Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1488480
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 27 MARCH 2022 OPINION 3 LETTERS & EDITORIAL maltatoday | SUNDAY • 18 DECEMBER 2022 Mikiel Galea Letters & Clarifications Cat crisis ON 14 December 2022, a meeting was held with Minister Anton Refalo and Animal Guardians Malta, who, for over six years, have been running a Cat Therapy Cat Café, caring for 300 cats and kittens, inside St Vincent de Paul elderly people's home. We were directly given permission to use the area by the then-minister for the elderly Justyne Caruana on June 2016. We were set up specifically as a cat therapy centre and believe that it is of utmost importance that it remains that way. This NGO has been giving a lot to our country's animal welfare, through years of continuous voluntary work, taking in society's abandoned animals, caring for them, and helping children and elderly with special needs through animal therapy. Instead of being supported, we have been battered for over six years. The area around our Cat Café is not tar- macked, with elderly on wheelchairs getting punctures. When a high wall exactly behind our premises fell on us last October 2021 because of the rain, the back part of our shelter was left damaged, and SVDP did not fix it for us. In fact it is still destroyed and cannot be used. With containers dumped exactly in front of our café, it makes it difficult for us to hold fundraising car washes or cake bake sells. We have been asking the SVDP administration for ages to kindly tar- mac the area and clear the containers, give us more covered skips, and make the area eye-pleasing with plants and flowers, like the other open areas at St Vincent de Paul, and this in the best interest of the elderly, but to no avail. We have told minister Refalo that hundreds of our country's of stray cat feeders, fosterers, and carers are in a desperate situation....with the nev- er-ending trauma of caring for un-neu- tered strays, pregnant cats and kittens. Besides the huge stress, this involves a lot of money. These people are self- lessly giving all they can for the strays, but direct help from the government is a must. The little help from a handful of considerate local councils does not solve this huge problem. Another difficulty stray cat feeders and fosterers come across is that many rescued cats/kittens, after neutering, cannot be returned to their territory because of lack of safety from road and home construction. Nor can the hun- dreds of kittens being kept by fosterers. With the suffering of stray animals in mind, and to lessen the hardship of the stray cat feeders and fosterers, we have put forward two proposals so that the disastrous situation of stray cats and kittens suffering in our countryside, streets and derelict buildings is min- imised, and hopefully solved within a couple of years' time. The necessity of a well-planned effective mass neutering plan, to be implemented by not later than March 2023 (because of the kitten season). This needs to be planned well, to be done in a professional manner – not with paid trappers, who do not all care about the animals' well-being – but given directly to the stray cat feeders to trap and transport to vet. Forms of transport need to be provided for the cats to be taken to and from the vets. Also of importance – planned facilities for the neutered/spayed cats to be kept in recovery for minimum of six days, not dumped in fields exactly after leaving the vet. 2. We also emphasised the urgent need of a National Animal Sanctuary to provide shelter for the many stray cats and kittens, whose number has exploded and whose territory is no longer safe, or they are no longer fit to live in the streets. This sanctuary plan already exists and was designed by Architect Martin Debono. Also, in 2017, a secret, foreign mil- lionaire began depositing monthly cheques of €2,500 into a local BOV account (The Malta Independent, 16 April 2017) with the intention that a National Animal Sanctuary would be built in Ta' Qali. But it seems not enough money was deposited for this dream of many animal lovers to be- come a reality. Minister Refalo stated that in fact, the money donated by this person only amounted to around €17,000, but that the building of a National Animal Sanctuary was in the pipeline of his ministry, and would cost much more. So we are certainly looking forward to more information about this won- derful initiative and much needed sanctuary. Our NGO is ready to work hand in hand with the ministry on both issues proposed. Carmen Coleiro Animal Guardians Malta