Neha Vora: Caring for Stray Cats and Building Community in Ras Al Khaimah

Introducing Beyond the Grant, the Al Qasimi Foundation's newly reimagined podcast exploring the ideas, journeys, and impact behind the projects we support. From researchers and filmmakers to artists and community changemakers, each episode goes beyond the funding to uncover the people and stories shaping Ras Al Khaimah and beyond.

Our first episode features Dr. Neha Vora, Professor of Anthropology at the American University of Sharjah, whose Foundation-supported research explores how caring for stray cats has become an unexpected way of building community in Ras Al Khaimah.

Tune in and discover what's possible beyond the grant.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Every project begins with an idea, and every idea has a story. Welcome to Beyond the Ground, a conversation with the Cosmic Foundation. Join us as we explore the ideas of people and impact between Gotham Frayman, the UAE and beyond. I'm your host, Alanda Oman, and today we are exploring the relationship between humans, animals, and cities in the UAE. Joining us is Dr. Niha Vora, Professor of Anthropology at the American University of Georgia, to discuss her work on straight cats care, human and non-human kinship, and what these interactions reveal about the urban belonging and precarity. Together, we will dive into how everyday acts of care shape the social and the ecological fabric of city life in the Emirates. Welcome, Dr. Niha. How are you? Thank you for having me. I'm doing well, thank you. So to begin, Dr. Niha, can you give us a brief introduction about yourself? What do you do, and how did you come across such a topic for your paper?

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Okay, great. So I'm trained as a cultural anthropologist. I started my career with my dissertation research, which was based in Dubai. This was like 20 years ago, almost 20 years ago now. And that research was looking at Indian diaspora in Dubai and the Emirates and thinking about this question, this kind of existential question that everybody who's an immigrant here has, which is, you know, how do you belong to a place when you don't have access to permanence or citizenship? And as we know, this country is full of South Asians, and in many parts of this country, you even feel more like you're in India than perhaps in the Arab world, right? So this is an interesting paradox that uh it's a very South Asian place, and yet it's a very transient place also for many South Asians. Um when I was reflecting back on that research, I and I started getting into academically, I started getting really interested in um thinking about animal studies. It was a field that I was very excited about. Uh, and I'm also a cat lover myself. And when I was thinking about my previous field work, I realized that, you know, cats were always present. So in these older neighborhoods where I did the research, Burdubai, Dera, Karama, um, I would carry cat treats around with me everywhere. Um, being in the UAE for the first time is a lonely experience. So those cats kind of became my friends, the ones that I would like see on my walks when I would go around, you know, from place to place, interviewing people. Uh, I just never thought of them as part of my uh part of the fabric of my field work. And then when I started thinking, oh, I want to do some kind of multi-species research project, I, and I'm an expert on the on the Gulf, um, what do I do? And then I then at reflecting back on those experiences, I realized that, you know, the Gulf is a very multi-species space. And like any space, all spaces are multi-species spaces. Uh, but particularly cats are very prevalent here, right? Um, in all over the UAE in all different kinds of neighborhoods. So I started thinking, well, if my experience of relating to cats was one in which they mitigated my loneliness as a field researcher, and oftentimes some of the people that I would meet on the street, like let's say a security guard who's guarding uh a residential building, um, he there would always be a cat in front of every building. He would have named the cat, he's friends with the cat, he's taking care of the cat. Then so I started asking myself, well, what do cats mean to other people here, right? Um, is there a way in which relationships with stray cats or other non-humans produces your sense of belonging to this place? Uh so that's how I started this project. And I started this project in like 2021, 22. It was still COVID. I was in the US, so I wasn't really able to like come here and do field research. I was interview, I was doing a lot of uh research on the online communities around animal care here, which there's a lot of. I was doing Zoom interviews, but then I got a job at AUS in 2023. So since I've been here on the ground, I've been doing a lot more field work uh on the ground, interviewing people, but also going around with a lot of cat carers as they do their feeding and caring circuits. Um, and I call them cat walks, and that's really helped me to kind of see, you know, what what are the experiences of the cats themselves in the various different neighborhoods of different cities in the UAE? Um, what are the relationships between people and cats? What are the struggles that the cats face, and what are the struggles that some of the cat carers face?

