Celebrating Our Birthday and Building Our New Shelter
Villa Kitty officially turns a decade this month, which is more than half a century in cat years! It certainly feels like we have been rescuing cats and kittens for much longer than a mere ten years. Check out our video above to see our work in action; our lovely cats waiting for homes and the challenges we have to grapple with as we wait for our new home to be built. And stay tuned for regular video ‘cat conferences’ in the future!
This past month has been eventful here at Villa Kitty. Come to think of it, what month isn’t! We officially began the building of our new home, which we are very eager to move to, but we are only at the beginning stages of this massive project. We have also struggled with more panleukopenia outbreaks, as the disease is all over the island - Bali needs a massive immunisations program. To top it off, we have been inundated as never before with requests for sterilisations – we received over 500 requests in under three days!
Due to an error beyond our control Villa Kitty was placed in an exceedingly difficult position when advertisements offering free sterilisations, which were intended to be local and print only, went viral. Needless to say, our phones and social media messaging platforms near imploded with the hundreds of requests. While it is fantastic to see that so many people wish to do the right thing, we simply cannot accommodate so many sterilisation surgeries in such a short period. We are doing all that we can to help but it will take days just to answer all the requests and months to help a portion of those in the area - we received requests from as far away as Sumatera, which of course is not within our capabilities.
This shows how vital our work is and the immense pressure we are under to increase assistance, which we can only really do once we complete the mammoth move to the new shelter and hospital.
Ten years ago this month we broke new ground, both literally and figuratively, when we built the first shelter dedicated to providing refuge and veterinary care to cats and kittens in Bali. And this month we have again broken new ground by officially starting construction on our future home, beginning with the nursery, which is essential as panleukopenia keeps taking lives despite strict infection protocols. Many of the kittens arriving are already carrying the disease and our outdated shelter does not have the space to properly quarantine arriving kittens, particularly as we are well over capacity. But in many cases turning animals away would mean abandoning them to an awful fate - at Villa Kitty they are at least given a chance.
We have also started building the special needs adoption area which is attached to the founder’s home. The special needs cats are much harder to adopt out and many will likely spend their entire lives at Villa Kitty, so it is crucial that their environment emulates a forever home.
After a month filled with tribulations and big beginnings, we still have a long journey ahead to complete the construction of the new shelter and hospital and to continue providing help as pleas for aid increase. Please stay with us and support us, every contribution counts.