Help us care for cats on Gili islands, Indonesia

Peace, love, cats and coffee

We have started this year with a big bang! We have opened a humble little cat café!

Our café is called KAFE KUCING, which means cat café in Indonesian language, and our café is located right in front of our charity shop.  We opened on April 17^th and since the opening our café has been fairly busy every day, serving yummy drinks and cat cookies for cat loving customers. And response has been pretty amazing, people have been super excited.

And why did we go this way? There’s a few reasons. One being people have been asking for us to open a cat cafe for years. We didn’t really think a cat café is needed, since every hotel, bar, café or restaurant here has cats, and no matter where you sit down to have a drink or food, cats will soon come to hang around. But all the questions made us think maybe a cute little café that is very very clearly cat themed would actually be a good idea.  

Another reason for opening a café was money. Of course. We want and we need to make our own money, and not just rely on donations. Although our little charity shop brings a bit income, we’ve still been struggling financially a lot. It is draining to be always stressed about money and having to worry if you have enough to buy all the cat food you need this month.  And also, we really need to be able to hire a person or two to work for us full time, so money for future staff salaries is needed. So, we had to create new ways to fund our work and hopefully the cat café  will not only be a lovely hangout spot for cat loving visitors, but it will also make some positive changes to our kittycat bank account.

And one reason for going the café-way was that for the first time since we started 10 years ago we now had time, space and possibility for some café action. Since a permanent vet clinic opened on the island last year, not all cats needing help come to us any longer. Sick and injured cats needing proper veterinary care can go directly to the vet clinic, instead of coming to us. So with a bit of organizing, we were able to have space for café stuff and café action.

Our café was built with a minimal budget and most of the work was done by the grumpy old cat lady (yours truly). We used hired builders only to do the main structures: concrete floor and the roof.  Zero donation money was spent on building the café, the costs were all covered with cat shop income and personal savings.

Our humble tiny cat café may be a very teeny tiny café, but it sure is unique. All decorations and artwork are our own, and all our drinks are fresh and homemade.  And maybe our little café will is going to help put Gili islands on the map for all cat tourists around the world!

While building the café, we’ve been looking after cats and kittens, as usual

We still get approx. 10 cats or kittens (sometimes also ducks, chickens and even goats) per month to look after, and we will continue to do so if and when needed. We NEVER turn away a cat in need. Most cats stay in our care for several weeks, and while some of the kittens do get adopted, many of them end up staying forever. All cats and kittens in our care get dewormed, vaccinated, treated for fleas etc, and they of course get their bellies full of yummy food. And don’t forget, we still  have a dozen or two (or three) of our old rescue cats, plus several neighborhood cats we are looking after and making sure they all are well fed.

For the rest of this year:

We continue looking after cats and kittens (and chickens, ducks, goats) that are brought to us.

We will keep our Purr It Forward –cause going, supporting  a few local cat loving families with free cat food.

We will slowly make our new cat café and our little charity shop better. We go more and more towards all our cute cat merchandise being our own designs. We want to be unique, a place you cannot find elsewhere.

And last but not least: we hope we will soon be able to hire one or two cat loving persons to work for us. Yes, we do have volunteers helping when needed, but we need real staff to help keep the whole circus running smoothly. We have our usual cat rescue action, a charity shop and now a new cat café, so yes, working staff is desperately needed.

THANK YOU FOR DONATING! WE COULD NOT DO ALL THIS WITHOUT YOUR SUPPORT!

We are sending loud, warm purrs to everyone who has donated to our island kitties. Thank you!

Links:

• Kafe Kucing on Instagram