SPEAKER_01 4:52

This brings me to my next question, the fact that you actually mentioned that you started this like during COVID, and however, you weren't able to, let's say, put in the field work as much as you would love to back then. So when you came in, like when you got your job at the American University of Georgia and you came in, has the fieldwork that you have done highlighted for you why was the UAE chosen as your primary field site? And and what aspects of its urban and social ecological dynamics has made it special regarding your topic, especially with the multi-species research that you wanted to do?

SPEAKER_00 5:31

That's a really good question. So, I mean, one of the reasons I chose the UAE was practicality, right? I'm an expert of the Gulf, so my research has always been on the Gulf. Um and uh, you know, the languages I speak, the the um the knowledge that I have, my familiarity, I've been coming back and forth to the Emirates for, you know, 20 years now, uh made the UAE a perfect first sight to start this project. Originally I had wondered, oh, maybe I'll branch out, I'll look at uh Doha, I'll look at Musket, I'll look at other Gulf cities, but uh it's been so rich just doing the research here that I don't think I think the project is gonna be contained within the UAE. Um what does make this place different from, let's say, a country like, you know, we can talk about Turkey or or Morocco, like these are countries where there's lots of cats too, right? A lot of Muslim majority countries you see a lot of cats. A lot of uh countries where, a lot of port cities you see a lot of cats, because cats came on ships, right? Um but in the UAE, like in a lot of other Gulf countries, we have a highly transient population, right? People are coming and going a lot, and that leads to a lot of abandonments of animals. Um it leads to financial, especially post-COVID, people are in very financially difficult situations. So let's say they leave their, they lose their job. If you lose your job, you lose your residency, right? Which means that you have to leave the country. What if you do not have the money to take your pet with you, right? Um we also have a really big problem in this country, uh, as in many countries, with this uh the breeding and sale of of uh you know fancy animals. So people will go to the pet market and buy for their kid like a cute little Persian kitten, but without really thinking through that, okay, this kitten is a lifelong uh commitment commitment. It's it's uh it's uh it's not gonna be a cute and tiny forever, right? Um we also have very different, we have we're a country full of uh, we're probably the most multinational country in the world, right? And so you have people coming in with various different cultural and religious beliefs about how animals should be treated, whether it's uh um whether it's okay to um sterilize them, uh whether you should be feeding them or not feeding them, whether they belong inside your home or not inside your home. So there's so many things here that make it very complex and and interesting uh to kind of think about what leads to the condition of both the cats and the people who care about the cats.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

I mean, like you mentioned, I think genuinely, even from my experience as a cat owner of three, you do see that kinship that you find from multinational people that you find in this country that I think may have, please correct me if I'm wrong, may have not been as evident if you have chosen, let's say, another country, like Qatar or maybe Kuwait. Um however, your research also introduces the concept of entangled precarities. Could you elaborate on how you developed this framework and what also has it revealed about the interconnectedness of vulnerabilities that you have found between the human and the animal or the cat in this case in these urban spaces that you found in the UAE?

