Наталія Тітомир Natalia Titomyr

For some reason, in our mindset, there's a stereotype that we still can't overcome. The attitude towards animals, especially stray ones, is like a topic… they are always treated like trash. It's a mystery to me why this happens. For example, this can be observed everywhere. Starting from the first mayors we talked to, who seemed to take half a step towards us, they always offered us a place at the landfill. It's a mystery to me. In our mindset, especially in eastern Ukraine, stray animals are seen as trash, just garbage, trash. Nobody sees them as living beings who suffer, have emotions, who can be friends, who are actually sources of love. No. They are seen as some kind of parasites, I don't know, like cockroaches in a house. Helping them is more than just not fashionable; it's like a "ugh" topic, something like that. The best thing we were told, even back then, I won't name the companies now, this was at the very beginning when we started, when I sent letters of the following content: that we want to reduce the number of stray animals, but we don't have funding. At your company, we also know, there's this problem, so we suggest combining our efforts, and, for example, your modest contribution, as you correctly said, this much per month, would greatly help in solving this problem. But, for example, the first response I received from the director, or rather, the head of security of this company wrote me a response, some factory, he wrote to me, "Provide documents that you have the right to exist at all, who are you, who is this CF Druh [Charity Foundation Friend]of yours. Provide all the documents." That is, they didn't even hear the problem, that we need to solve it together, it wasn't heard. Of course, some evolution has taken place since then, now they listen a little better. But even now, they still hear it as something annoying, "Well, here they are again with their dogs." But this is already some kind of evolution. But when we finally come to the point where, yes, let's finally solve this problem together properly, then we will quickly solve it.

Maybe it felt like just going with the flow... But there was a sense that certain processes, big ones, were happening as if on their own. And these processes, I mean, that's all your life needs were essentially accounted for within those processes. And that somehow, everything would happen by itself. And your task, with you being on your little shelf, your task was simply to adapt as comfortably as possible to these enormous machines that spun on their own without your involvement. Because, first of all, it seemed like you had no way to influence these enormous machines. You are so small, and these machines, they are just colossal, gigantic and colossal. So your task really was to find the most comfortable position on your little shelf to continue your life. Therefore, everything that was happening, like the coup, was just some kind of oddity that, again, had no direct relation to your life. But, on the other hand, I clearly remember when those early times and the first real changes came, when inflation hit — that I remember very well. By then, I was already a student, not yet earning on my own, only my parents were earning, I remember this strange feeling of absolute weightlessness that everyone found themselves in, this weightlessness. When huge inflation [struck], when your salary suddenly turned from something having weight into nothing. For example, the need to buy autumn boots again became an enormous, colossal problem because you received your salary yesterday, and you went to the market today, but the prices are already twice as high as they were the day before. This uncertainty in everything, plus these rolling blackouts, when all the familiar mechanisms started to collapse, and parents had no other model of behavior besides the one they had lived and worked in all their lives. Before, they knew how to earn, how to ensure the home was always warm, comfortable, clean, cozy, and had food and everything else. They always knew this, all their lives. And suddenly, at, let's say, a not very young age, they found themselves in a situation where they had to relearn everything, and they knew nothing. There was little information anywhere. So, this feeling of instability and weightlessness I also remember very well.

No, everything was also in a kind of prostration because it was unclear... Especially in the [19]90s, when, let's say, before that, parents at least understood which job might be preferable because there you had a more or less clear framework: here is such and such a job, such and such a salary, you will have some bonuses. But in the [19]90s everything was already kind of faltering, and even parents didn't have a clear understanding of what they needed to do in order to organize their lives somehow properly. So there was a short period when it was unclear what I wanted to be, but then, when the first commercial university appeared, and my parents found out about it, they became the people who told me to "go for it!". We heard these words for the first time then: marketing, management. At that time, they were already heard [often], too, nobody understood what it was, they just sounded so very, incredibly pretty. But when my parents read more about the program of this institute, they said, "go for it!". It was fee-based, it cost crazy money at that time. But my parents said, "We have savings in our account, we're willing to invest in you, in a good education." And they sent me there. And that's when I already realized that... especially when I realized in general what marketing was and when it became interesting, that's when I said, "Yeah, gee, marketing is interesting, I'd like to be a marketer.

[It was] a relatively close-knit class. At one time we had this thing called clan division. It was very unpleasant, and even parents tried to intervene. It didn't work out, of course. Then, when we grew up and became a little bit bigger, the clans went away, we became a little bit more united, but we can't be called very friendly. — What are these clans? What are they, what did you categorize them by? — Just to avoid naming names, they were, let's say, two persons. It was an important question: are you for person number one, or are you for person number two. The division of communication within the class depended on it. — Were these two people the children of some famous people in town? — No, no, no, I don't even know for what reason, but now you can probably analyze that somehow and get to the bottom of it. It just kind of happened somehow. Although no, one of the persons — her parents worked, her mom worked in the ORS. And the ORS in Soviet times — it was a big deal, they were such czars. — What was the ORS? — The department of labor supply. It sounds funny, but the women of ORS were the real ladies. They all had this bright white hair with this huge combover. They had this kind of corporate sort of fashion. But you could always recognize them by the way they looked. You could tell by this white hair combed over high, so bright white, so bleached, so sponge-like, they were all pretty fleshy — because they had access to things that regular people didn't have access to. — You mean groceries? — Yes, food. They had everything that was in short supply, from condensed milk to caviar, sausage — they always had it. Mayonnaise. They didn't have to stand in lines, they always had it at any moment. And ending with some other absolutely scarce things that we only knew they existed. So, her mom worked in the ORS. I don't know if that was the reason why she was the number one person or something else, but it just came to be that way.