By Susanna Patari | Project manager, crazy cat lady
Summary of 2022
What a crazy, rollercoaster year this 2022 was!
2022 didn’t start too well: covid restrictions were still in place, Indonesian borders pretty much closed, and zero tourism on our little islands. But that was nothing new: we had been living with this since March 2020.
When covid started to cause problems and Gili islands went to lockdown in March 2020, we had to start feeding our island cats. And we continued to do so, every day, rain or shine. Our teams of “Pussy Patrollers” were out and about, feeding hundreds of cats daily. We also had to send hundreds and hundreds of kilos of cat food to our neighbouring islands Gili Meno and Gili Air, to help people there feed the cats on those islands. Needless to say, this cost us a fortune. Our monthly cat food costs were doubled, sometimes tripled, during the covid months. But no matter how much it cost, main thing was that our island cats were kept well fed through the pandemic. We could not have been able to do this without the support from cat loving people around the world. No words to express how grateful we, and our cats, are.
Finally in May 2022 the borders opened up and tourist visas to Indonesia became available again. And how amazing was it to see people had not forgotten our tiny islands: travelers started to return as soon as it was possible, fast boats from Bali arriving with full loads of happy holidaymakers. Businesses started opening again, people had jobs and income again. Things were finally starting to get back to normal!
For us this meant that we were FINALLY able to slowly stop our PussyPatrol feedings, and we did that over several weeks during June and July. Cats can now find food so easily, since all restaurants are open, and loads of tourists happily feed the cats too.
We still do have a few feeding spots, in areas with tons of cats, and we still give free cat food to a couple of local families who have several cats.
Once our cat food costs per month were no longer astronomical, we were able to save a bit money and spend it on other things. For example, we were finally able to stock up on vaccines and medicines we desperately needed.
At our “meowquarters” aka charity cat shop we have been looking after cats and kittens needing help, and during 2022 we’ve had nearly 100 cats or kittens stay in our care. Most of our cat patients stay for several weeks, some even several months. Cats and kittens come to us for several reasons: some just need a safe place to be, some are hungry and need a bit fattening up, some have minor injuries and need a place where to recover, some are sick and need medication and care. Luckily now there is also a vet clinic on the island, so most sick cats go there and not to us. We can now better concentrate on taking care of orphan kittens and other cats who do not require intensive medical care.
So, even though the year started being fairly miserable, life has been slowly returning towards normal. And we have been doing what we have been doing since we started back in 2013: looking after gazillion cats and kittens, and doing the best we can to keep our island cat population happy and well fed.
SOME HOPES AND PLANS FOR NEXT YEAR
First of all: we sure hope 2023 will be a normal year, we don’t want to see anything crazy happening! Let us have a quiet, boring year, please!
We hope to see our cat food costs dropping back to normal, so at least some rupiahs could be saved and/or spent on othert stuff.
We will continue taking in kittens and cats (and chickens and ducks…) in need. We NEVER turn away a cat in need.
We will continue our Purr It Forward –cause, which supports local cat loving families with cat food.
We hope to keep on making our little charity shop better, because every rupiah our shop makes helps us continue our work. We think it is very important to make some money by ourselves. Donations help us a lot, but we do not want to exhaust people with non-stop begging for donations. Therefore, our little shop needs to support our work too. We hope more people find us and come to visit. And we will continue to work on some cool new designs we can turn into bestselling cat merchandise.
We will also think of more ways to make Gili islands become better known as one of the top holiday destinations for cat loving humans. We’ve heard “cat tourism” is a big thing and we think our island cats are so cute they certainly should be a tourist attraction too!
THANK YOU AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!
We are very very grateful for the support we have been receiving the past few years and we are sending loud, warm purrs to everyone who has donated to our island kitties. We couldn’t keep going without your help!
And HAPPY MEOW YEAR, EVERYONE! Let’s hope 2023 will be a good year!
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