Not even four years is long enough, for the average pet-friendly westerner, to grow accustomed to the often distant and abrupt manner in which natives of the region treat animals.

Certainly, there are instances of local citizens importing big cats and keeping them in their yard, for fun. Often in poor conditions.

But in this case, we are referring mostly to animals most of the world would consider pets. Dogs and cats, in particular.

Today, one of The National’s best reporters did a revealing piece about a group of 15-year-old girls who live in the north of the UAE, in Ras Al Khaimah, and their visit to an animal shelter.

Many of them had never touched an animal. Of any kind.

Others, not the visiting girls, admitted to viewing animals as sport, to perhaps strike with a car. The author of the story, a woman who has lived much of her life in that part of the UAE, wrote: “Stray cats are routinely tortured …”

Why should this be?

The most obvious starting point is the notion of dogs as unclean, a tenet of Islam. One of the women at the animal shelter said: “A lot of Emiratis don’t accept the idea of having pets.”

Famously, it is said the Prophet Mohammed kept a cat. But cats do not seem particularly popular here, either. Certainly not as pets.

Even the stray cats who semi-attach themselves to a dwelling or a neighborhood, are rarely given a name or allowed inside. Some of them, certainly, are feral.

They are tolerated mostly for their utility in keeping down the rodent population. (The UAE may have fewer rats per capita than any nation on earth; I have never seen a rat or a mouse in this country, actually.)

But when the cat population mushrooms, many of the felines quietly disappear.

Another element at work is the very recent shift (within the past 60 years) of many of the Arabs in this region from a nomadic lifestyle to a settled existence.

The Bedouin had little time or patience for any animals other than camels, the occasional saluki (the notable exception to acceptance of dogs), and falcons. And, most other animals were potentially dangerous to humans.

We must accept that we are talking about different world views here.

A case can be made that many westerners have perhaps gone too far in indulging their pets. Special food, expensive surgery, relentless anthropomorphism.

Christianity, Judaism and Islam each teach that humans are different than animals. People have souls. Animals do not.

In much of the world, though, animals are allowed into human lives. Dogs have been important partners of many humans for thousands of years.

However, they are not always the tidiest of animals, and can be dangerous, and those characteristics have been noted here.

When the girls visited the shelter, most of them eventually came around to the notion of touching a cat.

A dog is a different story.

The story notes that when a four-month-old Rottweiler, weighing about 10 pounds, was brought into the room, the girls shrank from it.

One of the women who works at the shelter noted it isn’t just girls who fear dogs. She said that a group of male college students came to the shelter and saw the volunteer’s boxer and wanted their photos taken with the friendly beast — but only on condition that a handler stood between them and the dog.

“We see that with most groups, regardless of their backgrounds,” one of the workers said. “They’re all a little bit nervous, and by the end of the hour most have at least tried to touch an animal.”