Urgent Appeal For Help

Here is something that we could really do with everyone’s help with:

At the end of November, one of our feeders came across 2 cats rummaging in a rubbish bin in a semi-rural area in the outskirts of Pegeia. He stopped to give the cats some food and 3 more hungry cats came out from behind a hedge. On the other side of the hedge was a restaurant and on going into the restaurant grounds to enquire about the cats, he was taken aback by what he saw – a total of 26 starving / thirsty cats and kittens who were desperate for food and water. The restaurant had closed for the winter a couple of days before and the cats had simply been left behind to fend for themselves. None of the cats were spayed or neutered and more than half of them were kittens. The sight of the that many cats being frantic for food and water on the first night was very distressing.

So, we started to feed the cats and we set about getting all the cats fixed that were old enough to go to the vet. Across multiple vet trips we have done a little more than half of them and we are about to commence a second campaign to do the rest - almost all of them are now big enough.

The restaurant owner professed to like the cats and didn’t appear to recognize that he has done anything wrong or even that he has been irresponsible in any way. His apparent motivation in not getting the cats fixed was something to do with feeling sorry for the male cats not being able to exercise their natural urges….  What could have been humanely achieved for maybe €100 at the start of last summer, 6 or 8 months later will in total cost more than 10 times that amount. If nothing else, it would be good if the restaurant owner didn’t recreate the mess going forward – time will tell about that.

Unfortunately,  despite Only TNR feeding the group every day, 2 of the cats died during the winter (seemingly of natural causes) and 3 of them have disappeared. So now there are 21 cats left - all of whom seem healthy and all of whom are friendly to one degree or another.

While the restaurant owner undertook not to poison the cats (although he said his friend had offered to do so…), he wants rid of them before the restaurant reopens in the middle of March which is a big, big problem as we really have no solutions as to where to put them. And of course, it will be difficult to get them to stick around wherever we do end up putting them. For a while, it looked as if we might be able to move the cats gradually over time to a new / safe location about 100 metres away from the restaurant, but this possibility (perhaps unrealistic anyway) fell through when one of the neighbours who volunteered to build a shelter on some nearby empty land didn’t follow through.

While it is very far from being perfect, we recognize that we now have to move the cats elsewhere but at least they will all be fixed and their chances will be better after having made it through the winter and with having a source of food (i.e. Only TNR) at their new location - if we can persuade them to stay put.

What we’d like to identify is somewhere suitable for the cats – does anyone have any ideas as to a good location or locations.

The cats do not all need to go to the same spot and can be split into much smaller groups according to whoever can help / what we can come up with as a new home (or homes) for them.

Please bear in mind the following:

*.. The cats can’t be in a location where they are going to overwhelm or bother people living nearby.

*.. The location needs to be safe in relation to traffic or other hazards,

* The location needs to provide some degree of shelter nearby (the restaurant provided great shelter for them!) and needs to be accessible so that we can feed / look after them going forward.

If anyone does have any good ideas (whether covering just one, ten or all of the cats), please get in touch as we’d love to talk to you about them - time is now very short.

In order to have the best chance of success going forward, what we need is a group effort