Finally got round to see a Mum and her 7 kittens taken into care a week ago at 10 days old. Man, these guys are lively little monkeys already and I don't envy Mum or carer once they start walking and exploring :+] Expect lot's more cut e pics...

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Time to update...

Okay, changed the title of the blog from 'Cat Vacation' to , well you can see. The reason behind this has come about since the local cat charity I was part of, FERAL CAT WELFARE, scaled back their cat rescue activities, partly due to funding, partly on the back of some personal reasons by the main organiser. Suffice to say I felt a little cut adrift after having worked with them for the past 2-3 years, helping with fund raising, and providing transport and trapping duties where needed. I am now essentially 'freelance' and whilst work seems to be either a full on, or nothing for weeks, I am still doing what I enjoy best... helping cats. In light of that I am intending to use this blog to share the work I do, as well as highlight cat-related inks, features and stories. Hope you enjoy, if not, thanks for dropping by...

No vets here...

If you were wondering how the volunteers in Athens manage with boarding the cats at vets whilst they are being sterilized, they don't. One one of the trips to drops some cats off down town I got invited into the building to help take the cats upstairs. Expecting a vets office or similar,it turns out the animals are kept in an empty apartment which someone has kindly given over for the group's use. The cats stay in their carriers for the duration of their stay, a long way from the nice cosy vets office and warm, lighted holding pens of the UK vets where the FCW guys usually stay. The cats are operated on and then transferred back to the carriers, with a kind of diaper on the floor of the carrier to soak up any spills. I did see one guy who had had an operation on his ear and he was in 2 transfer cages which had been strapped together to give him more room. These guys are really operating on a minimum budget and making ends meet as best they can. It may not sound ideal from our POV, but the cats ARE getting treated and this is better than not being done at all. The room was clean, didn;t smell, and I have no impression that they are treated with anything but love and kindness whilst in the apartment by a rotating procession of volunteers who come in to clean and feed. This is the outer room and you can see the double cage on the right of the picture

Here is the inner room, you can see the carriers lined up,each one with a cat in. The black and white cat out of cage at the back of the room has recently been taken in after her owner, and old lady, died. The cat was going to be put down and they are currently trying to find her a new home.

These guys should get a medal for doing what they do under such difficult conditions. You would only do this out of love, people come by all hopurs of the evening to let the volunteers in the drop off cats and collect them to return them to their respective neighborhoods. Anyone still wodnering why they need more people chipping in their time to help????

Grabbed by the Fuzz.

Well, today was different. There I was trapping away, slow start, got up to 4 and then 4 police on 2 motorbikes rides up, stop, and pull me to one side to ask me what I was doing. Well, these guys have ridden past a couple of times over the last few days but not stopped before.

I felt a little intimidated by 4 big tooled up foreign cops on my ass, I can tell you. Seems the cats 'belong to an old lady' and we were not allowed to take them. I was ordered to release the cats I have caught and leave the area taking my traps and equipment with me. I rang Petros and he came over as soon as he could, around 30 minutes later. He was furious. he said some interfering busy-body - we suspect it was an old geezer who walked by when Petros was there and asked him what we were doing - had rung them and it drove him crazy. He said the old lady fed the cats but that was it and the police should have known better as we have worked there before. he says this guy is typical of people in Greece who will feed them this week and then poison them the next when they get fed up with them. Petros said they have saying in Greece: 'The fool's mother is always pregnant'. He said there is never any shortage of fools. He told me about a time when he was one the beach and people were trying to stop the dogs going into the sea in case they peed in it! So today was a 4 cat day, then a zero cat day. Nice ending to my Greek trapping experience...NOT! Aside from that there were alot of calcio, tricolor [trik-a-law, as Angeliki k had called them] about today, both adults and kittens.

I realized I haven't posted a shot through the bars, into the abandoned wasteland. This is what the lovely area looks like....

Just where you want kitty to live and grow up.