2010 Colony Cats UPDATE

The end of March we found the body of one of our favorite, sweetest cats ... I brought him in for a necropsy which confirmed he died from wounds inflicted by a dog... We all thought it was a random attack, since we never see dogs around... but then we started missing more and more cats.. then we found several more bodies mutilated by dogs.... Cats that depended on us to keep them safe. Most of these cats were friendly loving cats who would spend most of their time in our office, next to us, or lounging on our steps...
We heard from someone that they did see a couple dogs in the area a few times.... and sure enough, two dogs had moved into our area, could have b een "homeless" peoples "pets", or just a couple dogs someone let go in the area, cause they didn't want them anymore...
Although they had plenty to eat, with all our feeding stations, these dogs attacked anything that moved just for the "fun" of killing!
We have lost between 20 and 30 cats! Our friends! It has been devastating! It is absolutely horrifying to lose so many friends like this, knowing you might find more bodies or friends missing the next time you go in to work...
Such a terrible way to die....

At least you get some comfort that the cats you have at home are safe... so you think.....
... one day in June we came home and I didn't see Mouse, who always greets me at the door... Searching for him and calling....
I found his lifeless body behind the sofa.... Why now? We didn't see any blood or wounds... We brought him in for a necropsy, which turned out he had a weak heart and he had heart failure! Sweet wonderful Mouse! Not even two years old... At the very least it appeared he did not suffer.
One of my all time favorite kities...

After finding out there were dogs in the area, we got a dog trap and have been trying to catch them ever since, to no avail. We also grabbed as many of the friendliest cats that we could and moved them inside our office. We also took four more to a room in our apartment, which at the time, had 12 already. And we took four more to some land we purchased and have them in a cage...

During this time we found four more small kittens that most likely lost their mom to these dogs, so we took them inside our office too...

But there are so many others that prefer to stay farther from us, whom we can't protect... and lots we don't even know about...

It is now the middle of August, and we haven't seen the dogs in almost a month. We are SO hoping this is over. We are letting the cats from inside the office out again, keeping our fingers crossed, but it's always in the back of your mind... that we will come into work and find these guys dead too,..

We bought several acres of land in Haiku with the plan to create a no kill cat sanctuary some day. A place for feral cats, and those deemed "unadoptable" that otherwise would be killed. We were thinking we could do this down the road sometime, but given the current circumstances, we need to move quickly and fence in an area asap. If you can help us, donate money or materials, it would be greatly appreciated.

Other issues / vet bills we have had recently ... the kittens have upper respiratory illnesses... Recently we had a cat in care recovering from a hematoma surgery, and one in isolation with a contagious skin disease… which we had to build a cage for... besides the regular bills for things like flea meds and food…

Besides all this, on February 27th we had a tsunami warning! We had no idea how big the tsunami would be, you always think the worst and plan for the worst....
Our colony is right next to the ocean! We really couldn't do much , but we did take 3 cats with us to higher ground, whom we thought needed more help than the others... Bunny who has a bad eye, Laptop 2 who had the hematoma surgery, and baby Popoki who was still a kitten... Luckily, the tsunami was very minor, only about 3 feet, so this time we were spared... But the stress indured was enormous...

Please consider helping... if you can donate supplies or help more, please email to contact us...

Thanks for your consideration and compassion.

Some of the Cats we lost in 2010 .....