Help Our Central Cats
- By: Sam Garai
- Short URL: https://archive.backabuddy.co.za/sam-garai-5828635684528269445
- Date Created: 4 February 2024
Personal message
Hi Everyone, I would like to introduce you to an amazing friend of mine, Sam, who is in desperate need of funds / cat food donations / cat litter / petrol money etc.
She tirelessly spends her time, energy and own money to rescue and foster neglected, stray cats.
We connected over social media due to our love of cats, she is on the forefront doing the heartbreaking work of trying to save these cats from a horrible life on the streets, me having some spare cash to help fund her heroic efforts.
I am not in the position to fund the cattery with a garden fountain / cat posts / beds / cat toys so I am reaching out to animal lovers for assistance.
Sam is not affiliated to an organisations and takes the financial burdens on herself and relies on public donations.
Below is Sam’s Story:
About 5 years ago I started fostering for one of the cat rescue organisations. I would take in mom cats and their babies and kittens and rehome them. Fostering is really hard work when you already have your own animals and you work full time.
It takes an enormous amount of time feeding, cleaning litter boxes, playing with them and spending time with them to socialise and tame them if they're feral and medicating them when they're sick.
After fostering and homing 300-400 kittens over the years a friend who has been a field worker for another cat rescue organisation and I went about setting a trap for the mom cat so we could have her sterilised.
Once we had trapped her, we started looking around on the partly inhabited property and we discovered a total of 26 cats and newborns!
To date all the cats on that property have been sterilised and 2 years later I have been feeding them every day.
During the course of the past 2 years and going to this neighbourhood every day, I have found so many street cats and so my journey from fostering at home transitioned to my awareness of all the street cats and the filthy conditions they live in and just how many unwanted kittens are born into that life every year; And so my path of feral cats began.
There are 5 different colonies I have been feeding, trapping and fostering.
Sadly this is one of the worst areas in our city. Drug infested and crime ridden, run by illegal foreigners and considered highly unsafe to be in.
My life has been threatened and I have been shot at.
I have lost kittens that have been killed and my heart has been broken. I have sat in the middle of icy winter on the streets in the pitch dark, trapping cats to sterilise them, to reduce the numbers of street cats.
I cannot turn a blind eye. I cannot see those dirty little faces and make a conscious decision to ignore them. They need to be fed.
I have just finished trapping and sterilising a huge colony in a bad street which has taken a year to do.
I have to start now in the worst, most infamous street in that area and I am scared. I've managed to arranged armed escorts to go with me when I go in there. I'm hoping that once I've met the "important" people who run that street that I'll be safer than if I don't meet them.
To date I have managed to sterilise enough street cats to prevent roughly 4000 kittens from being born into this awful life where they will never receive any form of love, warmth or the correct nutrition.
I now have 12 of my own rescued cats and 3 rescue dogs.
All the street cats I manage to feed and sterilise are all done on public donations for which I am eternally grateful. I don't like begging for money, but if I don't these cats will surely live a more unpleasant life.
My feral kitties are fat and healthy. I treat for fleas and worms.
I cannot stop what I do - I lie in bed at night and I worry about all those little nameless faces.
Donations
- Feb 28, 2024 - R 1 000.00 Fees covered
- "" - Anonymous
- Feb 19, 2024 - USD $ 62.95 Fees covered
- "U are a Angel, keep up the good work" - Anonymous
- Feb 06, 2024 - USD $ 28.33 Fees covered
- "" - Anonymous
- Feb 04, 2024 - USD $ 68.60 Fees covered
- "" - Grant Pittard
- Feb 04, 2024 - R 1 000.00 Fees covered
- "" - Anonymous
- Feb 04, 2024 - R 1 000.00 Fees covered
- "" - Anonymous
Statistics
Fundraising target
R 15 000.00Donations to date
R 5 648.73Help Our Central Cats Campaign
