Stray cat in Hvar Town

Published in Forum items

We are currently visiting your lovely island and are staying in the Amfora Hotel. Since our arrival we have fallen in love with a beautiful stray young cat.

She seems to spend the majority of her time down by the main harbour area (she sleeps behind the stalls underneath the palm trees, diagonally across from Split Bank). She's jet black all over with a pointed face and eyes and nose resembling a Siamese breed. She's so very thin and malnourished and we have been feeding her and looking after her as best we can during the time we have been here. We were delighted when we found your website, just moments ago. As a tourists, we have been hopeful that an organisation such as yours would exist. I've read about some of your work, your hopes and aspirations for the future. We feel powerless to do very much at all to help the little cat we've fallen in love with.  Can you provide us with any guidance or information as to how we can support the cat?
One question might be, should we enquire about taking her home? Would this be possible? Do you know of anyone who has done this before?
Another question might be, how can we support you as an organisation to help her, and others like her, when we leave?
C & D, visitors from Scotland, June 30th 2014
 
Many thanks for your very kind email. As you may have gathered from the website, yours is a fairly common situation! So far as I know, it is possible to take cats out of the country using the pet passport scheme. It is certainly routine with dogs. I am not familiar with the procedures for cats, but they must be similar to those for dogs. I think you have left it a bit late to do the necessary inoculations for taking her back with you, but I will ask at the vet's tomorrow morning, as I am going there with some of my dogs for their annual vaccinations. If it is not too late, the other thing would be to check with your airline whether you can take a small cat in the cabin, or if she would have to be put in the hold. On most airlines, pets which can fit into a small carrier can go in the cabin, which is of course less traumatic for the animal than putting it into the hold. If it is too late to arrange the transport to Scotland, you should be consoled by the fact that during the summer most of the stray cats are given food by kind tourists and locals or from the restaurants. Cats are generally good survivors, and it is of course important for us to accept that everyone has his/her own destiny. We do what we can to make their lives better and longer, but we can't hope to create an animal utopia in this imperfect world. 
It is kind of you to offer to support our charity, and the details for making donations to our bank account are given on the home page under the heading 'How you can help'. As individuals we help as many animals as we can, and we are working on the animal shelter project, which involves a huge amount of planning and eventually money. Tomorrow we are going to look at potential sites for the shelter, which is key to putting the project forward for funding from international organizations.
If you would like to send me a mobile number, I can text you once I have been to the vet's tomorrow.
Eco Hvar June 30th 2014

From the Vet: Cats over 3 months old have to be micro-chipped and inoculated against rabies, and they can travel a month later. Younger cats do not have to be micro-chipped, just inoculated.

It was therefore too late for C & D to prepare the cat for travel, and anyway as it turned out, their airline would not carry pets of any kind in the hold or in the cabin.

There are lots of helpful tips for travelling with cats on the internet, including 'How to travel with a cat', and 'Cat travel: flying with cats'. 

You are here: Home forum items Stray cat in Hvar Town

Eco Environment News feeds

  • Unless urgent action is taken life will be fundamentally altered for the ancient communities who live on its banks

    As a leader of one of the oldest gnostic religions in the world, Sheikh Nidham Kreidi al-Sabahi must use only water taken from a flowing river, even for drinking.

    The 68-year-old has a long grey beard hanging over his simple tan robe and a white cap covering his equally long hair, which sheikhs are forbidden from cutting. He says he has never got ill from drinking water from the Tigris River and believes that as long as the water is flowing, it is clean. But the truth is that soon it may not be flowing at all.

    Continue reading...

  • Ten years after I first followed the proposed route, I retraced my steps to see what life was like along the world’s most expensive, heavily delayed railway line

    Ten years ago, I walked the route of HS2, the 140-mile railway proposed to run from London to Birmingham, to discover what lay in its path. Nothing had actually been constructed of this, supposedly the first phase of a high-speed line going north. The only trace was the furtive ecological consultants mapping newts and bats and the train’s looming presence in the minds of those who lived along the route. For many, it was a Westminster vanity project, symbolising a country run against the interests of the many to line the pockets of the few. People whose homes were under threat of demolitionwere petitioning parliament, campaigning for more tunnels or hoping the project would collapse before their farms, paddocks and ancient woodlands were wiped out.

    The line, we were told a decade ago, would be completed by 2026. Like many of the early claims about the longest railway to be built in Britain since the Victorian era, that fact no longer stands. The fast train is running – very – late. The official finish date of 2033 was recently revised upwards. “The best guess is that it will begin with a ‘4’ when you can catch a train,” one well-informed observer told me. There’s similar uncertainty about its cost, but one thing is sure: it is catastrophically over budget. When complete, HS2 will almost certainly be the most expensive railway in the world. Nearly 20 years ago, HS1, the line from the Channel tunnel to St Pancras, was completed on time and on budget for £51m per mile (£87m in today’s prices). It was criticised for being twice as expensive as a high-speed route constructed in France. HS2 may cost almost £1bn per mile.

