Cats of Gili
Cats and cat clinics
There are cats everywhere in the Gili islands!
Cats Of Gili is a non-profit animal welfare project to help our feline islanders.
Some cats has got a home, many don’t, some have a relaxing life as beach bums around the beach restaurants, some prefer the local villages.
Cats of Gili Islands have funny tails: short, long, bended, curly… there’s no limit to the tail models here! And the cats are born with their weird tails, it’s a genetic weirdness they have. So no worries: no-one is doing anything to the tails to make them look so strange!
You will see cats with tipped ears, that has been done by vets. The vets mark all the cats that have been to our clinic for spay/neuter by cutting a small piece off their ears. This way we avoid bringing the same cats to the next clinic twice. The mark in the ear can be spotted easy. Cats do not suffer from the ear marking, they are sleeping when it’s done.
There are also lots of different colour combinations, but most commonly cats are ginger or tabby. Did you know all 3-coloured cats (that have black-white-ginger in their fur) are females? If there was a 3-coloured male cat, the locals have a belief it is a king cat, ruler of the feline world, and considered very special (and expensive!). So far, we have never seen a 3-coloured male here, but females are around.
Most cats of the islands are healthy, happy and fat, begging food from tourists or even stealing if you look the other way.
Taking a nap in the shade when the sun is too hot, climbing trees, playing with other cats and chasing small crabs on the beach.
Here are thousands of cats, we also do see sick cats and cats that are hurt. Cidomos, the horse carts of the islands, go way too fast and sometimes cats get run over. Recently people have started to buy electronic motorbikes, that are silent and dangerous, and we’ve seen many cats die from injuries they got when ran over by these nasty vehicles.
There are several serious diseases and viruses going around: feline panleukopenia, for example, that gets very active as soon as the rainy season starts. Due to inbreeding the cats have possibly other genetic weirdnesses than just the tails. Lots of the kittens that are born, die very young.
We have no idea why, but it might be there is something wrong inside. There’s also eye infections, ear infections, fungal skin infections, worms, cat flu, etc. You name it, our cats have it, for sure. This is why Cats of Gili are here.
Except rabies! That we do not have here, so no need to freak out about that!
Cat clinics
The main thing we do is to organize big – and free – spay & neuter clinics.
Cat population on Gili Islands is huge. We do love cats, and love having them around, but honestly, there were too many and not all cats were healthy or happy.
Breeding was totally out of control, therefore organizing big spay/neuter clinics has been, and still is, our main job. With spay and neuter, we hope that at some point we may have less cats but a healthier, happier cat population.
Since Cats of Gili project was launched in September 2013, we have organized 10 big cat clinics. In these clinics nearly 2500 cats have visited the vets and of those almost 1900 cats have been spayed or neutered.
This already has made a difference! You see lots of healthy, happy – and fat – cats roaming the streets and restaurants! But as the Gili islands have thousands of cats, the spay/neuter project must be continued, and this is why we organize 2-4 big, free cat clinics per year.
These cat clinics are organized together with Gili Eco Trust and Jakarta Animal Aid Network.
We also always have volunteer vets, who come to help and work long days at the clinic.
During these clinics we welcome other volunteers to come and help in catching cats and looking after them when they are recovering from the operation.
If you are interested in joining our future cat clinics, see our volunteer-info for details.
If you see cats around that have a triangular piece of ear missing, that usually is a sign that the cat has been to our clinic and has been spayed or neutered.
They mark the cats this way, so that when the next clinic comes, we do not spend time catching cats that have already been to our previous clinics.
Please feel free to us to find out when the next cat clinic is.
If you are on the Gili islands during our cat clinics, please come and help out!
Have fun and be safe!