Animal Welfare Indonesia Project #55123

Help us care for cats on Gili islands, Indonesia

by Yayasan Ekosistem Gili Indah (Gili Eco Trust)

Help us care for cats on Gili islands, Indonesia

Project Report | Aug 21, 2023
Cat ladies, bag ladies, markets... and more cats!

By Susanna Patari | Project manager, crazy cat lady

Ibu W in front of her home, with some new bags

Greetings from busy Gili Trawangan! It is high season at it’s highest at the moment, there are people everywhere, hotels are full, boats coming from Bali are full… and we too have been busy with all things cats!

FINALLY! BagLady Project - our empty cat food bags turned into cool bags and pouches!

As you can imagine, we go through mountains of cat food. Most of the cat food we use comes in big 20kg bags. For years now we have given all these big empty bags to our mama foundation Gili Eco Trust, to use the bags for island clean-up events. However, as the material is pretty strong, and often has cute cat pictures, we have tried to find a way to make something nice and usable from the bag materials. For years we have been looking for someone we can team up with and get this Bag Lady Project going!

Finally a few months ago we met Ibu W, who lives in a small village in Lombok. She needed more work and income, she has a sewing machine, and she was very happy to start making some bags and pouches for us. We started with a few samples of big beach bags she made, and those turned out amazing. We now have several different types of bags available, as well as big selection of zipper pouches. We provide the material (cat food bags, as well as toilet litter bags), Ibu W does the magic with her sewing machine and we pay her for each item she makes.

This is a fantastic win-win situation: all the plastic cat food bags get a new life as usable, long-lasting bags and pouches, Ibu W gets work and income, we get these items to sell at our charity shop, people who buy the items get cool and usable one-of-a-kind bags, and in the end: we get more money to fund our work with Gili island kitties. So, our Bag Lady Project brings income both for Ibu W in Lombok and for our cats here in Gili islands.

Also, now anyone who buys big bags of cat food from us, can return the empty bags to us, and we will recycle the bags to this fantastic bag project.

Our cat café KAFE KUCING got a little facelift

When we built our new cat café Kafe Kucing earlier this year, everything was done with a minimal budget. We simply had no money spend, so we started with a very simple set-up, and just hoped for the best. We opened the café in mid-April and have since saved every rupiah the café has made to be able to do a little facelift. And at the end of July we finally had enough money saved to be able to buy some nice wood planks and get our trusted building crew back on site. Again, we did go with minimal budget, and only used paid workers for stuff we cannot do ourselves: to put up the new walls. Paintwork, decorations and other details we’ve done ourselves, with a little help from local friends.

We now have new walls around the cafe, but our café still has an open plan and will stay that way. The café cats are free to come and go as they please, and if they feel they’ve had enough of humans, they can go and hide from the admiring cat tourists.

While doing this little reno/upgrade, the café has been open as usual and it has been fairly busy. We love meeting cat loving people from all over the world! And our cats love the attention and the cuddles they get from our customers.

The cats also love donuts they steal from our customers, but that’s another story…

Visiting Lombok Creative Market

In July we were invited to join the 2nd Lombok Creative Market, held at Naughty Little Cat Park in Mataram, Lombok's biggest city. Gili Eco Trust joined us so we had two market stalls together, where we sold our merch, eco friendly products and shared information about all the environmental work Gili Eco Trust is doing, including cat project, of course.

The Creative Market Day was a lovely day in a lovely place, and it was so nice to finally meet the people who run the Naughty Little Cat Park.

Naughty Little Cat Park has a little restaurant, shop and a big garden for cats and other rescued animals (we loved the ducks and geese!). They take in cats in need, when they can, and organize vet care and spay/neuter for the rescued cats in their care.

We often get messages from people living or visiting Lombok when they are looking for help for cats in need. It’s good to know now we can ask them to contact Naughty Little Cat Park first to try find help locally in Lombok.

We take in cats and kittens from Lombok only if there is no other option and there is no help available in Lombok.

Rescued cats and kittens keep on coming and we are preparing for big cat rescue/rehoming from Lombok

It is high season for tourism here now, and more people around means more eyes around spotting cats and kittens in need. We happily take in generally healthy kittens, who are not in need of intensive veterinary care, but are more in need of some TLC and a safe place to be. Anyone reporting seriously sick or injured cats, we tell them to contact the island vet clinic for help, since there now is such a thing and a vet working here permanently.

As of writing this report (mid-August 2023) we are preparing and getting organized for a big cat rescue/re-homing from Lombok. 11 cats and kittens need re-homing. The lady who has them is overwhelmed with the care of them, struggles to even feed them all, cannot afford vet bills to get them spayed or neutered... and one of the female cats is pregnant again.

We tried to find other solutions first, but for example our friends at Naughty Little Cat Park in Lombok are full and cannot take in more cats at the moment.

