According to recognized aerotechnical tests, the bumblebee cannot fly because of the shape and weight of his body in relation to the total wing area. But the bumblebee doesn’t know this, so he goes ahead and flies anyway.
—Igor Sikorsky
“How’d it go this morning?”
Sarah sighs and her eyes meet mine. “No trace of him yet—he’s still inside.” She turns back to the window and asks, “Did you take a look at the latest log?”
Tracing her gaze, I nod, “Last Thursday,” and then continue, “What about since?”
“He came out quickly Saturday morning—same thing on Sunday. Gina was on.” I hear it coming before she says it: “If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was me.”
I glance at her. “But, Sarah, you do.” Her look is sober. Her cheeks are flushed.
I wait for a minute, but she says nothing, still watching the doorway vigilantly.
“Were you on Friday?”
“Uh-huh,” she answers.
Pausing a beat, I then ask, “And?”
“Same as today … that’s four out of seven.”
I reach for my cell phone to scan the log. “Okay, that’s this week. But, you know his charts. Two weeks before he shifted for you … twice. And the same—no, three times—the one before that. And, look, both weeks he wouldn’t for Gina.”
I turn to gaze at the plate-glass windows and the lush green habitat beyond. T’ika’s no more than a foot away in a leaf pile just on the other side. Sniffing and pawing, she finds her target and—flash—in an instant it’s in her jaws. She deftly totes it a few feet farther, away from the window where we stand, back to a clearing near the edge of the pond. Setting it down between her paws, she sits more comfortably camouflaged, her coat blending into the undergrowth.
And then I see him: a nose emerging within a shadow along the back wall—the doorway to holding (a set of rooms where both can rest while the keepers clean their habitat).
“A whole chicken today?”
“Mmm-hmm,” Sarah answers.
“You crossing your fingers? It just might have worked.”
She takes in a breath and says, “Yeah, maybe …” almost a question, with hope in her voice.
In the meanwhile, T’ika sits with her trophy, tearing the feathers out nip by nip and dropping them aimlessly at her feet. Those that cling to her teeth and muzzle don’t manage to faze her, at least for now, as she plucks the chicken with practiced ease. Focused. Intent. Impeccably fastidious. The keepers’ enrichment has served her well.
From the shadow behind her, a face appears. First muzzle and whiskers. Then eyes, ears, and neck.
“There you go, Yaku,” I barely whisper, more to myself than anyone else. And then, to Sarah, “You got his interest.”
“Well, yeah, but a chicken,” she murmurs back.
And though I keep my eyes trained on Yaku, still I somehow sense Sarah’s smile.
With nose and whiskers tugging him onward, he steps out farther while crouching low—ears pricked forward, eyes wide open. Then with a wince his ears flick back … and forward again. Hesitant. Furtive. Frozen—uncertain which way to go. He stands there midstep waiting for something. A clue? An omen? I can’t say what.
We both stand with bated breath, still as stone, waiting.
I imagine I see resolve in his face, and then in a heartbeat he’s by her side. And though I’ve studied them countless days—standing at these plate-glass windows, on my computer reviewing logs, or back at my desk poring through videos—together the two seem almost surreal. Apart from all I know of both and everything that endears them to me, I stand in this moment transfixed by their faces, the patterns of their spotted coats, which conceal them so effectively while they perch stealthily in the branches or on the ground between the leaves of their private jungle habitat, but also makes them appear at moments almost as if from nowhere by magic—elusive whorls of red-gray circles outlined as islands by bold, black rings, at places forming larger blotches or flowing hypnotically into streams. Captivating and mesmerizing. No two cats exactly alike.
Of course, their brilliantly spotted fur was also the downfall of their kind. To make a luxurious ocelot coat it takes the pelts of thirteen cats. But with a single fur coat fetching as much as $40,000, hundreds of thousands of cats were hunted each year, back at the height of the ocelot craze. Yes, that was in the 1960s, although it maintained for twenty more years, even with import laws in place protecting them since ’72. And their trading still continues, although more surreptitiously. Countless numbers of free-living ocelots lost to nothing but human vanity.
Even aside from the fur trade of wild cats, man still poses their greatest threats. Jaguars, pumas, eagles, and anacondas, among a few choice predators, together barely rank fourth on the list of what most often kills ocelots. The destruction of their habitat (and ours), replacing forests with ranches and farms, and being struck by passing cars account, respectively, for second and third.
