Stray cats do not have an easy life in the French island of Corsica in the Mediterranean Sea. No one care about and locals mainly see them as annoying problem to avoid and not as living beings in need of care and protection. Moreover, people not particularly sensitive use brutal methods not to have cats around by killing or poisoning them.
The number of community cats is out of control and not just because the rate of abandonment is high, but the primary reason of increase is the lack of sterilization activities.
Local institutions, informed many times about the difficult reality of strays, have been totally unresponsive for now and not interested in providing “tools” useful and necessary at least to band-aid the problem. All over the island, there is not even a public vet service or a shelter to host cats in need of care.
Volunteers of OIPA Corsica have been working in the area of Haute-Corse for many years to help community cats left alone by feeding, caring and sterilizing them. They look after more than 120 cats in 11 different communities distributed throughout the territory and the last month they foster 8 strays who couldn’t live free as in need of specific medical treatments.
OIPA Corsica promotes a sterilization program carried out mainly with volunteers’ financial resources. Sometimes our delegation receives help with “vouchers” but there are so many cats in need that those aids are not enough to cover all expenses.
Next month, 40/45 cats are supposed to be spayed and neutered and volunteers hope this time, following a letter sent to the Major, in the good heart of institutions and their will to support them with food, sterilization activities and public awareness over the existing situation of community cats on the island.
Last month, volunteers offered food support to a person in great economic difficulties who lived camped in an old caravan without water and electricity on the outskirts of a town. They bought food for his 15 dogs, a donkey and a cow. Fortunately, the cow managed to graze in the surrounding countryside, but dogs and donkey were fed also with the help of two bakeries that supplied weekly bags of unsold dry bread.
Other activities of OIPA Corsica include the collection of food in supermarkets and some rescue activities as in the case of Blanca, a community white cat who volunteers are trying to save as she certainly suffers from a cancerous form on both ears and needs a surgery.
SUPPORT THE ACTIVITIES OF OIPA CORSICA IN AID OF COMMUNITY CATS