So, although we have more than enough cats ourselves too, we are bringing the cats here and we will get them spayed/neutered, vaccined, dewormed etc, and hopefully we can also find homes to at least some of them.

Please follow our social media to stay updated about this case.

For the rest of this year:

We continue looking after cats and kittens that are brought to us. Cat rescue work is the core of what we have been doing for the past 10 years, and it still is what we are and what we do. Everything else (charity shop and café) is just to support our work with cats.
Our Purr It Forward –cause is still ongoing, supporting local cat loving families and individuals in need with free cat food.
We continue making our new café and little charity shop better and whenever there is time we work on new merchandise designs and artwork. We want to be unique, a place you cannot find elsewhere.
Our new Bag Lady Project will continue and we recycle all our big cat food and cat litter bags to this cause
And last but not least: we hope we will soon be able to hire a cat loving person to work for us. We are currently surviving with volunteers stepping in to help when things get too busy, but we are desperate to find permanent staff member or two to help run everything smoothly.

THANK YOU FOR DONATING! WE COULD NOT DO ALL THIS WITHOUT YOUR SUPPORT!

We are sending loud, warm purrs to everyone who has donated to our island kitties. Thank you!

Kitten Makechi has been in our care since mid-July

Kitten Mona was found in a local warung

Our table in Lombok Creative Market in July

Cat Obelix loves to nap on our new cafe window

We still give free cat food for those who need it

Links:

Cats Of Gili INSTAGRAM

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Apr 26, 2023
Peace, love, cats and coffee

By Susanna Patari | Project manager, crazy cat lady

KAFE KUCING - Our humble tiny cat cafe

Peace, love, cats and coffee

We have started this year with a big bang! We have opened a humble little cat café!

Our café is called KAFE KUCING, which means cat café in Indonesian language, and our café is located right in front of our charity shop. We opened on April 17^th and since the opening our café has been fairly busy every day, serving yummy drinks and cat cookies for cat loving customers. And response has been pretty amazing, people have been super excited.

And why did we go this way? There’s a few reasons. One being people have been asking for us to open a cat cafe for years. We didn’t really think a cat café is needed, since every hotel, bar, café or restaurant here has cats, and no matter where you sit down to have a drink or food, cats will soon come to hang around. But all the questions made us think maybe a cute little café that is very very clearly cat themed would actually be a good idea.

Another reason for opening a café was money. Of course. We want and we need to make our own money, and not just rely on donations. Although our little charity shop brings a bit income, we’ve still been struggling financially a lot. It is draining to be always stressed about money and having to worry if you have enough to buy all the cat food you need this month. And also, we really need to be able to hire a person or two to work for us full time, so money for future staff salaries is needed. So, we had to create new ways to fund our work and hopefully the cat café will not only be a lovely hangout spot for cat loving visitors, but it will also make some positive changes to our kittycat bank account.

And one reason for going the café-way was that for the first time since we started 10 years ago we now had time, space and possibility for some café action. Since a permanent vet clinic opened on the island last year, not all cats needing help come to us any longer. Sick and injured cats needing proper veterinary care can go directly to the vet clinic, instead of coming to us. So with a bit of organizing, we were able to have space for café stuff and café action.

Our café was built with a minimal budget and most of the work was done by the grumpy old cat lady (yours truly). We used hired builders only to do the main structures: concrete floor and the roof. Zero donation money was spent on building the café, the costs were all covered with cat shop income and personal savings.

Our humble tiny cat café may be a very teeny tiny café, but it sure is unique. All decorations and artwork are our own, and all our drinks are fresh and homemade. And maybe our little café will is going to help put Gili islands on the map for all cat tourists around the world!

While building the café, we’ve been looking after cats and kittens, as usual

We still get approx. 10 cats or kittens (sometimes also ducks, chickens and even goats) per month to look after, and we will continue to do so if and when needed. We NEVER turn away a cat in need. Most cats stay in our care for several weeks, and while some of the kittens do get adopted, many of them end up staying forever. All cats and kittens in our care get dewormed, vaccinated, treated for fleas etc, and they of course get their bellies full of yummy food. And don’t forget, we still have a dozen or two (or three) of our old rescue cats, plus several neighborhood cats we are looking after and making sure they all are well fed.

For the rest of this year:

We continue looking after cats and kittens (and chickens, ducks, goats) that are brought to us.

We will keep our Purr It Forward –cause going, supporting a few local cat loving families with free cat food.

We will slowly make our new cat café and our little charity shop better. We go more and more towards all our cute cat merchandise being our own designs. We want to be unique, a place you cannot find elsewhere.

