A little cat meowing at the front door of an apartment and a dog in the bedroom space of a seven-year-old drove Mr. & Mrs. Thomas crazy. The tenants sharing their same apartment block often wondered why they found cats and kittens in the stairways of their building, as if looking for a long lost friend. This was the beginning of a passionate career for a seven-year- old lad – Hansel.
But the story actually began years earlier, when Hansel (who was then petrified of animals) visited his family friends who owned a four-year-old mixed breed Bahraini desert dog, called ‘Jacky’. Hansel was always fascinated yet terrified of animals, (especially Jacky,) and always hid whenever he saw him. But that evening, he decided to muster up all the courage he could find, while standing on top of the two foot high sofa so that he was high up off the ground, with his eyes closed and hand stretched out, to get a feel of Jacky as he passed by. The moment he touched Jacky and looked into his eyes, the fears melted away and a strange fascination and passion for care of animals was born in Hansel.
Since then, throughout his childhood he would care for lost and abandoned animals and volunteer at the BSPCA animal shelter in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Soon, it was obvious to him and all onlookers that he was born to administer veterinary care and compassion to animals. So, choosing a career path was a piece of cake for Hansel and he soon went to Vet School in Bangalore and completed his Masters from Edinburgh University, UK.
Charis Vets was a dream for many years that started in the hearts of Hansel and his wife Elizabeth. Veterinary care on the island was either too expensive or incompetent. And they longed to make professional veterinary expertise available to everyone at an affordable cost.