Volunteering in Montevideo

Our duties were not limited to cleaning only. Some weekends, Jessica’s organisation ‘Catitos’ ran adoption events at local pet shops. She and a handful of other volunteers would spend a few hours in the shop alongside all of the current adoptable animals (that would travel, of course). While Jessica didn’t have any babies at that time, a friend of hers did. She arrived covered in puppy puke with three puppies and about ten kittens. As you can imagine, it was slight mayhem. We ended up looking after Henry, one of the puppies that no one wanted because he had been bitten in the face by another dog. His face had been stapled back together and he was very restless, probably quite itchy too, as it had begun to heal. We were also put in charge of Totti, an elderly dog whose owner had died. While it seemed unlikely anyone would go for him when there were puppies and kittens on offer, by the end of the afternoon he had found a home and we went back to the house with that warm fuzzy feeling that we had done something good.

Not only was Totti gone the following day, but Lukas’s owners also returned from holiday. This significantly reduced the amount of time we had to spend cleaning up huge puddles of wee. It wasn’t to last long though. When we had visited the slum, another resident had mentioned there was another dog there with puppies. Their location was somewhat vague, but when Jessica revisited with medication for one of the other dogs, she returned home with a mum and six babies. The puppies were temporarily housed outside in the outhouse, but when one of them managed to crawl out of the bed and get stuck on the cold floor, they were brought inside. Patsy was not a particularly gifted mother. She would much rather be getting love and attention for herself than attending to her puppies.

As if six puppies weren’t enough, a few days later another older pup arrived too. He had been found tied up outside with no food or water. Flea-bitten and with a hugely swollen belly, he was a sorry sight. It didn’t take him long to recover though and soon he was play-fighting with all of Patsy’s pups, who screamed as he bit their tails and jumped on top of them. It was carnage and there was Darwin right at the centre of it all. But how could you be angry at such a cute little pup?

Now that we had been in the house over a week, we slowly started trying to introduce our cats to the household. While all the other cats would dive into our bedroom as soon as the door opened, our girls were not impressed. Aimee hid in the wardrobe and Lexi could be located by the constant growl emanating from under the bed. They may not have been happy, but at least they were safe.

The other cats in the house were totally unfazed by two newcomers. This was a normal occurrence here after all. However, they quickly realised that our girls sometimes had packets of wet food and so, as soon as the door opened, they would dive inside, oblivious to Lexi’s rage. Nova, another calico, was particularly obsessed with food. Any time I removed her from the bowl I was treated to a deafening scream. She’d be the first one there whenever we cooked or opened a treat.

Jessica regularly bought a kilo of liver from the local shop. She’d plonk it down on the kitchen worktop in a pool of blood and, as the cats descended upon it, she’d cut off chunks and hand them out. Nova would be there in a flash. She never settled for the smaller pieces and had on occasion leapt off the table with the entire slab in her mouth. She’d scoot around the centre island, mouth stuffed full, growling at anyone who tried to remove her prize. Naturally, our cats were utterly disinterested in any attempts to give them ‘real’ food and I hoped they’d be ok while we were gone, as Aimee especially is fussy when it comes to eating.

As the weather here got colder, I began to look forward to escaping the cold back in England. The days were mainly sunny but fresh. The house was mostly unheated. Jessica walked around in a t-shirt, oblivious to the cold, while I piled on layers. We began sorting things out ready to fly home. I made endless lists. We arranged to borrow some suitcases from Jessica and slowly started packing what we needed. It quickly became apparent that we weren’t taking much home. All of our things fitted into just one suitcase.

Our flights home were due to leave bright and early at 8am. Despite the unsociable hour, Jessica had agreed to drive us to the airport. With all the concerns about Ruby’s safety, we had arranged to move her to the garden of some friends of Jessica’s. They very kindly still refused to charge us and so, on the final night before we flew, Lee and Jessica headed over to drop her off.

Later that evening, we also found out that our flight had been delayed by six hours. This was actually great news, meaning we would now fly at a much more sociable time. Everything was packed, we kissed our girls goodbye and headed to the airport.

Our flights went smoothly, despite the enormous layover. Thirty-three hours later, we were back on English soil. I have decided that our time in England is not something I will document here and so our next blog will cover my solo return to Uruguay. For the foreseeable future, we will be consuming cheese, catching up with our families and cuddling our cats.