A House for Cats and Kids

Dear donor and friend, You Know Who. We have been busy during the last few weeks, creating our Safe Haven project. Well, it’s public now and we are ready for a miracle to buy our own piece of land, I guess you already know that our landlord withdrew the permission to build the House for Cats and Kids on her place.

Meanwhile, cats still need to be rescued, fed, and taken care of. Especially those semi-ferals, who once had grown with blankets, toys and kitten food, only to be abandoned later in the mountains. Some of them survive and get adapted to “life in the wild”, they try to avoid humans, because they do not trust them anymore. But hunger forces them not to remove too far into the woods, and there is still that longing for warmth, because they remember.

Lakshman came into our lives two years ago, a six to eight years old stray with a suspicious mind towards humans. But his disease, probably feline immunodeficiency virus, which caused carcinogenic tumors in his mouth, prevented him from hunting, he was starving and asked for help. At night, I used to leave some food outside for the invisible cats and there was Lakshman, who only showed up in the darkness to devour his food and then hid again. After a year he responded to his name and let me touch him, he learned to defend his food against bold neighbor cats and even opossums, but it took another year until he finally chose a cozy place inside, not without back-sliding, he often prefers sleeping in the cold and would never ever let me open his mouth for medication. But he is home now, and that means a lot.

I already told Merlin’s story in another report. It is similar to Lakshman’s, but as Merlin is quite younger, his adaption process has been faster and within only about eight months he became a confident, lazy couch potato.

Those forgotten cats like Merlin and Lakshman are our future target group, it’s a real challenge, but it’s absolutely worthwhile.