Pefkos, Rhodes, Greece - cats!

First of all, just to be clear...The Internet is Made of Cats (see below)

As promised, here is my Greek Cat blog.  

One of the things that I most love, but also find most upsetting when visiting places like Pefkos this year or Side, Turkey last year; are the gorgeously cute cats that are borderline or fully feral / stray.  

Before we flew out, my brother-in-law was suggesting that we should bring cat food with us, at first I was resistant, however, actually having spent 10 days in the company of some lovely (but very skinny) cats I think that maybe on reflection I would bring out food if I were to go again.

We met many cats across the course of our 10 day holiday and as they probably don't have owners to remember them, I would like to share their stories (and pictures) with the internet because if there is one thing that the internet needs it's MORE CATS!

The first cat that we met was at 8.30am the morning after arriving to our hotel at 4.30am.  Brother-in-law woke us up for breakfast and bleary eyed I opened the door to be greeted by several people and this lovely lady that had already been named "Princess" by Brother in Law and Sister in Law (pictured here distracting husband from his reading).

This lady had a very small face, skinny legs and a huge belly and we think was quite heavily pregnant.  She was very friendly and so I was able to stroke her and tried to feel if I could gently detect any babies moving in her belly, but I couldn't feel anything (mostly I think because she was purring too hard!).  She liked anything we offered her to eat which ranged from ham, a very small ash tray (clean) of milk to James Wellbeloved which was imported by Brother in Law especially for the Greek cats.  (She must be Greek as she even stole some Feta!

We think that the father of Princess's babies was this chap on the right.  I think he is quite the lothario, as we saw him on our walk to Anixis for dinner with a whole host of other kittens and lady cats!  We didn't actually name him, although Lothario might be appropriate?

Of course when you go out to eat (As I mentioned in my previous blog post about Food), you can't escape the pitiful and hungry eyes of cats and kittens asking for some food.  Here are some the cats we met at the restaurants.

This lady cat had the biggest and most scared looking eyes of any cat that I've ever seen, she was hanging out just next to Artemis and she wouldn't come for a stroke, but was pleased when we gave her a few morsels of lovely food.

This cat made me especially sad.   We met him on our last night in Pefkos at Georges and the waiting staff every other minute were chasing him and his friends away from our table (we really didn't mind, but I think that the staff did as obviously not everyone is as cat mad as we are so we had to do it very discreetly)  

He made me sad for two reasons.  Firstly he is the spitting image of our beautiful Stipey cat (below) who unfortunately went for a wander in November 2009 and hasn't come back yet and we still miss loads.

And secondly, the Greek Stipey had obviously seriously injured and broken his back leg and it had healed completely twisted and facing the wrong way.  It didn't seem to phase him too much and he was happy to pester us for as much food as possible, but he looked very twisted up.

This picture makes me a bit happier - it shows the total kitty disrespect for the Greek ruins at the Acropolis in Lindos - they are all asleep on it!

This cat was also at the Acropolis and was very interested in getting into my Mother in law's bag and enjoyed eating some cheese biscuits.

These two were both in the car park in Lindos, the first one was a bit mangey looking and made me feel guilty for not taking her photo - so I did and here she is looking a bit strange.  The second boy cat has clearly staked his claim on a very dusty vintage open top car.

The next day we visited Rhodes Old town and met a couple more kitties.  The first one is hanging out around the bins near the Street of the Knights, if you look carefully there is another one asleep behind the bins.  The second one stole some cheese from my Mother in Law (she was offering it in his general direction) and on the way back made himself look pretty with a flower.  The bottom one is protecting a can of tuna with his tail whilst sleeping next to where they have the Sound and Light Show.

On the main street of Pefkos is an open field and at night there are at least 10 cats on the wall begging for food from passers by.  We came across quite a few people feeding the cats tins of cat food which seemed to be much appreciated by the cats.

Below is a more plastic version of a Greek cat that I met...and purchased :-)  During our holiday there were several people who came up to us and put lighters, and other bits of tat on our tables with a card saying something like "I'm deaf and would like to speak with you, but I can't so please take a look at my wares and buy if you like, this is how I make my living"  As you can see, I had been drinking a few cocktails, so I was easier to convince!

As I've been writing this blog, I've been searching for other articles about stray cats in Greece and have come across a couple of charities - Friends of the Strays of Greece and The Greek Cat Welfare Society.  These charities both seem to try and help the strays by neutering, administering veterinary treatment, trying re-home and generally raising money for Greek cats.    

I also came across this rather upsetting article on my most detested "newspaper" The Daily Fail (and as much as I hate giving them ad revenue, I did think that it was necessary to comment on this article - don't read if you get upset by articles about animal cruelty)  

I'm now not sure whether feeding strays is a good or bad idea and a lot of cat haters seem to put out a lot of negative comments on this topic.  The only sensible advice I've found seems to be here at Nine Lives Greece who have some dos and don't's for dealing with stray cats.

If anyone knows of the best way to help Greek cats, I would be interested in hearing more.