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Absolutely. So let me I'll take you back to like a story that really resonated with me from my previous research. So it was 2000 and it was either 2009 or 2010. I was coming here for a follow-up visit. Um, I was in the process of writing my book Impossible Citizens, which is about the Indian diaspora. And I was in Barsha. At that time, Barsha was just sand lots, basically, right? And it was uh the Mall of the Emirates was there, and one of but one of my friends lived in in Barsha. And we were just walking from her apartment to the grocery store. And we came across some cats, uh uh, like a little mini colony of cats, and we love cats, so we started petting them. Then we realized there that we were actually at the border of a a dead construction site because this is post-recession, right? Um, and so this man comes out of the trailer. There's nothing in this construction site except for one trailer. This man comes out of the trailer, this Indian man, um I'll call him Dilip, that's not his name. Um, but uh he is feeding and taking care of these cats, right? Um, with almost no paycheck coming at all, because the company has abandoned the the site. They're technically still employing him, but you know how things go here. Yeah. Uh he's not getting he's not getting paid. And he was telling us the story he told us was that he was so lonely because all he's doing all day is just living inside this trailer, supposedly guarding this construction site that's not even active. And he said that this cat family was his family. And he even told us that without this family of cats, he doesn't know if he would still be able to be alive, because that's how terrible his conditions were, right? And that's when I started, like when I reflected on that story, and I thought about okay, what is a post-recession moment, right? If people are losing their jobs, if people are stuck in these kinds of conditions, if people aren't getting their paychecks on time, if people are even more lonely and precarious than they were before, obviously cats who depend on us because over time we've created conditions in which uh they have to, you know, our conditions shape their conditions, right? They depend on our our our built environments for their food sources and stuff like that. And then what is the condition of those cats? He can't feed them constantly, right? He's not gonna have like two Western ladies walking by every day bringing him kibble, like which is what we did, right? Um but he's still taking out of whatever meager resources he has, he's feeding these cats. And that and they've formed some kind of kinship that's making, that's making both the cat and the human life improve through that relationship, right? So that's what I mean by entangled precarities. If we want to expand it broader, and some of the things that I've seen in all of my time in the UAE, but especially during this research, think about the places where you see the most suffering of stray animals, right? It's usually in the places where you see the most marginalized humans of our of our country, right? Yeah. So fish markets, right? We'll find a lot of animals behind the animal market, like especially in Sharjah behind the animal market, right? Um, industrial areas where there's labor camps, a lot of these pest control companies that private developers will call to come and remove a cat, will then go and dump the cat in an industrial area or in the desert. That what we're doing is we are actually passing on the labor of care for these animals onto the most vulnerable populations in our country. Um we're also passing on the violence against animals towards the most vulnerable populations in our country. So if you think about it, if if if I'm if I'm an upper middle class villa owner somewhere, and I don't like the fact that a cat came into my backyard, who do I call? I call the the management or the security, right? Those security people might have a relationship with that cat. That cat might be helping them get by in their day, and then it becomes their job to call the pest control and remove that animal or catch that animal, even because their job would be on the line, right? So the structural violences that animals face and the structural violences that humans face are very intertwined in in this country.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

I mean, it's such a like honestly, like when we talk about your research paper, it is such a uh new, I would say, uh concept to what you read on most papers every day. Because like you just explained, like this properly shows to you how vulnerable humans and how dependent they are on these cats and how these cats are also dependent on their conditions. And I think usually this is not as highlighted as much as it should be, especially in the country where we are right now, because you see this everywhere. Wherever you're going, whether you're going to, I don't know, you're going to another city for just visiting your family members or going out with friends, you see this even when you're driving by your car. You can see it in all areas in all aspects. And I'm speaking from a person who has lived here my whole life. You see it everywhere. And I would like to thank you for highlighting such a such a framework and such a conditional entangled multi-species connection that actually exists within us, but most people have their eyes covered on. So now discussing more in detail, as an anthropologist, what methods did you use for your research and what challenges did you face?