Though once they ranged much farther north to Arizona and Arkansas, at most eighty remain in the United States (half on private ranches and half on managed public lands) and all in the southernmost tip of Texas. Even there, protected within the boundaries of a federal reserve, tourists infringe as predators, striking ocelots with their cars—as many as nine in a single year—in spite of posted caution signs glowing brightly along the roads. So, though they once were quite abundant, they now run the risk of becoming extinct and are listed as an endangered species—a testament to man’s consumption and how well we care for our habitat.
Across the border in Mexico and beyond through South America, the picture is a bit more hopeful. Though numbers vary for different subspecies (distinguished in part by their locale but, more importantly, by their features), they’re faring better than in the States. But the very same issues are taking their toll on a larger scale and at greater rates. And one more factor may be their undoing unless we step in to help their plight: Despite the fact that ocelots live throughout much of South America, their ranges have shrunk to rafts of land where once they were wide habitats. Within these man-made “islands” of cats, they’re forced to intermingle and breed with all too dire consequences: loss of their diversity, less resistance to disease, fewer young conceived from breeding, and even less becoming adults. Right now as I write these pages, researchers and ecologists are struggling to develop a means to bridge together these stranded cats.
So, as with other endangered species, zoos end up playing a vital role in ensuring the future for ocelots. At the present time just over a hundred ocelots live in accredited zoos. And while in the wild the life span of ocelots is, on average, rarely more than ten years, in zoos they commonly live till twenty. Although zoos certainly can’t match nature, endangered species can live in them sheltered from the risk of extinction and mounting threats they face in the wild. Watched over earnestly by their keepers and offered a rich environment, ocelots I’ve seen can thrive in zoos and safeguard the future of their species while biologists, conservationists, park rangers, and you and I strive to protect those remaining in nature.
If you took a tour of ocelot exhibits while traveling through North America, you might be surprised by how much they differ—in some a desert shrub habitat and others a lush planted jungle scene. But this range of their homes matches that found in nature. True to their felid lineage, they’ve adapted well to diverse terrains—worlds apart in many ways—reflecting their flexibility. In Laguna Atascosa, their national wildlife refuge in Texas, beneath a skyline of ebony trees and lonely, stargazing yucca stands, they live in dense, sheltered, thorn scrub thickets. Yet, in South and Central America they’re found in much different environments: coastal marshes, mangrove swamps, grassy savannahs, second-growth woodlands, and beneath the rain forest canopy.
“See that?” Sarah asks.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“What just happened?” Yaku’s stopped eating, though T’ika continues, neatly tearing at chicken and bones and swallowing both unchewed in gulps.
Yaku looks up toward the viewing windows but over a bit to the side of us. I double-check, glancing over my shoulder, to see if perhaps there’s someone approaching. At eight o’clock, the path is still empty. He’s noticed something—it’s not clear what.
Did he see a reflection of light on the glass? Could he have heard Gina humming a song while working with the tamarins? Did the howler monkeys’ bellows grab his attention? An aracari purring? Zoo base on the radio?
He gives us a chance to see his face fully. Ears turned forward, eyes open wide, nostrils twitching, all senses aligned—his focus is riveted on the window and the path that lies beyond. But his pupils are dime slits, not wide-open circles. His breathing is easy. Muscles relaxed. It’s clear to me he isn’t scared. But something just distracted him. And then, again, he shifts his focus to somewhere just beyond the pond.
Tracing his gaze, I track where he’s looking and spot something white in a nest on the ground. Squinting to view it better, I ask, “Eggs, too, huh? Are they whole or hollow?”
“Hollow,” Sarah answers back.
“Catnip in them?”
“Mint and oregano.”
Yaku sniffs the air and takes a step. We stand unmoving, watching him. Waiting to see if they’ll pique his interest. If he’ll crack them open. Rub and roll.
T’ika stops eating, matches his gaze, then stretches and walks off behind the pond. Yaku follows her path in step, a pace or two behind her tail. The veil of tangled vines enshrouds them, and both cats vanish between the fronds. Then T’ika, still leading, reappears through the ferns. She sniffs and considers, looks back toward their trail, then catches the scent of the eggs just ahead.
“Hmmm,” I mumble. “Do you see Yaku?”
“No.” I hear Sarah’s voice is tense. “Do you?”
