By Susanna Patari | Project manager, Grumpy Old Cat Lady
MEOWMEOW and April greetings from Gili Trawangan!
Feels like we have been going from one holiday to another! Christmas and New Year, Chinese New Year, Nyepi (Bali’s day of silence), the beginning of Ramadan, then Easter. And right now we are at the end of Ramadan month, and everyone is excited about the Eid holidays. This is the biggest holiday of the year, and many locals have left the island to be with their families.
Holiday seasons or not, cats and kittens need to be looked after. At our Meowquarters we haven’t had time for any holidays, we have been busier than ever just taking care of all our kitties and their needs.
Kittens, and more kittens, and a few more...
The beginning of this year has been crazy busy with kittens. Last year we looked after 77 cats and kittens in total, and this year we are in number 53 at the moment, most of them kittens, and it’s only the beginning of April! We have been totally full both at our Meowquaters, and at our Grumpy Old Cat Lady’s house.
We mostly receive kittens that are found somewhere needing a bit help. It might be they are just in need of love and care and a safe place to be, or they may be a bit sickly and need medication too. There may be minor injuries, sometimes even birth defects (such as kittens born without eyes). They all get treated for worms, fleas and whatever health issues they may have. And they will get spayed and neutered when our supervet Rini comes for a visit.
Cats and kittens who don’t have homes or don’t get adopted stay with us for a long time, usually several months, and some may stay forever, becoming cat café cats or move to live at our Grumpy Old Cat Lady’s big garden.
Looking after so many cats and kittens is not only lot of work, it is also expensive. We go through crazy amounts of cat food and toilet litter at the moment, so that’s where most of our money has gone this year. See the picture at the end of this report of one of our cat food delivery, it’s a pretty impressive mountain of food! The kittens also need deworming, flea treatments, vaccines, sometimes antibiotics and other medicines, so the more kittens we look after, the more expenses we have.
Although we have been full and overwhelmed and exhausted and running out of money, we never turn away a cat in need. We may need to play a bit of tetris with kitties to find space for more, but somehow we always make it work. We never say NO to a cat or kitten who needs help, and we never throw out kittens or cats just because we need space for more, or are exhausted taking care of them all.
Meet one of our rescue cats: McCoy, now a FIP warrior
Little black kitten McCoy arrived from south Lombok in June 2023 and it was love at first sight. There was just something special in him. McCoy grew up at our cat shop, got all his vaccines, had his cojones chopped by our vet Rini in December last year, and then he moved to our Grumpy Old Cat Lady’s house and garden to live among other cats, chickens and ducks. Fun times for McCoy!
All went well for about two months but in the beginning of February it was clear something is not right, and unfortunately he was showing classic symptoms for FIP: losing weight, while his belly was growing huge with abdominal fluids.
FIP (Feline Infectious Peritonitis) is feline coronavirus and up until few years ago it was pretty much a certain death sentence, there was no vaccination against it, no treatment, and it led to horrible death, unless the cat was euthanized in time.
Luckily, there is now medication available, even here in Indonesia.The medicines are still very expensive, but it is available and easy to order online, and gets delivered to our island in just 2-3 days. There was no question about whether to go for the treatment or not. McCoy could be saved with the FIP-treatment, so that’s what we’ll do.
As of writing this, McCoy has gone through 2 months of daily injections of FIP-medicine and vitamins, and now he has changed to daily oral medication for the next 4 weeks, and then it's all done. He is doing great, has gained weight and is cheerful and active (pain in the ass –active, to be honest). Every rupiah we spent on McCoy's medication has been worth it.
And now we have experience on how to treat this nasty virus, so we are ready to fight this in the future too.
Whats’s happening in the next few weeks:
Many of our kittens are starting to be old enough to be spayed and neutered, so it’s time to bring Supervet Rini for a visit again. Vet Rini will be coming over in the beginning of May, and we will do a one day cat clinic. The clinic will be 100% free of charge to everyone who brings in their cats. We hope to spay and neuter 30-50 cats at least, in that one clinic day.
We continue looking after cats and kittens that are brought to us. Cat rescue work is the core of what we have been doing since 2013 when we started, and it still is what we are and what we do. Everything else (our charity shop and café) is just to support our work with cats.
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 this year! Your support means a lot and enables us to continue our work with Gili island kitties.
Thank you, terima kasih, kiitos, purr!
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