Forth Street Kittens and Cats desexing fund

Mia, Trinny and Tabitha are 5 months old female kittens, Possum, Scout and Ebony about 4 months, and Heidi is a baby at just 9-10 weeks old. They were born wild under student flats around the University of Otago. There are thousands of feral and semi-feral cats in the North Dunedin area. Dunedin City Council Animal Control will take care of stray dogs, but nobody ever tried to solve the problem of stray and feral cats in the area. They are breeding uncontrollably, living under old houses on piles and surviving on what they can find in the rubbish bags once a week. Every Monday (rubbish pick-up day) bags are ripped apart and the contents scattered all over surrounding streets.

Last summer me and my friend were trapping kittens on one of the streets, there was a cat that could barely walk, he was covered in sores, his eyes were all inflamed and we could not get close to him as he was feral, but couple of days later we got him in the trap. Never ever in my life have I seen a cat in such horrible state, I don’t know how he was still alive, the smell of rotten flesh that was coming from the cage was excruciating! His ears were eaten away by cancer and ear-mites, his body was covered in sores and he was almost blind and extremely skinny. Unfortunately we couldn’t save him, he was too far gone and we had to make a tough call to put him down. I don’t know how old the cat was. He looked very old but it is possible that he was only about 4-5 years old. Domestic cats can live happily over 20 years, but urban strays usually only survive for about 3-4 years! And it is no surprise considering that they are starving, having to fight for rotten rubbish and getting scratches, bites and infections that will never heal and often lead to more serious diseases. These diseases are then transmitted to other cats within the stray and domestic population.

So this is the life for the urban feral cat. I wish I could help them all, but it is not possible. But with your help I hope we will be able to help a few of them and work towards reducing their population and suffering. We are trapping kittens like Mia, Trinny, Tabitha, Possum, Scout, Ebony and Heidi, taming them, desexing them and (hopefully) rehoming them, so they will never ever experience the same life their mothers did. Also we are desexing and releasing mothers if they are still in reasonable health. Please help us to make a difference at least for some of those cats, without your help we will not be able to help many. We do it all voluntarily of course, but vet bills are really high, and we need to find ways to pay them. Every bit helps, even giving up today's cup of coffee and donating the cost to us would be greatly appreciated! If you are a poor student and can only donate a dollar it will also help, imagine if everyone who see this will donate at least a dollar! Sometimes people think if I can’t afford to donate much, my small donation won’t matter, but it all adds up and it does matter! So please help us to help those poor cats! A massive thank you from our small but very dedicated team of volunteers and of course all rescued cats! :-)