I peer through the leaves for a spot on his flanks. A hint of black rings from a swish of his tail. Those long, sweeping stripes on each side of his muzzle. No trace of him. I scan the bushes again, watching for any hint of movement—a shift in the undergrowth, a wavering vine. Still nothing at all.
I answer, “No.” But then I do. “There—in the tree, on that upper branch.”
A nose and some whiskers rest on a paw. And above them, surreptitiously, two umber eyes gaze down steadily (almost imperceptible if not for the pale fur encircling them), their focus sharpened near where we stand—not quite at us but not far away. Watching—or waiting—for something, but what?
I turn to examine the trail once again, the viewing area where we stand, the rock wall, the window, the gardens around us. I listen for voices. I hold still for sounds. But still I find nothing.
Where is he focused? What is he hearing? What does he see that I somehow have missed? Can I really be clueless to what he is sensing after all the hours I’ve spent with him? And why does he linger there more days than not—or hidden in holding, refusing to leave—till well after closing and many times later, on into the evening, while T’ika roams their habitat indifferent to what imprisons him?
“I think that’s it.”
“Me too,” I say.
“It’s the same thing as always—just when I’m hopeful.”
“I know.” I turn to face Sarah again. Oh, that look in her eyes—discouraged. Disheartened. One step from resigned. I feel the same—but we won’t give up.
“So, where do we go from here?” Sarah wonders.
I sigh. “I don’t know what else to do.”
She studies my face to take in what I’m saying, and then I continue, “Keep plugging away—reinforcing relaxed behaviors, target training, conditioning …”
“I know.” She nods. “And he has improved. It’s just that we …” Then her voice trails off.
“Want more for him,” I say, completing her thought. With all the time we’ve worked together, we understand each other well. But, I feel somehow I have failed us all: myself, Sarah, Gina, T’ika, the zoo, but most of all Yaku, perched in that tree.
It’s been two years since Yaku arrived as part of the ocelot SSP, the endangered Species Survival Plan, which links zoos together for ocelot breeding and helps oversee their care and well-being. As a male of Brazilian ancestry, Yaku was sent to be T’ika’s companion and also with hope they’d eventually breed, helping to strengthen the gene pool of ocelots. The paperwork that came with him contained not only his pedigree but also a copy of his medical records as well as summary reports from the years at his former zoo. In short, he was a healthy, young male. No medical issues to speak of at all. No conflicts with Sumaq, his older companion with whom he’d lived for several years. And, though it stood in stark contrast to now, he’d adjusted well to the daily routine.
Yet, it seemed from the first day he came to this zoo, something was strangely amiss with Yaku. For seven full weeks he huddled in holding, refusing to leave by the light of day, though the keepers knew he’d slip out after nightfall from the scat they’d find in his habitat—on trails, in corners, and from time to time on logs—presumably left as a calling card to mark his domain with a comfortable scent.
When we look for ocelots living in nature, they’re rarely, if ever, spotted by man, even those times that they hunt by day. For the most part, though, they’re crepuscular (which means they’re most active at dawn and dusk) as well as being nocturnal cats. In the dimness of twilight and darkness they roam, stealthily hunting large game and small prey in the cover of scrub thickets, jungle vines, and underbrush. And though they most often hunt mice, rats, and rabbits, ocelots catch small deer, monkeys, and birds with the same skill and cunning they stalk lizards and anteaters. Also being accomplished swimmers—a trait uncommonly found in most cats—those that live near rivers and swamps also often hunt fishes and crabs.
Although those in zoos live removed from nature, they keep the routine that they would in the wild, rising in the predawn hours until sometime around nine a.m. From then they lie low through the late afternoon, when they’re once again active till sometime near ten. But none tend to be as reclusive as Yaku, resting hermitically all day long, withdrawn to the furthermost reaches of his habitat. Ignoring the routine of other zoo ocelots, he shuns most mealtimes, preferring instead to wait till much later—long after closing—to accept the remnants that T’ika has left.
Wild cats in zoos don’t eat live prey for meals, unless an impetuous insect or frog just happens to stray onto an ill-fated path. For most zoos it’s simply too expensive and impractical. But beyond these obvious justifications, I suspect the public would rather avoid the sober, unabashed realities of hunting—the method of killing, the struggle to live, the moment of death of another being, alive at one instant then gone in the next.