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Um so quite honestly, this is a topic that everyone wants to talk about. So I have been very surprised and gladdened that anybody will want to talk to me about cats. Um in Dubai, technically, it is not legal to feed cats, uh per my understanding. Um I think it falls under hygiene law. So it might not be that it's not legal to feed, but it might not be legal to leave food. Does that make sense? Yeah. Um so uh but even if you talk to the you know, the night watchman at a factory who's feeding the cat, he'll talk to you about the cat. Like so, a lot of things in this country, as we know, people are nervous to speak about certain things because people want to keep their head down, they want to do their job, they don't want to get in trouble, they want to make sure that they're earning their money, they're you know, taking care of their families. But the this is the one topic that everyone will talk about. They'll talk and everyone has an opinion, right? They either love cats, they hate cats, there's not like cats tend to be kind of controversial. Oh yeah. Um, but it has been very, it has been a really nice research project uh process because uh because I'm living here myself, I'm making home here right now myself because this is a inshallah permanent move for me. Um so I'm walking around my own campus and interacting with the cats on my campus. I even adopted two off of my campus. So it's this really interesting collaborative experience where I walk around with people in their neighborhoods or in the park near them, or even if they want to show me cats in some area, and we interact with the cats while we're having a conversation. It's a much uh more collaborative form of ethnography than I've done before. Where before it would be like the way you and I are talking, I would just sit down with somebody at a coffee shop, I would ask them questions, I'd record it, and then I'd go back later and I'd figure out what, you know, wonderful academic intervention I want to make. Um, I feel like I've been having a lot more back and forth with people, and they've been also involved in helping me think through what this meaning, how what do cats mean here? What does what does this multi-species world mean? And it it's been it's been it's been really a lovely uh experience. So I've been interviewing people, I've been going on cat walks with them, I've been going on cat walks on my own, I've been visiting hotspots that have a lot of cats, uh, talking to the people there. I've been documenting um a lot of what I call um the micro architectures of cat care. So, like the the bowls and little makeshift shelters and things that people leave everywhere, right? So this is not just a sad sob story. This is also, I want people to really kind of realize that there's a lot of joy that people get out of interacting with street cats, taking care of them. It becomes a way that they stake claim to their neighborhood, to their to place. Um, I've also been able to visit so many different parts of the UAE that I don't think I normally would have visited. If it was just sitting down and doing interviews, I would meet you somewhere uh air conditioned and indoors. Um instead, I've been like walking around in the Mina Zayed port area of Abu Dhabi or in in Alcos or, you know, like the the it's allowed me to really get a sense of the flavor of different parts of the UAE.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

So you engage deeply with informal care practices that has led you through your research. In your view, how do everyday acts of care, like feeding those straight cats, challenge dominant ideas about who or what belongs in the UAE or in the city?

SPEAKER_00 18:28

No, I think that's a great question. Um, you know, I think we tend to think about cities of the UAE or the Gulf as these like spectacular places, right? That they're marked by uh these um iconic buildings um and these neighborhoods that are uh fancy, like the marina or or Almarjan, right? Um we don't really think about the little alleyways and older neighborhoods uh and how people which is where most people live, right? Uh and how people occupy space there. So one of the things that I've been kind of really uh uh thinking about through this project is like we live in, especially in Dubai, but also in other UAE cities, we are living in a way that we we understand the city as something that's vertical, that we look up all the time, right? Um but what happens when we look down, right? What happens when we're walking from our from the metro to our apartment and we just look down? What do we see, right? A lot of times you see all of these little artifacts of care and ways that people make place in a country where we're kind of encouraged not to really occupy public space. We're really just encouraged to go to work and home, right? So um take a neighborhood in like uh uh downtown Sharjah, for example, or in downtown Russell Khyma, right around here, right? Uh people will do things like they'll put a couch outside in the alleyway between two buildings, right? You'll find planters where where they've brought, they've cultivated seeds from plants that come from their home country, right? You'll find little bowls and and uh that are left with water for for animals. These to me very much like these are things that we might um just say, oh, that's just junk. Let's that's just look at look at this neighborhood. It's a it's not a well-kept neighborhood, right? Unlike if we go to like DIFC or something like that. Um but to me, those are that's those are ways that people make place, right? It that to me is a lived-in neighborhood. Like that's a place where there's a multi-species life going on in those spaces. People hang out outside in in those alleys between their buildings. Um, they are occupying space in ways that are kind of, you're putting your footprint there and you're saying, This is I I'm not just here to work and remit money and and then go home. I am living my life here. Life is not lived in suspension here, waiting for me to retire in 40 years in the home country. Life life is being lived actively here, and you can see it through all these little um ways that people engage in care.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Yeah. I just want to know what insights have emerged about the role of social networks, let's say, and trust and solidarity that you have found among these carers? Because at the end of the day, they do go through similar situations, and they all have one goal, which is to the safety of the cat. And uh how do these informal, let's say, systems between the cat carers that you have noticed operate within the constraints that they have found or the challenges that they have found because of urban governance or like policy silence?

