The War between Russia and Ukraine has been raging in Ukraine for nearly a month, and many local families have fled their homes to take refuge, and everyone is worried about the war, but a doctor of Indian origin, Girikumar Patil, insists on refusing to evacuate his home, just to take care of his big cat hairy children!
Patil, 40, is from andhra Pradesh, southeastern India, and now lives in Northern Donetsk, an area in eastern Ukraine that borders Russia, just in the Donbass region. He came to Ukraine in 2007 to study medicine, became a practicing orthopedic surgeon since 2014, and worked in a public hospital in Södśnedtsk, which has been temporarily closed since the war began in late February.
Patil has two big cats, a 1-year-old and 8-month-old male "leopard jaguar" Yasha (a rare leopard hybrid of jagulep whose father is a leopard and a mother is a jaguar) and a 6-month-old female and young black panther Sabrina, both bought from the Kiev Zoo, who said the zoo allows the resale of animals to private individuals, provided that the owner must prove that there is enough space to keep them, and the park will also provide birth certificates for the animals, which is a legal transaction.
Patil said his love of big cats stemmed from watching South Indian movie star Chiranjeevi's film Lankeshwarudu (1989) as a child, where he first sold his Mercedes, brought it back to Yasha for $35,000, and sold his BMW a few months later to buy the little panther for $20,000.
Since the war, the lonely Patil has been hiding in the basement of the house with two big cats and three Italian mastiffs he has raised, and the time he can go out every day is at the end of the curfew, and he will take advantage of this time to take the big cat to the yard to let the wind blow, or hurry out to buy food for the hairy children; he also said that the price of prices in the surrounding villages has also changed, and he must now buy meat to feed the cats with four times the original price, and buy about 23 kilograms of lamb, turkey and chicken at a time, but because of the sound of bombing around, The big cats were also alarmed, and their appetite was also affected, but he still tried to keep them at least the minimum amount of food to ensure their health.
Patil said it was actually the second war he had experienced, because he had lived in Luhansk, also in the Wudong region, and since 2014, his home and his Indian restaurant in the area had been destroyed, and then moved to Severotnetsk, 100 kilometers away, and now he is trapped in the war zone again, "My parents have been calling me to go back to my hometown, but I really can't let go of my fur children." 」
He said it was proposed that he put the big cat field in the forest, "but they are like my children, how can I keep them in the forest, where I am afraid that poachers will hunt them for their fur." 」 Because Patil has been living in Ukraine for 15 years, he not only learned the local language, but also established good friendships with the locals.
Now the neighbors near Patil have moved to other relatively safe villages, leaving only him to stick to his home, "I am the only Indian here, after night this area is only me, most of my neighbors have moved away, but for the sake of my furry child, I will still stick to it." 」
Patil spent most of his income on the big hairy child, in addition to the fixed salary when he was a doctor, he also opened a YouTube channel, and usually uploaded videos of two big cats, hoping to get some extra income. I also hope that the war will end as soon as possible and that we can return to normal life as soon as possible.
