Relationship between pets and people in Nepal

This is a part of 'project 110, going back and re-filling', writing is happening 8ish months after the date.

The relationship between pets and people in Kathmandu, and in Nepal generally is interesting. People don't own pets, they co-exist with them for the most part.

I was in Newa Lahana in February, a cute little cat kept purring at me after I was done with my meal. I petted him and ask the staff if it was the hotel cat. They replied, it's a cat that shows up every so often, we feed it and it stays around, sometimes it gets bored and goes elsewhere. It's out for a couple of weeks even sometimes, and eventually when it feels like it comes back and we feed it.

SNR's mom shared similar experience with cats. There's apparently a litter of cats that grew up on their yard, but one day the mother abandoned them. Eventually all the cats went their own way, and came back every so often when they were hungry or just bored. Some were adopted by families, some apparently died of various reasons, but every so often they would show up. Eventually the children had their own kids, and the grandchildren of the original cat would come visit sometimes to be fed, if they felt like. Some cats came more regularly than others, she said.

In the mountains the villagers have a similar relationship with dogs. The dogs follow the trekkers, are fed by them, and once they end their trek, they latch on to somebody else. When there's nobody else to latch on to,the villagers feed them. That's actually how the stray dogs in Kathmandu live too. They are, very technically speaking, not super duper stray: they're community-owned creatures that are fed a bone, a biscuit, a box of dog-food at a time by kind random strangers. My parents feed grains to pigeons and other birds in the morning, the dogs are like that, except well they don't fly, and they can bite people or get hit by cars on occasions. They also tend to find amongst themselves, which pigeons tend to not do.

This is such a different modality of relationship between animals and people compared to the 'West', by which I mean large American cities. I've not checked out rural American communities, maybe they maintain a similar relationship with their creatures but I have my doubts, the people here are too individualistic and selfish for such a relationship to thrive.