We ended up neutering approximately 30 cats at the restaurant / in the vicinity of restaurant where one of our volunteers found the 26 starving / thirsty cats that had been left to die at the end of November. Because the restaurant owner didn’t want the cats there, we ended moving about 20 cats to locations where they will be fed and afforded a measure of safety. While moving them was absolutely the last thing that we wanted to do, unfortunately we had no choice as the restaurant owner made it clear that the cats had to be gone before the restaurant re-opened after the winter break. We successfully negotiated with the owner to keep a small group at the restaurant and for him to feed them going forward (to be fair, at one point he was feeding all the cats that were there although of course it is very disappointing that he didn’t get any of them neutered and left them to their own devices…). The good news is that most of the cats we released at their new locations have stuck around and are doing just fine in their new surroundings. We are optimistic that none of them have come to any harm but we think that pretty much all of them would have died if we had not stepped in to help. All-in-all this has been an enormous task for Only TNR and around 10 different people have put many, many hours in so as to secure the best outcome for the cats – perhaps 150+ hours of effort in total and €2,000+ of expenditure including fixing poor soul German Tommy’s leg (see separate post about him…). Many thanks to Pam, Jodie, Chris and Diane in particular for their sterling efforts in working through what at times was a very distressing / depressing situation.
