A Month of Days
How to describe this month of April? After a tumultuous start to 2023, I hoped that a quarter of the way through, the year might settle into some kind of routine and order. Cats and dogs, was I dreaming?
After our last newsletter, here on Bali we have celebrated Nyepi, witnessed the month long Ramadan to be succeeded by Idulfitri this weekend and survived the festival of Easter, which brings its massive influx of tourists to the island. All of these events have an impact on our routines. To have them cascade one after the other over a period of thirty days is stressful and disruptive for the staff and residents of Villa Kitty.
The residents: our current tally of cats and kittens, in a facility intended for 350, is 517 at this moment in time. Since 1 January, we have received a total of 393 new arrivals. I am grateful to those travellers and tourists and the locals who see an infant or adult in distress and have the compassion and kindness to scoop them up and bring them to Villa Kitty, but the fact that the general population remains blind and hardened to the circumstances of vulnerable creatures wounds my spirit.
Last week I received a night time message from a young traveller, visiting the rice terraces in Tegalalang, who was confronted by a tiny baby, crying in distress, covered in fleas, alone and terrified. The tourist didn’t know of Villa Kitty but picked up the desperate kitten to bring her back to Ubud when she was refused permission by the tour guide to board the bus. All she wanted to do was to keep the kitten safe until she could find a shelter, a vet clinic, and not leave it in rice fields! How can someone be so cruel in the face of such need? The kitten tried to follow the would-be rescuer but was abandoned to the night, until I could dispatch staff to search for her. Despite our best efforts, the staff member who lives in this area was unable to find the kitten. However, this story does have a happy ending.
I had a chance find myself a week ago. While queuing for an immigration appointment, almost at the front of a long line of hopefuls, I heard the plaintive cries of a kitten and on investigation found a wee ginger and white scrap, miaowing piteously, without a mum and begging for help. It took a sustained effort on my part to track the baby and subsequently I found myself on hands and knees, looking through a drain. The kitten was captured with the help of fab driver Pak Wayan, and I was able to return to the line, albeit way down.
Our wee kitten was named, Oimigrasi (it was O week for names at Villa Kitty & Imigrasi=immigration in Indonesian) He is now under the care of our vets and staff as he goes through the vaccination ‘protection’ program here at VKF.
This brings me to a rare expression of pride in the Villa Kitty you have helped us create. Last week, I welcomed an old friend to the new Villa Kitty. Jeni had not been to Bali since March 2020 and while a supporter of Villa Kitty since its inception, had not seen the new facilities. As I walked with her, I saw it through new eyes.
When I began the sanctuary in a corner of a dog foundation in 2009, I could never have envisaged the scale of operation that is Villa Kitty in 2023. Would I have run away if I had had a crystal ball? All I know is that this is my life’s work. I am never more at home than when I am on the front line of animal welfare and every day and every way I am nourished by my love and respect for these beautiful, funny, clever animals, ummm and 40 of their noisy canine counterparts.
Together, Jeni and I visited the Learning Centre, the Nursery, the Graduates Pavilion, Anggun’s House for retired mothers, the Sun House and Central Park, the loooong Quarantine building that brings you to the Kitty Kindy Adoption Centre, and the Hospital with all its wards and Hospital Annex.
We saw how our gardens have flourished in the year since we moved to the new premises. Thank you to the generous benefactors who gave us numerous plants and trees and continue to do so. Jeni exclaimed at how calm and efficient the staff are, how confident they are at their tasks. Villa Kitty is blessed with a dedicated and conscientious workforce. I wish we could afford to train more!
We visited our special needs cats. Alas, there are many of them. Happily, the majority are unaware that they have special needs and live lives of play and contentment that would be impossible in the outside world. There are our wobbly cats, Inez, our oldest who suffers from cerebellar hypoplasia, beauties such as Jasmina and the handsome Ginger Rogers who have no use of their hind legs but tear about at will, and of course the blind cats and kittens.
You must meet Jonesy. Jonesy lives in our office. She’s tiny, her life measured in weeks rather than months. Completely blind, she finds her way around the furniture, grappling with every obstacle that towers above her. Her favourite toy is a piece of crumpled tin foil. She hears the scrunchy noise it makes and tears across the floor to bat it about. I hoped she might be mentored by Elsie, an adult blind cat who also lives in our office. Her eyes were removed after massive infections but she is comfortable in her domain.
Hope, and your donations, are what sustains us. As I walked with Jeni, we paused at the sites of the buildings yet to be constructed: Villa Kitty’s Reception, Clinic, Consulting Rooms, Operating and Recovery Rooms. We have come so very far, but we have a huge journey in front of us. My eyes are open to the reality of our task: we beg you to open your hearts and purse strings to ensure we are equal to it. So many hundreds of lives are dependent on your support.
A month full of days: days full of challenges, rewards, joys and sorrows. Villa Kitty will be here next month, and the next and the month after that.
Please help us endure, help us to survive so that the defenceless cats and kittens of Bali might thrive.
Thank you,
Elizabeth Henzell
Founder
Villa Kitty Foundation