It’s rough living on a small Croatian island, especially if you’re a cat. Resources are limited even for humans, so you can imagine the challenges animals face. But we do have some good news!
After 20 years of doing without, Vis finally got a vet in May of this year. The clinic is only open two half-days per week, but at least we’re able to plan our TNR work around those days and avoid putting cats through the long trip to the mainland and back. The town of Vis has been paying for sterilisation since February of 2020, and so far over 300 cats have been sterilised!
Want to know what else we’ve been up to? Here’s a short list.
We care for three cat colonies year-round: one on private land, one at Tommy supermarket, and the other at Wellington, the town’s rubbish dump. In total, we feed and care for 36 adult cats in these groups. Colony care means making sure cats have food, water and shelter, keeping an eye out for any freshly-dumped cats or kittens, and dealing with health problems as they arise. We recently got a freshly-dumped female cat sterilized, and are still in the process of treating another cat for lesions.
At this time of year we have a lot of requests to help kittens. Our newest kitten came from the rubbish dump known as Wellington. We regularly respond to requests to help sick kittens found on the street, and as the vet is only on the island two half-days per week, we still often need to take kittens to Split for veterinary assessment and treatment.
Street Cats of Vis is a very small group of volunteers, and we’re always stretching our resources. Physical space to care for kittens is limited, and permanent homes here are not easy to find. We’re always looking for people who could help foster, who might like to adopt, or who are traveling by car and would be willing to transport a cat or kitten to their new forever home elsewhere in Europe.
As busy as we are helping and caring for cats, we’re also trying to be more active on social media to highlight the situation here, find homes for cats and kittens and to help cover veterinary and feeding costs. If you’re interested in helping, you can find all our contact info at streetcatsofvis.com. We look forward to hearing from you!
What a great charity.