Indeed, those same truths confront us at mealtimes, whether eating at home or in restaurants, when we face the food on our own plates, but there it’s detached from reality. When I watch others eat, I find it so curious how absently most people cut at their steak, tear off a chicken wing, or gnaw at a bone, without a thought about their prey, the abattoir, the life that passed. I don’t believe it’s done with intention. It’s just that the meat is removed from its source—a fragment of another being. Having faced death from an early age—the slaughterhouse labs as an undergrad, vet school anatomy, clinical practice, and all my struggles through the years to save so many creatures’ lives—where others see meat, I see flesh and bones. It’s hard for me to divorce the two. But, then again, why should I want to, even if I somehow could?
If we set a mouse loose in an ocelot habitat, it would not be the same in the zoo as in nature—at least, I am certain, not for the mouse, trapped by four walls, unable to flee, its fate as fixed as a steer in a stockyard waiting for the inevitable. Perhaps it’s too gruesome. It could be we’re squeamish. Or maybe we just feel too vulnerable facing the death of another being and the fleeting impermanence of life itself.
So, zoos feed ocelots preprocessed meals: a commercial, precut felid diet with special meats added from time to time—turkey, venison, chicken, duck, rabbit. But since they don’t hunt for their meals in zoos, they forage as an alternative. To meet this need—this natural drive to delve into their habitat—their keepers give zoo cats endless enrichment: chicken carcasses to pluck, tear, and eat; leaf piles to dig through and find hidden “gold”; banana leaf purses wrapped around turkey necks; frozen capelin floating in the pond; cowhides doused with antelope urine; pumpkins stuffed with cinnamon and clove; liver-laced ice chunks; eggs stashed in sand piles; catnip buried or sprinkled on logs. Devising these is never a goal; it’s an ongoing process of learning what works. What sparks their interest? What brings them pleasure? What challenges them to think and invent? What brings to their lives a sense of fulfillment—replacing what’s lost from the natural world with richness in their habitat? Sarah, Gina, and most keepers get this.
If we offer enrichment late in the morning or early in the afternoon, ocelots will adjust when they’re active, despite their night-owl tendencies, and visitors will see an animate cat fully engrossed in his habitat instead of one passively sprawled on a log. But Yaku wasn’t a typical cat. Those first two months he withdrew into holding from dawn to dusk habitually. Although it wasn’t long after that—another month or two at most—he began to hide in the tree instead. Most mornings we’d find him aloft in its branches, but he still was reluctant to venture below except when the zoo was dark and quiet.
Then, one morning several months later, when Sarah arrived to begin her routine, she found Yaku peacefully lying with T’ika in a pile of leaves near the edge of the pond. To discover him there, we were stunned—ecstatic—though also confused about what could have changed. All morning, till T’ika retired to the bushes, he stayed by her side or not far away (not only when Sarah called both into holding, with chunks of fresh rabbit as their reward, but also when they were released again, once Gina had cleaned their habitat). That day he seemed lighter—more carefree, unfettered—heedless of what had tormented him, as if some ill omen had been removed, a demon vanquished, a spell undone. The next day, however, he’d returned to hiding, tucked in the tree till the keepers had gone and he could move freely once more by night’s shadows.
Even so, from that point on, it was obvious Yaku had turned a corner. Though most mornings by far he still lurked deep in hiding, once in a blue moon he strayed to the ground before dawn broke over their habitat and stayed there through sunrise till late in the morning. Shadowing T’ika on those rare occasions, in the late afternoon he would follow her down and remain on the ground until well after closing. As fall led to winter, he did so more often. More telling to me, when he hid in the tree or hovered within the threshold to holding, I sensed in his features a conflict—his struggle to stay in seclusion or risk joining T’ika. Though he still showed no signs he was fearful or anxious, he preferred to avoid it—whatever it was—more days than not, roughly five out of seven.
So, as winter led to spring, we again explored his habitat and dissected every detail we could for what differed on good days and bad: the times they were fed; the climate and weather (temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, stormy days, cloudy days, windy days, rain, sun); sounds of neighboring animals; handymen, docents, keepers, and vets; zoo guests—their ages, numbers, behaviors; stray voltage from the lighting fixtures; the manner and means of their varied enrichment; the nuances of his bond with T’ika, both when they were together as well as when apart. Late nights at my desk I would stare at his image—probing his features, retracing his steps—as I reran his videos over and over. But at the end of the day, I was no more the wiser.
