Adopt an animal: my cat Zoi and the beauty (and responsibility) of love

A cat is a destiny. Of course, you can keep the door of fate closed, but when you think, even for a moment, that you could take a cat, everything begins: the wheel of luck sets off and he will arrive. In the end, a cat, and so a dog, is like falling in love: “Love we spent in front of us as a murderer comes out in an alley,” Bulgakov wrote in Maestro and Margheritaand did not refer to a cat, but it is so for them: from the Vicolo dark one comes out one and your life will change. Why do you get a cat and not another? Some choose you, like my first cat, move from you, you don’t know where, and now I’m at home and in the heart. Sometimes the choice is more mysterious: Why among hundreds of advertisements and messages of needy kittens and looking for a house I saw, did I choose that? Why did I want an agile and brilliant cat to keep the first one, did I take one with a paralyzed paw? It’s love at first sight, I tell myself, it is “the killer who strikes you”is that thing that happens when you are in love, you would do everything. But not only: when I saw the video of this tiny kitten that mended, dirty, which was wandering in a cardboard box of the supermarket dragging the left rear paw, I understood that few would have liked it. He thought about it one night, I wondered if I felt ready to take care of it, knowing that it would not be a walk. The next morning I took the car, I went to the lady who found him – meowed abandoned alone in a field between his home and the Bergamo highway – and took him away.

In Italy there are no updated official data of abandonments: in 2022 the Ministry of Health has recorded 89 thousand inputs in kennels (245 per day!); according to the report of Legambiente of 2024, which is based on the data provided (or not provided) by the municipal administrations, in 2023 were abandoned 83 thousand dogswhile there are no data for cats. There would be 200 thousand presences in kennels (estimated data) and an unknown number in cats, plus thousands of stray animals (according to Legambiente only the dogs are 358 thousand) without name and calculation that become potential victims of the road, malnutrition, diseases and hardships. The adoptions are there, but the problem is another: “The theme is not adoptions, the theme is to work for the reduction of numbers, through sterilizations and disincentive the storage housewives, because if you don’t do it, there will never be enough families to adopt all animals that do not have a home,” he says Sara Turettapresident of Save the dogs. Its foundation, which turns 20 this year, has a center of excellence for the recovery of animals in Romania, which hosts 300 specimens between dogs, cats, horses and donkeys, sterilized 45,000 animals, and from which 8,500 started to be adopted throughout Europe. They also have a headquarters a Milan With a project alongside the humanitarian associations and the Municipality to assist the animals of homeless people with free sterilization and veterinary services and a one in Southern Italy, which finances 4 thousand sterilizations for dogs and cats in Puglia And Calabria.

Sara Turetta, founder and president of Save the Dogs, an organization engaged in the fight against stray and protecting the human-animal relationship.

“The problem – continues Turetta – is therefore the huge number of puppies born in the house available for free or for a few euros on the internet platforms. Someone gives them for profit, others because they have not sterilized the dog or cat, still others to have the cagnetta puppies do at least once in the false idea that it is beneficial for the animal. It is a phenomenon that clearly goes down to lower the number of adoptions in the structures, and to see it is also a tax damage, because kennels and cats remain full, with the weight of maintenance against local administrations, that is, with the money of the taxpayers “.

Who knows what story my kitten came from: they had thrown him into the field from a litter too much or had he escaped the mother’s care or the mother had abandoned him because he had a paw that did not work? When veterinarians officialized that the paw was paralyzed, some friends told me that I could not keep itI had to give it to a structure, which would have made a miserable life. But the cats, among the many of their qualities, have that of tenacity: at my kitten of his paw he didn’t care, he ran and played as he could, his life perhaps would not have been like that of the others but it was his life, it was his story: perhaps for the fear of the abandonment he had lived he followed me any step I did, and only to look at him he did the melts. He was full of life, I called him Zoì. I decided that I would try everything to fix the paw, I made him do physiotherapy and also acupuncture, and the money for my holidays were gone like this.

Taking an animal is undoubtedly a commitment, even economic: according to one of the latest research in this regard, promoted by Changes Unipol and developed by Ipsosto maintain a pet in Italy, about 1,000 euros per year are spent on average. But the commitment is not only cheap: Having an animal means understanding the specific needs of another being and giving him answer. Between us and a pet there is a tacit pact, he renounces free life for the privileges of a protected life, our part of the “contract” is to guarantee him those privileges, without indulging in any hierarchy of species, in the recognition of animals as sentient beings (as well as sanctioned by the European Community since 1999 and the recent Brambilla law of 2025), but not only. Explains Alessandro Mancusoprofessor of anthropology at the University of Palermo, expert in the evolution of the relationship between humans and non -human animals: “The recognition of animals how to be sentient to a legal level is fundamental, and the road that leads to the recognition of some animals as real legal subjects opens the way. Also from a philosophical point of view, the last frontiers of animal law marry the concept of “Interspecies justice“, That is, the need to find ways of coexistence and relationships as much as possible with animals, to which to assign the role of subjects, bearers of one’s rights and morals”.

However, we want to piggy in the debate in this regard, whatever our sensitivity, our task in life with a dog or a cat is basically simple and in a word it is the care, that is, to feed them, take care of them if you sick, understand their breed needs, then make them play, bring them to the park, do not leave them too much alone (no, not even cats), in summary, means loving them. For their part, faithful companions will be (yes, also cats). There is a vast scientific (as well as emotional) literature that testifies to the benefits of living with an animal: The cat reduces stress and anxiety, makes you feel less alone, lowers blood pressure and even improves the immune system; The dog also “forcing you” to daily walks, has the effect of increasing physical activity, as well as promoting socialization. In hospitals Pet Therapy is increasingly widespread and a green area is planned in the new project of the Polyclinic in Milan where you can meet your animals. Also according to the search for Ipsos, 56% of Italians have an animal, and 8 out of 10 of them consider it a family member.

Sara Turetta in the center in Romania.

Mihnea Turcu-Romania

The truths is that an animal develops one of the best and most forgotten of human skills: altruism. In an era in which individualism reigns sovereign, in times when what happens to someone else does not move consciences if it does not touch directly, an animal reminds us that there is another being, who does not even speak your language (but that it makes itself understood very well) that is waiting for you, is in relation to you. “The adoption of an animal is a beautiful choice – says Turetta – but it must be made with conscience and awareness: it is not a romantic and sentimental act, you have to be prepared, and in particular in the case of a dog, to choose one that can share your life with the happiness of both: a hunting dog in a studio apartment in Milan can hardly express its characteristics. For this reason it is important to contact the associations that can recommend the right choice. The impulsive decisions, those made by looking at a photo, are the basis of the many renunciations that are counted every year: the northern Italy kennels are clogged by the dogs that come from the South, you can see announcements on Facebook and you answer – to good – but then if the dog that arrives is not as it was thought, after a few weeks it is left in a kennel ».

The cat zoì now one year of age

In the meantime, my cat Zoi has never recovered the pawon the contrary, following the suggestion of the various (and all very good) veterinarians that I asked, has been amputated to him. It was not an easy decision, on the contrary, it was very difficult, but This also means having the responsibility of another beingmake decisions for him by evaluating his well -being first. Each animal, every cat in this case, has its own distinct personality and everyone is able to teach something to those who look at him closely, and Zoi teaches that life is lived in the best possible one. He is as if he had never had that paw: now as I write we are in the countryside and runs like a madman on the lawn, even if staggering, chasing birds, flies and butterflies. He never takes them, if you make a reason, the inhabitants of the lawn thank you.