Family enlargement ....

At the centre we are working in, there is a small collection of "feral" dogs. It is not customary for the Iranians to keep pets so we also have a collection of feral cats. Most of them seem to do quite well food-wise, but are very wary of people. The dog in the picture has recently welped, delivering eight puppies of her own and managing to keep another five from somewhere else as well. Between the feral cats and the feral dogs we hav to take care that none have taken up residence in any of our fire scenes when we fire them up.

The picture shows "mum" with a large part of her brood. Our students and the staff here regularly feed them on left-overs from their own meals and even ensure they have adequate water. It is, we are told, illegal to keep a dog or cat as a pet here since the revolution which probably explains the number of feral cats around our apartment block and the equally large number of dogs around the centre which is on the southernmost edge of Tehran and bordered by farmland.