By Susanna Patari | Project manager, Grumpy Old Cat Lady
Greetings and purrs and many many BAAA-AAAAs from Gili Trawangan, Indonesia!
2026 has begun with a BAAAA-AAA-NG. And tons of meooows too. We have been hit with a goat and cat tsunami, so we’ve been insanely busy and occasionally it’s been quite overwhelming. Read on, and we will tell everything!
Our free spay and neuter clinic in January
We organized a free cat clinic day at the end of January, offering free spay and neuter surgeries and other veterinary care to everyone. Our supervet Rini and her friend vet Janipa came over from Jakarta, and we had a team of volunteers helping with everything else, such as going around the island catching stray cats. And lots of locals living here on the island brought their pet cats for the little snip-snip and chop-chop.
In total 54 cats visited our vets and of those 43 cats were spayed or neutered. More than half were females. Rest of the cats visited our vets for other issues, or were kittens too tiny for spay/neuter surgeries.
Our cat clinics are, and have always been, free of charge for everyone who brings their cats to the clinic.
We will organize one or two more clinics this year, but haven’t decided dates yet.
Biggest goat rescue ever
Already at the end of last year we were told about a local family, who had several goats and the goats were not doing well. We visited, we donated some medicines to the family, we and some friends were popping in to check to see what is going on. However, by the end of January, things were not looking too good, and as much as the family loved their goats, they were also clearly overwhelmed. Several of their goats had died, the remaining goats were very sick and it was all just too much. We discussed the situation with the family, offering help, and in the end the family asked us to take all the remaining goats.
We are a cat rescue, not a goat rescue. We do not have a farm or any kind of big piece of land, we don’t have staff working for us, we have limited funds, and are pretty much always just a step or two away from breaking point.
Adding EIGHT sick, weak, malnourished goats to this… not an ideal situation, but how could anyone walk away and leave the goats to die? Not us, that’s for sure. So our Grumpy Old Cat Lady gathered her friends and some volunteers and went and got the goats. They had to be placed to Grumpy’s garden, no other option. One goat was too weak to walk, and had to be carried, one collapsed on the way. Rest were able to walk but were very skinny, dehydrated, malnourished, all had scabies/mange, there was eye infections and who knows what else.
Medical treatment was started immediately and plans for feeding them were made. Getting enough food so many goats is not an easy task, they need lots of food and eat pretty much as much as you give them. We had friends go collecting yummy tree branches daily, one friend hired two local boys to do this also for a while and we added couple of new resorts and restaurants for our food waste collection effort. But still, with all this, feeding and medical treatment of the goats takes a few hours every day.
As of writing this, we’ve had the goats for about 8 weeks now. Miraculously, everyone is alive and most of them are doing well. The goat who was too weak to walk is back on her feet and is perfectly fine. One goat, who collapsed the day the goats were picked up, has been the weakest of them all. For several weeks she could not get up, could not move at all, her legs being like cooked spaghetti and one back leg seemed paralysed completely. But at the moment, she is able to move around a bit, is using both her back legs, and is currently slowly starting to use her front legs legs too. She has been a true miracle and although she is still very skinny and looks miserable, her improvement has been just incredible.
Most of the goats are doing great now and we have tried releasing the healthy ones outside so they could roam free and feed themselves. We even took them to some big, lush fields where other goats and cows roam free, but our goats simply walked back home and come BAAAA-AAAAing behind our Grumpy Old Cat Lady’s gate. So, at the moment it looks like the goats are here to stay, we just need to figure out how to get more help in feeding them.
As rewarding as it has been to watch the goats get better, taking care of them has been exhausting beyond belief and there has been no time or energy to even think of much else. But the goats are doing great and that is the most important thing!
SUMMARY OF THE PAST 4 MONTHS (December 2025 – March 2026)
PLANS FOR THE COMING MONTHS:
IF YOU READ THIS FAR: THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING US!
THANK YOU everyone! We could not do what we do without your help. The support and donations from all you animal loving people around the world means a lot, so from the bottom of our heart: THANK YOU!
Links:
By Susanna Patari | Project manager, Grumpy Old Cat Lady
By Susanna Patari | Project manager, Grumpy Old Cat Lady
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