At the train station in Lviv (more about trains in the next post…) on my way to Krakow Poland, I did a bit of people watching – I LOVE people watching.
There were the usual suspects: the old grannies trying to sell stuff, the young kids waiting for their boyfriend/girl friend to arrive, the travelers, the commuters, the backpackers…
There was a gaggle of children that particularly caught my attention. I watched the older sister discipline her 2 younger brothers, and keep them in line while grandma caught a couple winks. At one point, the girl went sprinting across the station and disappeared. A few minutes later she returned with a kitten! Super cute, super young little black and white kitten.
The first thing she did was kiss it and promptly swaddle it up nice and tight in her jean jacket. She sat with her near mummified kitten rocking it and kissing its head. Her grandmother opened an eye and spotted the new “bundle” there were some words exchanged that I didn’t hear – and probably wouldn’t have understood – but I guessed that the little girls asked about keeping the cat. The grandmother gave a lazy nod and an eye roll and went back to sleep. The little girl went back to loving her kitten. My first instinct was to be concerned for the kitten. The kitten was young; really young; too young to be taken from its mother. I was trying to find the words to expleain to the little girl that the kitten needed to be with its mother or it would survive. And then I paused.
For those that don’t know there is a serious problem with stray animals in Ukraine. The stray dog problem seems to be worse than the feral cat problem, but stray dogs tend to be easier to spot –the cats stay out of the spotlight. Nothing is done to sterilize, feed or catch the stray animals that roam the streets in every Ukrainian city.
This little kitten was being taken away from its mother way too young, but it actually had a shot at a much more satisfying and safe life with the little girl. I was torn. I pulled out the camera, and walked over to talk with the little girl. The kitten had woken up and her and her brother were playing with it and cooing at it the same way middle aged women do with newborns. I asked if they were going to take it home, they said yes; I asked if the cat had teeth yet, they said yes; I asked if they had cats before they said they live on a farm and have lots. I had satisfied my curiosity, and also satisfied myself that the kitten would be much better off without its mother and with the little girl than with its mother and without the little girl.
I took quite a bit of time to reflect on this experience. The experience discombobulated my moral/ethical compass a little bit. I really had to work to decide what was in the best interest of the little kitten. Of course there was the concern for the kitten being taken from its mother before it was ready, and also the identification of a teachable moment with the young girl: an opportunity to teach her a quick lesson about life and how life happens and that it must be respected; on the flip side there was the concern for the kitten ending up as just another stray kitten and also the idea that this girl may have found her first pet and have the opportunity to learn more about life by taking care of the kitten than by letting it loose. What a brain workout – AND I did it in Ukrainian! I finally came to the decision that the kitten and the girl would be better off left alone: the kitten was better off being taken care of by a human, and the human was better off learning how to foster life. This was a wonderful experience for me, and really reinforced the idea that right and wrong are not as black and white as we sometimes want them to be. The kitten and the little girl fell into that grey space we often forget about.
I have given my brain a similar workout in the first couple weeks at the orphanage. We Canadian students swoop in on these girls (at the Internat) take them on (essentially) as pets for a few months and then hightail it out. Sure they leave an impression on our lives, and the experience looks mighty fine on a resume/CV but for them we leave big holes in their lives. A few of the girls cried when talking about how much they miss former Canadian students. I really wondered, at first, how much good we are actually doing by sending a new student every summer, or whether the placement was more self-serving than anything else.
Again with this issue so many different variables had to be considered. It was another case of ethical/moral calisthenics. At the very least it is it was a question of enrichment vs. emotional trauma for the girls. Eventually I reached the decision that that enrichment that that Canadian students offer to the girls in the short period they are in their lives is well worth the heartache that results from leaving. The grey area in the middle can feel a bit strange. It’s a challenge to be really sure that you are doing the right thing when you are deciding between different shades of grey, and I DO like to do the right thing. The mental calisthenics throw off the moral compass, but it seems that the recalibration is the hardest part. I know that I am comfortable being uncomfortable, and I am getting more used to being caught in the middle.
*love*
(PS for those that are wondering – I did my research – grey and gray are both acceptable spellings of the colour. “Grey” tends to be a more Canadian…. )
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