In the Philippines, animal welfare is too often handled with a shrug and a phone call.

A stray cat wanders into the property. A dog gets too close to the gate. Someone calls pest control. Someone calls the pound. The animals disappear. Most of the time, they don’t come back. And nobody asks what happened. Nobody really notices.

That’s the landscape CATropa Meralco’s animal welfare program, chose to step into.

So when CATropa received a Public Relations Society of the Philippines (PRSP) Silver Anvil for the category PR Programs: Advocacy/ Public Awareness/ Cause-Related, it wasn’t for being cute or clever. It was for doing the work that most people refused to do — for challenging indifference, confronting ingrained habits, breaking cycles stuck in their own loop, and proving that real solutions require time.

I’ve learned that in a country where cats are still called pests and pounds are still commonly associated with euthanasia, choosing to do animal welfare properly is already a quiet act of resistance. Doing it consistently, publicly, and strategically is something else entirely.

CATropa never tried to sell pity. What it asked for was attention. To stop looking away. To recognize that animals are living beings, not inconveniences. To accept that kapon, Trap Neuter Vaccinate and Return (TNVR), education, and real community engagement aren’t idealistic concepts—they’re practical, proven, and necessary.

What became clear early on was that none of this works in isolation.

Humane animal welfare only holds when people are willing to work together—when LGUs deal with the situation on the ground instead of passing it along, when animal welfare groups are listened to rather than dismissed, and when lawmakers are part of the conversation, helping turn basic decency into policy that lasts.

The Silver Anvil doesn’t just reflect reach or PR Values. To me, it marks a shift—from indifference to responsibility, from quick fixes to long term solutions that don’t collapse under pressure, from treating animals as disposable to acknowledging that how we treat them says something about who we are.

What people don’t always see is the work behind it.

Volunteers showing up before their shifts start. People using their break time to trap, transport, explain—again and again. Offices choosing the harder, humane option when the easier one was a phone call away. Partners who stayed even when the work was repetitive, messy, and largely invisible.

The award didn’t make any of this matter.

It mattered long before anyone noticed.

The Silver Anvil just made the indifference harder to excuse.

Meralco’s CATropa chose not to look away. And once you stop doing that, there’s no going back.