Brigitte Anzola arrived in Lebanon on vacation to visit her daughter Joselyn, who has lived there for eight years with her husband, her dog and three cats. On September 26, in the middle of an interview with Noticias Caracol live, he had to leave the house with his family due to a threat of bombing. Now, two days before a humanitarian flight takes them out of there, they are begging to be allowed to board with their pets.
“If my daughter doesn’t leave, then neither will I”: Colombian in Lebanon
Joselyn Reyes emphasizes that for her “animals are beings that are part of our family, they enter the family nucleus and for me it is very difficult to board that plane and not be able to take them with me. I have three cats and I also have a dog, but I understand the dog a little more because it is a large breed dog, a Rottweiler, a breed that is not accepted on many commercial flights because I had previously found out. and I have a person who could stay with my dog while we see what happens, but I have three cats that depend one hundred percent on me. I don’t have anyone to leave them to, I don’t have a person who I can feel sure is going to have them and take care of them, because right now we are all worried about our lives and animals for many people would take a backseat. And well, my request at this moment, my greatest wish, is that they allow me to board with my pets, with my three cats in this case. They are cats that are sterilized, they are vaccinated. They are cats that this week, in order for me to be ready with everything, I took them to the vet, they did their check-up and gave them the certificate they would need to realize that they are in good physical condition. They have their microchip too.”
That is why he asked the Colombian Foreign Ministry, “to the person who has the power to grant me that permission, that authorization, that they allow me to get on the plane with them, because personally, and I told my mother, I refuse to get on that flight if they don’t allow me to get on the plane with them.”.
“If I don’t get permission or the air force crew doesn’t allow me to go up with them, I go back home.“I will return and let it be what God wants, but I am not going to abandon them,” he stressed.
Brigitte, through tears, stated that “If my daughter can’t travel with all the pain it would cause me, neither can I because I know that my family is waiting for me in Colombia, but I can’t leave my daughter in a situation like this either. Suddenly many people are not going to understand me or my family, as they tell me, how they are going to stay there for some cats. I am not capable of abandoning animals either.. They are considered sentient beings, there are laws that protect them. And if my daughter doesn’t leave, well, I can’t leave my daughter in a situation as difficult as the one we are experiencing. So I do ask the chancellor, please, to the person who can give us that priority permission, so to speak in some special way, that we can board that flight, because we are really experiencing it, it is very difficult.”
“We don’t go to bed and, as we say here, we’re going to take a bath while we can, you go to bed without knowing, if God forbid, they send a bomb nearby, next door, and you fall into it. So it is a quite complicated situation that we are experiencing, but I would not have the heart to abandon the animals, much less my daughter,” he stressed.
Source: https://www.noticiascaracol.com/mundo/familia-colombiana-en-libano-ruega-que-la-dejen-abordar-vuelo-humanitario-con-sus-3-gatos-rg10