Taking Care of the Kennedy Park Cats

 

 

Feeding the cats

Feral and domestic cats living permanently in the park need to be well fed in order to help them survive the hardship of an outdoor life.  They require up to 20 kilos of canned and dried food on a daily basis. Due to lack of funds and donations, GVDF usually only succeeds in obtaining 10 kilos of daily food. Currently various cats suffer from gingivitis, which is why, in addition to dry food, GVDF has to purchase wet food to avoid them going hungry. It is unfortunately very difficult to find people ready to adopt cats with that disease.  

 

Cats are very territorial. This is why we distribute food “by tree”, since each of them belongs to a specific piece of territory. When there are more than a dozen cats at a certain point, food is given in individual disposable dishes. Water is placed at each food point, although in summer it is quickly used.

 

Deworming, vaccinating and defleaing

Sanitary authorities require the cats to be dewormed every six months and get rabies shot once a year as they live in a public area. When funds are available, GVDF also vaccinates the cats with the triple and proceeds to deflea them.

 

Spaying and neutering program

Since new, unsprayed cats are abandoned every week, GVDF must constantly take them to the vet. In average 4 cats, males and females are sterilized per week. While male cats are usually returned to the park the same day, female usually remain in foster care for a week so that their recovery be complete.

 

Apart from spaying and neutering the cats from the park, we also try to spread consciousness to the public by delivering tracts in favor of spaying and neutering and against abandonment.

 

Providing medical treatment for sick and injured cats

Every single day people abandon cats and kittens in the park, covered with lice, sometimes with broken legs, pneumonia and other diseases. Cats venturing outside their areas and new cats are often beaten and drawn away by resident cats, thus exposing themselves to many dangers (i.e. crossing the street) and resulting in accidents. In the humid winter many cats get colds and have to be given shots and eye medicine. When they are too small or too sick to be left in the park, those cats are taken in for medical treatment and temporary fostering until they can be adopted. 

 

GVDF counts with the assistance of two veterinarians who offer us their services at low prices. However, due to the high number of cats being treated, our debts with them are very high. Furthermore, medicine still has to be bought and is often very expensive. Finding enough funds to cover veterinary costs is always a challenge, which is why we regularly organize a flea market to sell donated objects. The recollected funds go entirely to cover part of our high veterinary costs.

 

Protecting the Cats

As stated before, GVDF constantly has to protect the cats against ill intentioned people.

This includes sheltering them during end of year festivities and during the Corso de Wong, an annual parade around the park which ends up with fireworks inside the park itself. Similarly, at Christmas and New Year’s Eve many people go to the park to use their fireworks, including prohibited ones. This is why GVDF volunteers have to gather all the cats and store them in a truck for a day, leaving out the feral cats which have to endure the fireworks and risk their lives running away desperately.