Charity: Care For Cats
Featured Charity
Care4Cats
Care4Cats is UK registered charity formed in 1999 by an English lady, Angela Collins, following a holiday in Ibiza .Angela wanted to humanely address the growth of the feral cat population on the island and to encourage the neutering of cats generally. The charity has neutered an impressive 9000 cats since it started in 2000.
We first volunteered for Care4Cats in January 2000 after answering an ad in the Veterinary Record. It was the first neutering trip carried out by Care4Cats (then Friends of Duo) and although teething problems were evident it was great fun and a great success.
The veterinary team was made up of a lovely German vet living in Ibiza called Martina, an English vet called Helen and Billy. I was the vet nurse assisting and was helped by a lovely lady from England who had volunteered to trap cats but ended up mostly stuck indoors sterilising instruments for us. The system we were using for this was a very slow one and without Valerie we wouldn’t have managed to neuter anything like this number of cats.
Angela along with a wonderful team of ex. pats. In Ibiza trapped stray cats from known colonies around the island and our work began.
We operated in an apartment in Es Canar. We made operating tables by standing dining tables on breeze blocks, shaved the cats on top of the fridge and made an impromptu recovery room in the bedroom.
We were all determined that every cat would be returned to the place it was found so every cat was labelled, several times, to ensure this happened. This resulted in a hilarious obsession with sticky labels which we then found everywhere we went-stuck to us, stuck to cars, doors ... the street!
One thing we hadn’t realised is that Ibiza is cold in January ... very cold! There is no heating in the holiday apartments as they are only ever used in summer so they were freezing. We wrapped the sleeping cats in layers of bubble wrap until they woke up and gave them all of our calor gas heaters for their recovery room.
We froze but a couple of glasses of vino tinto at the end of the day and some lovely meals from the team in Ibiza made it more than bearable!
A steady stream of cats kept us busy all week, often until 11pm. The admissions were great fun. The cats were brought in by a series of wonderful characters. Forms were filled in but given the language barriers there was always an array of loud voices, smiles and animated gesticulations! Some spoke German and Spanish, some English and Spanish, some just Spanish, just English and just German and only two ladies, Martina and Wendy who spoke all three. They must have been shattered by the time we went home!
The cats were brought in to us in a variety of boxes and cat carriers. These feral cats had to be transferred, awake and annoyed into baskets which we could manage them in. For this we would take cat box and basket into the bathroom, lock the door and not come out until we had the cat in the basket. There is an amazing sense of pride when you achieve this!
Every cat we neutered,200 In all on this trip, was wormed and given pain killers and a long acting antibiotic before being returned home where they were released to a tasty meal of the best cat food we could buy.
Care4Cats now have the use of a clinic for their trips so things are much more organised. Our subsequent trip was such a contrast. Operating theatre, lights, autoclave working cat baskets. The cats are now admitted in another room, leaving the veterinary team free to work. Much more organised but it does lack some of the humour and camaraderie of that first trip. Of course they do manage to neuter a lot more cats though!
Elaine Moloney
As many of you have noticed we have a collection box for Care 4 Cats on our reception desk. A big ‘Thank You’ to everyone who has donated. Our first collection box raised an amazing £70 and a shiny new one now stands in it's place.
