Please, put a little shine and sparkle into 2024.
When each New Year dawns at Villa Kitty, I excitedly hope, no, believe, that it will be a happier, more sparkly year than that just ended. For a few shiny, brand new days, I cling to this belief like a drowning woman to a rope. Inevitably the shine diminishes, the rope frays, and I realise that Bali has burst the bubble of hope yet again. Welcome to 2024 and the harsh realities it brings.
I pledged to our staff that we would be tougher on those finders bringing in abandoned kittens and cats. Examine any possibility that they can care for them at home. Sigh. Inevitably they are people who do not live on Bali or who reside in a kost (Indonesian boarding rooms) or are tearful children who know the house rules. NO kittens or cats!
Yes, this happens. So 2024 has started as 2023 ended. We are being inundated with tiny ones, sick ones and even a puppy.
Our 21st January report revealed that this month alone we have received 69 kittens, cats and yes, the puppy. We are at a loss as to how to manage this situation. How do we turn away people who have nowhere else to go? What do we say to the tourists who have spent half a day looking for the mother of babies they have found in a cardboard box on the side of a busy road? I know you’ve heard this last month, last year and the years before that, but this is our reality. This is what we live with every single day. This is the direct result of the entrenched practice of ripping kittens from their mums and tossing them out, on roads, in gutters, on garbage dumps. Crying, terrified infants. We find them in rice sacks, in plastic bags, cowering in wet cardboard, or simply shivering, exposed to the elements.
The most urgent solution available to Villa Kitty is to ramp up the mass sterilisation of Bali’s feline population, male and female. It’s not a quick fix: this is a huge project but Villa Kitty has progressed along this path and is committed to the long haul. Villa Kitty Foundation carried out 1,354 sterilisations in 2023. We need to at least double this number in 2024, even triple it. What’s stopping us? Just one thing: money.
On 18 January, our managing vet, Dr Tyas, attended a seminar convened by the Indonesian Veterinary Medical Association and Villa Kitty Foundation was commended for our free sterilisation program. Despite the recognition, there is still no funding for foundations such as ours. We employ three vets who work 7 days a week and cover 11 hours daily and their work involves caring for the hordes of cats and kittens in our hospital, nursery and quarantine buildings. The increase of kittens and cats arriving amplifies the risk of cat flu. Our hospital is crammed full of patients so we have devised ways to keep our not -so- sick cats out of the wards by enclosing our Bales. Our three full time vets work non stop through their shifts, facing a diversity of illnesses, diseases, challenges and risks.
For those cats and puppies who turn up on our doorstep, we have two visiting vets who attend Villa Kitty three days a week to carry out free sterilisations. These two vets will operate on 10-15 cats per day and would do more, but our operating room and our equipment only allows this capacity. We need to increase our days. Obvious really, but it requires more funding. And here we are with overcrowding and the huge worry with viruses like cat flu spreading. Meanwhile, what do we do? Tell the tourist to dump the kitten back on the street? Could you do that? Should we do that?
Every day we agonise over these issues and wrestle with the questions and every day we reach the same decision: act with kindness. The kindest thing for all involved, the rescuers, the kittens and cats and puppies, is to try to save lives here at Villa Kitty by caring, vaccinating and sterilising. Then shoot for the stars: find these beautiful animals their forever homes through adoption.
Will you help us? The lives we save are worth every donation. Even those we lose have known comfort and love with their last breaths. Please, put a little shine and sparkle into 2024.
Thank you for always being there for the street cats of Bali.
With warm regards,
Elizabeth Henzell
Founder
Villa Kitty Foundation