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Yes, absolutely. So almost everything here in terms of care for cats is done on an informal level, right? So you'll find um like if you go to a Facebook, there's many Facebook communities, either they're for neighborhoods, or they're for all of Dubai, or all of the UAE, or they're for dogs, or they're for cats, or they're for uh, you know, it's there's so many for animals. People will come on there and they'll constantly like either post a picture of an animal that they f saw that's suffering and say, can someone come and help? I I can't pick this animal up right now because I have I'm my my plate is overloaded, or I don't have room in my apartment to foster this animal. Can I somebody help foster? Or or um, here's my vet bill. Sometimes they'll post their vet bill of thousands of serums and say, Can somebody please just pay directly to the vet? Because we're not allowed to ask for charity here, but I can pay a vet, you know, uh, for somebody else's bill. Does that make sense? Um so uh there's a lot of crowdsourcing. And then there's also a lot of WhatsApp groups and things like that where it'll be like in a neighborhood. And something what I find very um positive about this is that you'll have on like some of these WhatsApp groups, you'll have a uh gardener and a nanny and a housewife and the security guard, right, sharing information about the cats. These are people who normally, like we we do live in a pretty stratified society where we're stratified by class, we're stratified by nationality, we're stratified by citizenship or non-citizenship, right? Um I feel like that's changed a lot in the 20 years since I last did my research here, but still we we see that. Um you're not, you know, the the housewife is not going to be friends with the security guard. Um but these kinds of networks are creating like community across these kinds of barriers that I find very um endearing and uh uh optimist, I'm optimistic about. However, given the the kinds of baggage that we bring with us uh to this country and the fact that you know we get paid differently based on our race and our our our nationality and things like that, there's still a lot of, I see still a lot of um presumptions around race and class circulating in some of these communities as well. So, you know, people will say things like, like, I'll see somebody come into one of these groups and say, I lost my job, um, I'm I'm getting deported, I can't take my cat back to home with me. And usually these are uh Asian or African people, right? Uh not white people. Um and then they'll get vitriol, like cats are forever family, you should have, you know, if you if you weren't gonna take it with you, then but nobody's planning to lose their job and get deported. No one's planning that the pandemic's gonna happen. No one, no, no one we this we we see something innocent on the street, uh, we find if we form a bond with it, we bring it into our home. If our circumstances change, at least these folks are going into these groups and asking for help. They're not just taking the cat and putting it back on the street, right? And I even see things like this is why I don't give my cats to certain nationalities and stuff like that. So, like so, even though these social networks of care transcend and transgress some of the stratifications in our society, which I find very positive, I also see them re-entrenching some of them as well.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Yeah, I get what you mean. Of course, I'm really sad for our podcast to come to an end. However, this is my last question. And which is if you could leave our listeners advice or one lesson to take in from your experience, from the field work that you have done in your research and from your policy paper, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 25:44

I think it's just that you know, we have to stop thinking that humans are the only ones that exist in this space, right? We live in multi-species spaces. If we care about the environment, if we care about the future of the world, then uh let's start by giving more grace to the non-humans that live among us. Like next time you see a bug in your house or a lizard in your house, like, why do you have why is the first thing that we do is we want to kill it, right? Why, why can't it just coexist with us? Take it outside or or just let that lizard live on your wall. It's not, it's not do it. In fact, that lizard's eating the bugs. So I think we we've gotten to this very kind of sanitized way of living in urban space where we think that it's only it should be only humans. Like these pigeons are doing bad things and the cats are doing bad things, but they have rights to exist in this space with us. And in fact, we've created the conditions under which they live. So it's our responsibility to treat them well.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

Of course. Thank you so much, Dr. Niha. It's been a wonderful, wonderful topic. And thank you so much to our audience and our listeners for engaging with our podcast. This was your host, Lennon Norman. Thank you. Thank you. This was another episode of Beyond the Grand A Conversation with Alpasse Foundation. Be sure to follow, share, and stay tuned for our next conversation.