“Could Yaku be delusional?”
The question was posed by Dr. McCullough, a fellow clinician on the zoo’s vet team. If we couldn’t make sense from his life and routines of whatever it was that was bothering him, was it possible it could all be in his mind? Could Yaku be escaping from his own hallucinations—seeing, smelling, or hearing things that didn’t exist in reality?
“Well, I can’t say for sure, but I really don’t think so. From all that I’ve seen of him, that doesn’t fit.”
Yaku’s ease slipping down each night after closing; the way he’d relax when he was on the ground, roam through the ferns, dive into enrichment, stretch out with T’ika near the edge of the pond; and his calm, studied manner aloft in the branches, watchful and patient but never aroused—none of these fit with a delusional cat. But beyond any logic, I knew in my gut—by medical instinct or just intuition—that Yaku sensed something very real, to which he responded quite reasonably.
For a year and a half, like a dog with a bone, I gnawed at the mystery of what bothered Yaku. Outside their window, I’d stand there and brood, lost to the world as I sorted it out. Yet, as much as I tried, I could not find a pattern. In spite of my searching, one didn’t exist.
To be sure, though I sweated and stewed over Yaku, over time I admitted our prospects were bleak for solving the mind-boggling question we faced. So we focused instead on conditioning and learning—reinforcing those times when he was on the ground with jackpots of venison, turkey, or rabbit. With chicken in hand as a timely reward, Sarah helped shape Yaku’s focus away from the window and toward his environment. Much to their pleasure he followed her cues and over time he did improve. Still, more days than not, he’d remain in the branches or linger in holding except after dusk, living only a trace of an ocelot’s existence.
“It’s getting late. I better go.”
“Right,” I answer distractedly.
“Where’re you headed next?”
I check my phone.
“Cotton tops with Gina … then on to chimpanzees.”
“Should I radio her that you’re on your way?”
“Nah, that’s okay. I’ll stay here for a bit.”
We say our good-byes and I turn to the window. With fragments of eggshells scattered around her, T’ika now sprawls near the ferns by the pond, leisurely gazing around their domain. I smile at the green flecks of mint and oregano loosely dusting her muzzle and cheeks.
Looking up to the branch where I last saw Yaku, there’s not much to see of his face through the leaves: a beard of white that envelopes his whiskers; black freckles that splash down his muzzle and cheeks; the pink of his nose, just a dot at this distance. Our eyes meet each other’s—a timeless instant, a glance of connection through windows and trees.
A pit in my stomach. Resolved to make his life better, all that I’ve done simply isn’t enough. Where do we go from here? What can we change for him? How can we bring more fulfillment to his life? What can I do to make a real difference?
I search his eyes for a hint of an answer. He looks back at me with that calm, steady stare—patiently waiting for the menace to be gone so he can claim more of his ocelot’s essence. Then he turns his gaze to the plate-glass window to resume his vigil of the path beyond.
In the eyes of a doctor, a patient responds when something about their condition changes as a result of the treatments we’ve offered or, in some cases, in spite of our care. Sometimes for the better and others for the worse, we look to our patients for signs of real progress—proof we’re on target with our diagnoses, as well as on track in our treatments for them.
Though modern medicine is based in science, how we provide it is still much an art—a synthesis of our clinical skills: our bedside manner; how we relate to others; impressions, assessments, and decisions we make; the care and attention we bring to each patient. This is nowhere more true than in behavioral practice, where without the aid of definitive tests, we must strive to peek in our patients’ minds—to grasp what they feel, understand what they’re thinking—and then put in place a plan to care for them. How we respond to their state of being and they, in turn, respond to our care unfolds with the bond between doctor and patient. Yet, as much as our goal may be one and the same—to bring them comfort by some means of healing—our viewpoints will differ quite naturally.
Responsiveness is a quality of being by which we choose an action or feeling as a result of perceiving a stimulus either within or outside of ourselves. Distinct from reacting, which is mostly impulsive (and often results in some form of resistance), responding implicitly involves awareness. Responses imply introspection and forethought. Reactions, instead, arise instinctively. Responding is conscious, reacting reflexive. Both happen hand in hand, naturally—first instinct kicks in, then more mindful discretion—as a matter of course in both creatures and man.
