‘Meow Tours’ organizes Christmas tours to feed strays in Cairo, Alex

CAIRO – 2 December 2020: A Cairo-based initiative focuses on raising awareness towards animal rights in Egypt organized two Christmas tours in Cairo and Alexandria to feed and play with stray animals.

“Meow Tours” identify themselves on their Facebook page as they are not a shelter, but they just organize trips to shelters, and tour in the streets to feed strays.

On December 25th and 26th, the initiative organized tours in Downtown Alexandria and another in Downtown Cairo, respectively.

The event was not to rescue street animals but to feed and play with them; a total of 70 people participated in the two events.

The initiative creates events on their Facebook page, and those who are interested to join call the initiative and book for free.

Some participants bring food with them on their expenses, and sometimes pet shops join the tours and offer food discounter or for free. Participants walk together and feed the animals on the streets until the food is done.

In Christmas this year, Meow Tours launched a competition where people post a picture about their pets wearing cute Christmas outfit, using the hashtag “Furry Christmas.”

Meow Tours initiative was founded by animal rights activist Mostafa Abdel Atty, aiming to give the people an opportunity to help out animals in their communities.

Streets animals like cats and dogs are all around streets of Egypt, where you can find them roaming in almost every Cairo neighborhood.

There were many calls and initiatives by animal rights advocacy groups over the past years to raise awareness of animal rights, especially strays, following incidents of animal abuse on the streets. Some activists blamed the Egyptian government for not providing safe environment for strays to live, and condemning the government’s policy to limit street dogs’ phenomenon by poison.

Incidents of animal abuse were widely condemned by Egyptians, who are commonly friendly with stray animals on their neighborhoods.