Even if we assume that no one cares about the welfare of the actual animals (and personally I think it’s still awful, but much improved from when it first opened) it is still embarrassing for me to take friends visiting from other countries to that part of the souq.  Qatar spends so long telling people that it’s a big player on the world stage, and everything they do is top notch and glitzy and amazing, and then tourists end up at the souq, distressed at the sight of animals confined in cages that are too small for them, cats and dogs panting in the heat because they have no water, and other birds sitting in their own crap because their cages aren’t clean.

The pet souq is a disgrace to Qatar, not just because it shows how inhumanely people here treat animals, but because it confirms in the eyes of tourists that this is a backward country that thinks it’s amusing to sell little birds soaked in food coloring.

I don’t know what the Ministry of Environment is busy doing if it hasn’t bothered to pop down to the only pet souq in the country.