Eco Hvar

Feeding cats in Brela

Published in Forum items
I am staying at the Hotel Berulia in Brela and have been feeding a mother,father and five kittens about (10 weeks old). Do they get rid of the kittens in the winter when there are no guests?
I know my airline takes pets, but this may be very traumatic for them and it would be difficult to leave some. I have 5 days till I go back to Zagreb for a flight back on Mon, so there is not a lot of time. Can you help or give me advice?
G., UK Visitor to Brela (a coastal resort on the Dalmatian mainland), 14th July 2014
 
I am sorry I couldn't reply to your email earlier, and obviously I am now too late to advise you before your return home.. I have been away, and am just catching up with the backlog.
During the summer, cats in the tourist resorts are generally well looked after by kind people like yourself. In the normal course of things, the mother will gradually find alternative sources of food for her kittens, and set them on their way to independent living. It is a good thing if the mother is given the opportunity to keep her kittens long enough to teach them what they need to know, and to bring about the natural separation.
Although they are dependent on humans to a great extent, cats are also very canny, and usually find ways of ensuring their survival. The main problem facing them here as elsewhere is the question of feeding increasing numbers if they are allowed to breed without any control. Where cat numbers are considered excessive, then sadly there is little help provided for them: there is no provision for sterilizing them, except privately by individuals, and very few catteries where they can be taken in and given basic shelter and support. Obviously one of Eco Hvar's aims is to remedy this situation, at least on Hvar.
I hope it will reassure you to think that 'your' kittens will almost certainly be fed and petted through the summer, so that by the time autumn comes they will be mature enough to hold their own.
I very much hope that you enjoyed your stay in Brela, one of the Dalmatian coast's many beautiful places.
Eco Hvar 23rd July 2014
 
Thank you for your reassuring reply. I managed to find out most if the information with regards to the cats. Although the airline I was travelling with did carry animals, the problem was the pet passport. If they are too young to get the rabies jag (which by the size of them I think they were), they would have to go in to quarantine for 6 months. The nearest one where I live is 3 hours away, so it would be difficult to maintain a relationship with them. It would also have been extremely traumatic removing them from their mother and then placing them in the cattery for 6 months. U.K. is very strict, I could have sorted it, if they could have got the rabies blood test, as you only have to wait 21days, and I would have got someone to look after them for this time. It was not  to be, and yes it would be better if there was a neutering program - but this costs money and sometimes countries have other priorities.
I loved Brela and the  Dalmatian coastline was spectacular - unfortunately I didn't make it to Hvar - maybe next time!  I wish you well in your venture, and if there is anything I can help with (I will check your website again for updates) let me know and I will try to help.
G., 24th July 2014
More in this category: « Stray cat in Hvar Town Glyphosate comment »
back to top
You are here: Home forum items Feeding cats in Brela

Eco Environment News feeds

  • ‘People yearn for stability’: the Thames Water sewage plant at frontline of its crisis

    Weighed down by underinvestment and uncertainty, staff at Maple Lodge just want to get on with the job

    It is a grey day in a wet weekbut one of Thames Water’s neglected plants is still coping. Wastewater is being pumped into the vast Maple Lodge sewage treatment centre in Rickmansworth, just off the M25, at a rate of about 3,000 litres a second, within capacity.

    The site manager points out the first-line screens that catch everything that will not pass through a 5mm filter. A “sheep” – a bundle of wet wipes, sanitary pads, cotton buds, condoms and indigestible bits of sweetcorn – is rotating at one edge. Credit cards and false teeth have been known to end up here.

    Continue reading...

  • Reform mayor courted US oil and gas executive about fracking in UK

    Exclusive: Documents show Andrea Jenkyns asked how she could help firm after major gas find in Lincolnshire

    Lincolnshire’s Reform party mayor, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, has courted the head of an American oil and gas dynasty in the hope of bringing fracking to the county, the Guardian can reveal.

    Egdon Resources, a British subsidiary of the US fracker Heyco Energy, announced a major gas discovery in Lincolnshire’s Gainsborough Trough last year. Jenkyns, who became the first mayor of Greater Lincolnshire in May, reached out personally to the company asking how she “could help with your recent gas find in my county”, according to records released by the mayoral authority in response to a freedom of information request.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘It’s more exciting than Tesco’: can traditional fishing lure Cornwall’s young people?