    Continue reading...

  • The oil and gas industry must be legally bound to cut methane emissions. With climate tipping points approaching, time is running out

    • Mia Mottley is the prime minister of Barbados

    The timing is brutal. Just as the world celebrates the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the Paris climate agreement this month, new evidence shows that the world is crashing through the main defence that was constructed against climate catastrophe.

    The three-year temperature average is – for the first time – set to exceed the Paris guardrail of 1.5C above preindustrial levels. According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, 2025 will join 2023 and 2024 as the three warmest since the Industrial Revolution, reflecting the accelerating pace of the climate crisis.

    Mia Mottley is the prime minister of Barbados

    Continue reading...

  • Hogshaw, Derbyshire: They’re in our paintings, in our folklore. A little opportunistic planting and I’ve got them in my garden

    As I cleared our garden of dead vegetation, including many old teasels, I realised that the latter were still shedding seeds and luring goldfinches to them. Not wishing to deprive winter birds of food, or myself of opportunity, I planted the stalks in a single grove, and set up a mobile hide. Within minutes, a kind of magic unfolded. Sulphur wings twittered as old plants swayed with their featherweight burdens and the pointed pink beaks jabbed relentlessly for food.

    Of all European birds, goldfinches are surely those best able to illustrate the survival of magical thinking in our world. Throughout the middle ages and the Renaissance, more than 300 artists across 486 works – including those of Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo – painted Madonna and Child images with goldfinches secreted in them.

    Continue reading...

  • Climate crisis forecast to wipe out thousands of glaciers a year globally, threatening water supplies and cultural heritage

    Glaciers in the European Alps are likely to reach their peak rate of extinction in only eight years, according to a study, with more than 100 due to melt away permanently by 2033. Glaciers in the western US and Canada are forecast to reach their peak year of loss less than a decade later, with more than 800 disappearing each year by then.

    The melting of glaciers driven by human-caused global heating is one of the clearest signs of the climate crisis. Communities around the world have already held funeral ceremonies for lost glaciers, and a Global Glacier Casualty List records the names and histories of those that have vanished.

    Continue reading...

  • Only 10,000 out of economic bloc’s 6m trucks are electric and are more likely to be operating on short routes

    The chances of the European trucking industry hitting zero emissions targets are “dire”, an industry body has warned, as it emerged that only a tiny amount of lorries delivering goods in the EU are electric.

    Speaking as the European Commission prepares to water down electric car targets, the boss of the association for commercial vehicles called on the commission to commit to an urgent review of the sector, tackling problems including a lack of public charging points, a lack of tax breaks for trucks and high energy costs.

    Continue reading...

  • RHS predicts big shift in gardening habits as green-fingered Britons adapt to climate breakdown

    Bouquets of cut flowers will be swapped for tabletop vegetable plants next year, the Royal Horticultural Society has said, as the UK charity announces its top plant trend predictions for 2026.

    Mini-planters of aubergines, chillies, peppers and tomatoes will be displayed in homes instead of flowers, as breeders develop dwarf varieties that are decorative and capable of supplementing the weekly shop, the RHS says.

    Continue reading...

  • Despite billions in investment and backing from the federal government, carbon capture and storage technology ‘should be in no way treated as a climate solution’, critics say

    The US energy company Chevron describes it as the world’s largest industrial carbon dioxide injection project of its kind. But it has a problem. It still isn’t working as promised and the results are getting worse.

    The $3bn Gorgon carbon capture and storage (CCS) development, on Barrow Island off Western Australia’s Pilbara coast, was supposed to start operating in 2016, backed by $60m in federal government funding. Chevron and its partners in the project, including Shell and ExxonMobil, said it would capture up to 4m tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from an underwater gas field each year and inject it in a reservoir more than 2km beneath the island.

    Continue reading...

  • Jessica O’Bryan puts the $60,000 Musso EV through its paces in suburban Sydney and finds some pluses, some minuses – but no charging points

    When I am handed the keys to Australia’s first affordable fully electric ute, to say I feel nervous is an understatement.

    I’ve been driving a 2014 Volkswagen Polo for the past four years, and before that, a Holden Astra that was older than me.

    Continue reading...

  • The watershed summit in 2015 was far from perfect, but its impact so far has been significant and measurable

    Ten years on from the historic Paris climate summit, which ended with the world’s first and only global agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions, it is easy to dwell on its failures. But the successes go less remarked.

    Renewable energy smashed records last year, growing by 15% and accounting for more than 90% of all new power generation capacity. Investment in clean energy topped $2tn, outstripping that into fossil fuels by two to one.

    Continue reading...

Eco Health News feeds

Eco Nature News feeds