And last but not least: we hope we will soon be able to hire one or two cat loving persons to work for us. Yes, we do have volunteers helping when needed, but we need real staff to help keep the whole circus running smoothly. We have our usual cat rescue action, a charity shop and now a new cat café, so yes, working staff is desperately needed.

THANK YOU FOR DONATING! WE COULD NOT DO ALL THIS WITHOUT YOUR SUPPORT!

We are sending loud, warm purrs to everyone who has donated to our island kitties. Thank you!

Peace, love, cats and coffee

Kitten Obelix arrived from Gili Meno in February

A sick baby goat stayed with us for a while

Casper has been in our care for almost 2 months

Links:

Kafe Kucing on Instagram

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Jan 3, 2023
Goodbye 2022, and welcome 2023!

By Susanna Patari | Project manager, crazy cat lady

We were feeding cats every day for over 2 years

Summary of 2022

What a crazy, rollercoaster year this 2022 was!

2022 didn’t start too well: covid restrictions were still in place, Indonesian borders pretty much closed, and zero tourism on our little islands. But that was nothing new: we had been living with this since March 2020.

When covid started to cause problems and Gili islands went to lockdown in March 2020, we had to start feeding our island cats. And we continued to do so, every day, rain or shine. Our teams of “Pussy Patrollers” were out and about, feeding hundreds of cats daily. We also had to send hundreds and hundreds of kilos of cat food to our neighbouring islands Gili Meno and Gili Air, to help people there feed the cats on those islands. Needless to say, this cost us a fortune. Our monthly cat food costs were doubled, sometimes tripled, during the covid months. But no matter how much it cost, main thing was that our island cats were kept well fed through the pandemic. We could not have been able to do this without the support from cat loving people around the world. No words to express how grateful we, and our cats, are.

Finally in May 2022 the borders opened up and tourist visas to Indonesia became available again. And how amazing was it to see people had not forgotten our tiny islands: travelers started to return as soon as it was possible, fast boats from Bali arriving with full loads of happy holidaymakers. Businesses started opening again, people had jobs and income again. Things were finally starting to get back to normal!

For us this meant that we were FINALLY able to slowly stop our PussyPatrol feedings, and we did that over several weeks during June and July. Cats can now find food so easily, since all restaurants are open, and loads of tourists happily feed the cats too.

We still do have a few feeding spots, in areas with tons of cats, and we still give free cat food to a couple of local families who have several cats.

Once our cat food costs per month were no longer astronomical, we were able to save a bit money and spend it on other things. For example, we were finally able to stock up on vaccines and medicines we desperately needed.

At our “meowquarters” aka charity cat shop we have been looking after cats and kittens needing help, and during 2022 we’ve had nearly 100 cats or kittens stay in our care. Most of our cat patients stay for several weeks, some even several months. Cats and kittens come to us for several reasons: some just need a safe place to be, some are hungry and need a bit fattening up, some have minor injuries and need a place where to recover, some are sick and need medication and care. Luckily now there is also a vet clinic on the island, so most sick cats go there and not to us. We can now better concentrate on taking care of orphan kittens and other cats who do not require intensive medical care.

So, even though the year started being fairly miserable, life has been slowly returning towards normal. And we have been doing what we have been doing since we started back in 2013: looking after gazillion cats and kittens, and doing the best we can to keep our island cat population happy and well fed.

SOME HOPES AND PLANS FOR NEXT YEAR

First of all: we sure hope 2023 will be a normal year, we don’t want to see anything crazy happening! Let us have a quiet, boring year, please!

We hope to see our cat food costs dropping back to normal, so at least some rupiahs could be saved and/or spent on othert stuff.

We will continue taking in kittens and cats (and chickens and ducks…) in need. We NEVER turn away a cat in need.

We will continue our Purr It Forward –cause, which supports local cat loving families with cat food.

We hope to keep on making our little charity shop better, because every rupiah our shop makes helps us continue our work. We think it is very important to make some money by ourselves. Donations help us a lot, but we do not want to exhaust people with non-stop begging for donations. Therefore, our little shop needs to support our work too. We hope more people find us and come to visit. And we will continue to work on some cool new designs we can turn into bestselling cat merchandise.

We will also think of more ways to make Gili islands become better known as one of the top holiday destinations for cat loving humans. We’ve heard “cat tourism” is a big thing and we think our island cats are so cute they certainly should be a tourist attraction too!

THANK YOU AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

We are very very grateful for the support we have been receiving the past few years and we are sending loud, warm purrs to everyone who has donated to our island kitties. We couldn’t keep going without your help!

And HAPPY MEOW YEAR, EVERYONE! Let’s hope 2023 will be a good year!

Our Purr It Forward -cause supports local families

Kitten being treated for severe eye infection

Our charity shop aka "meowquarters"

Rescue kitten Toby arrived on Boxing Day

Links:

Cats Of Gili website

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