Kafr Naha’s Unexpected Cat Clinic
Picture a war‑torn town in north Syria where a makeshift animal clinic buzzes with the gentle beep of an ultrasound machine, and a man comforts a pregnant cat as she’s checked up. That’s how the story unfurls in the rebel‑held Kafr Naha.
Meet Mohammed Alaa al‑Jaleel, The Cat Wrangler
At 43, Jaleel is a former electrician turned ambulance driver, yet he never abandoned his lifelong love of cats. Growing up in Aleppo’s “second city,” he’d swing by the butcher to snatch scraps for the street felines on his way home.
When the 2011 conflict broke out, he switched tools—literally—into a first‑aid kit for wounded soldiers, but his cat‑feeds remained a steady side hustle.
Cat Man of Aleppo
Post‑war, Jaleel found himself with 170 hungry cats and a new nickname: The Cat Man of Aleppo. With help from friends and an online crowd‑funding campaign, he set up the first sanctuary right in the city, only to have to uproot it when the regime’s missiles started squeezing the opposition‑held neighborhoods.
“We started moving from street corner to street corner until, in the end, we escaped the city altogether,” he reminisces.
The Migration Mission
With a fierce determination to not abandon his furry squad, Jaleel, along with fellow cat lovers, rescued 22 of the city’s creatures. Each family received two cats tucked safely in a plastic veggie basket—think tiny treat boxes.
One standout was Sukhoi, named after the sleek Russian jets that carry the regime’s firepower. “He zipped in and grabbed food from right under the noses of the other cats, just like a jet,” Jaleel says.
From Aleppo to the New Sanctuary
After fleeing Aleppo, Jaleel opened a second shelter in early 2017, christened Ernesto’s Cat Sanctuary in honor of his favorite feline. Here, 18 of the 22 rescued cats found a launchpad for 18 months of catty camaraderie.
The shelter employs marble cubes with cut‑out windows, each sill named—Pouncer, Rose, etc.—to encourage cats to swap napping spots between the rooms. Meanwhile, a kitchen with a ‘pink mincemeat’ churner supplies the daily grub.
More Than Meows
It’s not just a pet park. The clinic offers free treatments for a staggering array of farm animals—horses, cows, chickens—plus a full in‑house veterinary service. Since opening, the clinic’s prescriptions topped 7,000 in a single year.
Hearing the Praise from the Field
Mohammad Watar, a nearby resident, was stunned when he brought his cat in after a bout of food poisoning. “There are no vets where I live. I asked people and they pointed me to the sanctuary,” he said. “I saw them treating all sorts of animals. It’s really beautiful.”
Under Fire, But Still Shining
War does not spare the sanctuary. The main building bears bullet marks, and the shelter once canceled a children’s party after a boy was shot near its premises—spilling a thin line of blood on the ground. Even the cats get war‑related injuries, and the clinic struggles with shortages of meds and vaccines.
Beyond Wounds
Veterinarian Mohammed Yusuf shares that the clinic also performs ultrasounds on expectant cat mothers, predicting the number of pups and their delivery dates. The ability to nurture these little lives amid chaos is a beacon of hope.
So, beneath the rubble of a war‑scarred town, a man’s devotion keeps a cat community alive—one purr at a time.
