In the Shadows and the Sun: Reflections on Cats, Dogs and a Multispecies Community: Bonded Coexistence in Sauraha’s Sharing Society
The morning heat was lifting the mist over Sauraha when I heard the distant, unmistakable call of captive elephants, an echo of enforced stillness. Their confinement stood in stark contrast to the quiet freedom of two tabby cats nearby. Sleek and entwined, they perched calmly at the edge of a quiet riverside restaurant as sunlight glinted off the water. Just present, observant. Just part of it all.
What role do cats and dogs play in Sauraha’s multispecies society? That question stayed with me, unspooling as we observed, listened, and learned from a community where humans, wildlife, and companion animals coexist in proximity.
This was my first visit to Nepal. I came as part of a research project, ‘Companion Cats and Dogs in Nepal: A New Frontier’, supported by a 2024 Society for Companion Animal Studies (SCAS) pump-priming award hoping to better understand how cats and dogs, so often framed as "owned" or "stray", fit into complex communities where humans, wildlife, and companion animals live side by side. I had expectations, informed by years of working in rescue and welfare in Saudi Arabia and Thailand, and influenced, like many of us, by dominant Western narratives about what animal care "should" look like. After my previous experiences (Oxley Heaney 2024, 2023), I had steeled myself for my visit to Sauraha, a town on the edge of Chitwan National Park in the lowlands of southern Nepal, expecting to find dogs and cats living in poor condition. However, I was quietly but pleasantly unsettled. Instead of neglect or suffering, I found cats and dogs cared for by the community, living alongside wildlife and humans in surprising coexistence.
A Shared Landscape
Sauraha in Nepal is a landscape in motion. Locals tell us how the river’s course has shifted, reshaped by structures concreted into her banks to accommodate tourists watching the sunset or taking canoe rides into the park. Yet rhinos and elephants still move through these transformed spaces. In the early evenings, you might spot a free-living elephant crossing the boundary river back into the park, or a rhino calmly wandering through the sunset-viewing areas, weaving between restaurants and excited tourists.
Dogs, unlike rhinos or elephants, don’t stir the same tourist-gaze excitement, yet they share the neighbourhood with a quiet ease, largely unfazed and undisturbed by visitors. Surprisingly and thankfully, there’s none of the alarm or unease often seen in Western contexts when animals roam without human-created constraints. Also, the dogs co-create their own social structure, and I did not see many negative dog-dog interactions. A few guarded barks, one group chased off an unwelcome dog visitor, but generally their days included dozing in sunlit courtyards, following familiar people at a gentle distance, or padding across streets checking out the multispecies daily news. Several had notched ears, the locally accepted sign of sterilisation. We saw very few signs of mange or severe injury, and some animals clearly had received care. One local even approached me to ask for help with dogs in his village, a small but telling sign of community concern beyond formal systems, showing that bonds of care existed, even if outside formal systems. While not all dogs were part of a human household, many were quietly supported by the wider neighbourhood. Some were tolerated, yes, but also, mostly, gently cared for.
Cats moved more quietly, discreetly, through the landscape. We had to seek many out, where they lived in the margins: darting through shadows, resting under tables, or emerging at night. Some were confident, like the two more relaxed bonded tabby-siblings at the riverside restaurant where we often dined, while others were loved and cared for by restaurant residents. Some were more elusive, and upon seeking them out, I understood they resided between several homes or loosely connected to one space. Their lives were shaped by an environment where they navigated both indifference and subtle forms of welcome.
Beyond Ownership: Community Animals
What struck me most was not just the animals’ presence, but how they were part of the environment, rather than being placed in strict human-animal roles. In Western discourse, we often treat cats and dogs as either pets (owned, named, housed) or problems (for example labelled “stray”, “feral”, “unwanted”), managed in terms of where they are permitted to reside in a neighbourhood and, of course, large charismatic wildlife are subject to even stricter forms of control. But Sauraha pleasantly loosened these expectations of governance.
Dogs were part of the town's rhythm, receiving food or affection without being tethered or confined. Cats found pockets of safety in spaces that tolerated their presence. This coexistence wasn’t perfect, resources are scarce, and medical care can be expensive, but it felt, in some ways, more respectful than companion-animals-in-society models based solely on “ownership” and being considered “property”. While elephants did not receive the same measures of freedom, their confinement was visibly and audibly present, rhinos wandered freely through town, munching on vegetation, strolling the streets with an ease and familiarity that would not be expected in many social scenarios. These rhino-residents seemed to delight tourists from a range of nationalities, while the local dogs and cats just observed their gentle tank-like mass, flexing their agency in choosing where to go.
