one but it is not that easy. I still think a lot of those three (3) kittens that got me started with PAWS.
Working with the other members of PAWS can be very rewarding and especially a lot of fun but also can cause some very embarrassing situations as happens to me occasionally.
One such occasion that caused me to perspire profusely happened when Doris was running her monthly Garage Sale out of her husband's garage and driveway, a true garage sale, in the Dhahran Hills area, which I brought two (2) pickup truckloads of material to, from Jubail.
Alan invited me in for a cool drink of water when the telephone rang and it was Lani wanting to speak to Doris, then the many helpers like Melanie, then Judy, then Bonnie, then Deb and then me finally.
What I heard Lani say on the telephone to me was "would you like to come to my house for some food?'
I said sure, is forty five (45) minutes okay and Lani said okay and hung up and I sat down with Alan to finish my cool drink of water and told him I'm invited to dinner at Lani and Merle's place.
I drove over to their home, Lani let me in, and as I walked past their dining room, I noticed the table was set for three (3), Lani, Merle and me, I thought.
Lani said that Merle will be back in about twenty (20) minutes and fixed me a nice glass of cool water while waiting for Merle to return.
Merle came back as Lani predicted and gave me a big hello and went into the kitchen to discuss something with Lani.
He came back out and said "Jerry, would you like to join us for dinner?"
Apparently, Lani did not invite me for dinner and despite the fact their AC was going full blast I felt very warm and was perspiring buckets of water.
I learned later that what Lani meant by food, was not dinner but cat food she got at cut rate prices at a local super market sale.
I have had a few other similar embarrassing moments with PAWS members mostly with women because they represent ninety six percent (96%) of the PAWS membership.
I'll save those for the Twenty Fifth (25th) Anniversary of PAWS.