From Yaku’s reluctance to come out of seclusion, one might well believe that he failed to respond. Based on our efforts to change his environment, the months we invested conditioning him, and the countless hours we struggled and sweated, searching for why he remained so withdrawn, his progress in two years was hardly impressive. And yet, I’d assert he was highly responsive. Notwithstanding the plans that I’d laid out for Yaku, he chose to hide most days deliberately. In tune with his ocelot instincts and senses, Yaku perceived a discernible threat and mindfully heeded it with due discretion. And still, as he did so, we brooded and fretted, yearning to bring out a different response.
Consider an ocelot not in the zoo, reliant on keepers for food and enrichment, but instead in the Andes of Ecuador. Nestled in the shadow of an active volcano and couched in a cluster of lush red-green bromeliads, she peers through the mist that bathes the cloud forest. An agouti, a few yards away, gnaws through the husk of a large brown fruit to get to the cache of Brazil nuts within, for the moment still oblivious to the peril lurking close at hand. Just as she crouches to spring toward her prey, the ocelot pauses a moment too long. Sensing some danger, the agouti looks up and, with no more than a breath’s hesitation, scrambles toward the cover of his burrow down the slope.
In spite of a chance she could outrun her prey, she draws in her paws and squats closer to the ground. Ensconced in the mosses with leaves all around her, she furtively gazes through orchids and vines to the gnawed piece of fruit the agouti left behind. Though faint calls of songbirds are heard in the distance, the forest around her is quiet and still, as if nature had eerily fallen asleep. The moment is timeless and minutes pass by.
Then, without warning, the trees spring to life. With shrill chirps of alarm and a flutter of wings in a burst of bewildering yellows and blues, a bevy of hooded mountain tanagers takes flight. And from a limb just above where the Brazil nut fruit lies, a jaguar leaps down in a swift, blurry pounce, surveys his surroundings with penetrating eyes and, after several minutes more, ambles down the mountainside. Only then, with her role restored once again from prey back to predator, does the ocelot stealthily slip from her nest to resume her hunt by the fading light.
Hiding from a jaguar is without a doubt adaptive—for had she resolved to chase the agouti, she would, quite likely, have paid with her life. But what of our ocelots back at the zoo? Can we really be certain that Yaku’s avoiding some harmless annoyance or unfounded threat? Or might it be possible T’ika’s ignoring a very real hazard that Yaku has sensed? How do I, as a doctor, or you, an observer, with what we can see from our viewpoints as humans, judge the responsiveness of another being?
At times, I heard rumors of Yaku’s mishandling when he was transported between the two zoos, as well as suggestions that, when he was younger, an uninformed keeper had mistreated him. Yet, as much as I tried to confirm these suspicions with past keepers, curators, interns, and vets, the best that they offered were just suppositions based on impressions they felt in their gut. I’ve seen where events, even several years later, in spite of the months without signs in between, all at once can induce an onslaught of symptoms. But, oftentimes, when I do find a history of trauma my patients have faced in their lives, my diagnoses remain much the same. In spite of the insight, more times than not, I still face the very same question: “Now what?” At that point what matters is how I respond.
The autumn of 1985 proved a turning point in my career as a vet, one that reached deep to my very essence, brought me to question my ethics and values, and has since imbued every part of my life: the tenderness I treasure as a father and husband; the connections I cherish with colleagues and friends; my empathy for others, both animals and humans; and the compassion that inspires so many choices I make. As I set down these thoughts nearly thirty years later, I remember that fall still so vividly.
We had just dipped our toes in the third year of vet school. With a wild-eyed excitement that had snowballed all summer—after two grueling years spent in lectures and labs in a torrent of formaldehyde, microscopes, and specimens—we were finally entrusted with our first chance in clinics. With stethoscopes draped round our necks, proudly worn as badges; manure-stained khaki overalls and blue scrub suits in hand; and student-length, white clinic coats (and in their pockets our bibles of notes as well as a small cache of instruments), we could now join the ranks of the upperclassmen to walk through the doors of the hallowed halls. Within those teaching hospital walls, though much of our duties took place late at night—checking on patients, meting out treatments, and scribbling our bleary-eyed notes in their charts, while still keeping up with a full day of classes—twice weekly we’d meet with real patients and clients while senior clinicians, their interns, and residents watched us and guided each step of the way. And though we’d only begun working with our first patients, it seemed what we learned in our classes each day took on a grand new relevance.