A Personal Shift
Coming from contexts like the UK where animals are compartmentalised into categories of expected and accepted behaviours, and Saudi Arabia, where unwanted or lost companion animals, often face harsh conditions (see Oxley Heaney 2024), and the concept of community care is complicated by legal and cultural restrictions (see Oxley Heaney 2023), I found myself recalibrating my expectations while in Sauraha.
It wasn’t that Nepal “treats animals better.” It’s that the ethics of care here look different. They're shaped by history, economics, religion, culture and landscape. And within that framework, people are caring and coexisting with non-human animal neighbours. Quietly. Daily. Without headlines.
The SCAS grant allowed us to begin observing these interspecies relationships, and while we’ve yet to publish formal findings, this initial field visit offered valuable insight into the delicate, dynamic bonds between humans, animals, and place. It’s a reminder that coexistence is not a fixed achievement, but an ongoing practice, a way of living with, rather than over, others.
Looking Ahead
This is the first of several reflections from our project team. Together, we hope to build a broader picture of what bonded coexistence looks like across different cultures and why it matters to those of us who care about animal well-being globally. Sauraha offered its form of welfare, where the boundaries between wild and domestic, cared-for and neglected, are blurred, and often reshaped through daily acts of coexistence.
The author (left) with Kris Hill (co-investigator, middle) and Michelle Syzdlowski (PI).
A penultimate note to recognise the hard work of Chitwan's animal rights activists, for example, Animal Rights Club (ARC), whose work to promote coexistence in Sauraha is enmeshed with complex and unsettling realities. While dogs generally were cared for within multispecies families or at least on the periphery, cats lived in the shadows, often cared for across multiple homes. Free-living wildlife are afforded some kind of liberty in the protected zone of Chitwan, while captive wildlife and domestic horses (which often fall into the liminal space of companion animal or labourer) often suffer, bearing the brunt of the intersection of capitalism, ethically disengaged tourism, conservation ideologies and socioeconomic human constructs of society.
A final thought to the more-than-just-human landscape which bears us all, shifts with our demands and still supports all of our coexistence, while sporting the ecological scars we create. I wonder what the monkeys in Kathmandu make of the 2024 landscape, as they gaze over areas that were lush rice fields just 20 years ago. The left-hand photo below, taken from the flight from Kathmandu to Bharatpur, reveals the stark contrast of widespread deforestation (top) and a now protected area (bottom). The right-hand image illustrates our lasting impact on what was once a forested landscape. If only we understood what landscapes could divulge about the change…
In the meantime, I’ll remember the two tabbies sitting in the sun.
Quiet, seen, and simply at home.
Sarah is a SCAS member, PhD candidate, and co-investigator on the 2024 SCAS-funded project, Companion Cats and Dogs in Nepal: A New Frontier. This blog relates to fieldwork undertaken as part of the study, led by Principal Investigator Dr. Michelle Szydlowski and co-investigator Kris Hill. Learn more about the project here.
References
Hill, K., Szydlowski, M., Oxley Heaney, S., & Busby, D. (2022) ‘Uncivilized Behaviors: How Humans Wield “Feral” to Assert Power (and Control) over Other Species’, Society and Animals, 21(4), pp. 1–19. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-bja10088.
Oxley Heaney, S. (2024) Abandonment in Arabia: Acknowledging Feline Experiences (Felis silvestris catus). In László,B. and Lovas,A. (Eds.), Studies on the Human-Animal Relationship Anthrozoology Series III. University of Debrecen Anthrozoology Research Group, ISBN 978-963-490-644-5, pp 49-83. Available at: https://antrozoologiakonf.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/borbala-laszlo-antal-lovas-kiss-eds_studies-on-the-human-animal-relationship-2024-1.pdf
Oxley Heaney, S. (2023) ‘Arabian feline (Felis silvestris catus) lives: Insights into abandonment’, EASE Working Paper Series, 1, pp. 54–88. Available at: https://anthrozoologyassymbioticethics.wordpress.com/ease-working-paper-series-volume-1-emerging-voices/