While spreading our wings as soon-to-be doctors meant taking on duties we’d dreamed of for years, it also led us into roles we’d dreaded. That fall we were plunged into one that was both: the realm of junior surgery. As freshmen we’d toiled in time-honored tradition through a formalin haze among well-preserved tissues, dissecting cadavers with meticulous care. At last it was time, as we started in clinics, to apply what we’d learned to real, living beings, before we stepped into the surgery suite. To do so, however, required we first work with dogs who had run out of time in a shelter.
As vet students, certainly, we were well versed in the daunting statistics of pets in this country: 70,000 dogs and cats born every day; 70 million living as strays; 6 to 8 million enter shelters every year, and well more than half of these tragically end up euthanized. Perhaps saddest of all, another 30 million more die every year of neglect, cruelty, and mishandling.
Knowing these cold, hard statistics is one thing, but facing them firsthand is quite something else. Putting a few of these dogs in our care on the day they were due to be euthanized forced us to take matters personally. For, in spite of our kindness and gentle attention, commitment and diligence in tending to them, sterile technique, leading-edge anesthetics, and a crackerjack team of clinicians at hand, in the end our procedures were terminal. Surgery—even when expertly done—once over is painful, takes time to heal, and can challenge both human and animal patients. So policy, ethics, and above all compassion dictated we would not cause them more pain than if they had been put to sleep at the shelter.
Each week in the morning, well before we’d begin, I could see our class buzzing with anticipation. This time it was us who were holding the scalpel, ligating the vessels, suturing skin, administering anesthesia, and tracking each vital sign. Yet, prepared as we were from reviewing the textbooks—going over each step in the finest detail so once we were scrubbed in we knew them by heart—we felt the full weight and responsibility of caring for those creatures whose lives were in our hands.
At lunchtime while most of our classmates were eating and reviewing their surgery notes one last time, a few of us quietly slipped away to the kennel where the dogs stayed until lab began. Without many words but a look in our eyes that clearly expressed why we each were there, we opened the door and walked into the kennel to meet the dogs we would be working with soon—to take them for a walk; play with them on the lawn; let them sniff at a lamppost, the bushes, the trees; sit with them on the grass and do nothing together; pet them and hug them; let them know that we cared. At times in that hour, we’d catch a glimpse of each other and I saw in their faces what I’m sure was in mine: a respect for the lives of the dogs we were with.
That first afternoon, just before our procedures, while all of us scrubbed and got into our gowns, a few of our classmates asked why we came early, why we put ourselves through that ordeal. To be sure, it was painful, but also essential, the five of us felt, to go on with the surgery. And we did so each week for the rest of the quarter till junior surgery classes were done.
Times have changed quite a bit in the past twenty years. Notwithstanding the statistics of unwanted pets—the millions abandoned, abused, and euthanized—simulations and models now take the place of live animals for training vet students in surgery labs. I still think of those dogs, though, all these years later—the joy in their faces as we walked into the kennel; their simple abandon in our hour together; that soft, grateful look when their eyes would meet mine. And given what was required of us in that era of training, I could not help but choose to spend that hour with them.
We each must make choices of what we respond to. In tune with his ocelot instincts and senses, Yaku perceived a discernible threat and mindfully heeded it with due discretion. For even if a jaguar wasn’t in a tree, who’s to say his response did not serve him well, just because it was not what we wanted to see? How do we, as observers of other species, other human beings, people we know, judge the responsiveness of another being?
And still, as he did so, we brooded and fretted, yearning to bring out a different response. The animals I work with are in tune with their surroundings: other creatures, their environment, enrichment we may offer them, the cover that a tree or a holding room provides. All the while, we, as humans, struggle in our minds. What should I do? Dare I act now? How will they react once they see my response? What if I think this out just a bit longer? So, often we wait and postpone doing anything, choosing instead to avoid a response.
The question that I struggle with in caring about Yaku, the dogs in junior surgery, what food is on my plate is: What can I do to make a real difference? Creatures all around me remind me of that question in the choices they make on a day-to-day basis, the hardships they live with, the struggles they face, the fate they endure in our human hands, and the simple joys in which they celebrate.
The answer I hear, which they offer to all of us, is to trust in our instincts, wisdom, and judgment and risk doing something.