    Taster days and training are offering teenagers an escape from a future of part-time, seasonal work – and giving a boost to a declining industry

    It’s mid-morning on a rare calm day in Newlyn, Cornwall. Will Roberts is back at the quayside with a catch of mackerel to unload, having set off from the harbour before dawn. At 22, he is something of a rarity here, one of a handful of young fishers running his own small commercial boat from the port.

    “It’s a magical feeling when you set out in the dark, with no one else around, and see the Milky Way in the sky above you,” he says. “I couldn’t imagine working in an office or somewhere indoors, and not be surrounded by all of this.”

    Potential recruits learn more about career opportunities at sea at a taster day for young people in Newlyn

    Continue reading...

  • Weather tracker: Early taste of spring to sweep parts of Europe

    South-western France could hit 25C, while a powerful Nor’easter is forecast to bring blizzards to Boston

    An early taste of spring is on the way for millions across northern and western Europe this week. Temperatures could climb close to a near record-breaking 20C (68F) in parts of Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, with south-western France approaching 25C on Wednesday.

    The warmth is being driven by a highly amplified synoptic pattern, featuring a region of low pressure over the Atlantic and strong high pressure over central Europe. The setup will allow exceptionally mild air to spread across much of the continent, with temperatures in some places rising to 10-15C above the seasonal average.

    Continue reading...

  • Country diary: The magic of knowing a meteorite fell here, of all places | Amy-Jane Beer

    Wold Newton, East Yorkshire: On a dreary day in a nondescript field, I visit the site where a 4.56 billion-year-old bit of space rock came to Earth

    On a low rise, beyond a screen of trees, behind a small holiday park in the Yorkshire Wolds, a brick obelisk stands incongruously at the edge of an otherwise nondescript field. It bears a plaque inscribed as follows: “Here, on this spot, Decr. 13th, 1795 / fell from the Atmosphere AN EXTRAORDINARY STONE / In breadth 28 inches / In length 36 inches…”

    The words are carved in a variety of enthusiastic fonts, with the opening “Here” given particularly earnest flourish.The extraordinary, extraterrestrial stone in question is the Wold Cottage meteorite, the first from anywhere to be widely recognised as a rock from outer space. After a 4.56bn-year journey, it now rests in the Treasures Gallery of the Natural History Museum.

    Continue reading...

  • How an annual ‘wedding flight’ of 1,000 virgin queens is ensuring the revival of Europe’s dark bee

    The Belgian ceremony attracts beekeepers from the Netherlands, France and Germany keen to boost dark bee numbers and stop the spread of the hybrid honeybee

    Every summer, 1,000 virgin queens descend on the Belgian town of Chimay. During the “wedding flight”, a male attaches to the female. His endophallus (penis equivalent) is torn off and he falls to the ground and dies. Mission accomplished.

    Beekeepers come and pick up their fertilised queens in small colourful hives, driving them back home, sometimes more than 300km away. They will use the genetic material gathered in south Belgium to build new colonies in the Netherlands, France and Germany.

    Continue reading...

  • Under water, in denial: is Europe drowning out the climate crisis?

    Even as weather extremes worsen, the voices calling for the rolling back of environmental rules have grown louder and more influential

    In the timeless week between Christmas and the new year, two Spanish men in their early 50s – friends since childhood, popular around town – went to a restaurant and did not come home.

    Francisco Zea Bravo, a maths teacher active in a book club and rock band, and Antonio Morales Serrano, the owner of a popular cafe and ice-cream parlour, had gone to eat with friends in Málaga on Saturday 27 December. But as the pair drove back to Alhaurín el Grande that night, heavy rains turned the usually tranquil Fahala River into what the mayor would later call an “uncontrollable torrent”. Police found their van overturned the next day. Their bodies followed after an agonising search.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘If we see you again, we kill you’: how a Colombian wildlife hotspot turned into a death zone

    Armed groups and a state-owned refinery’s oil leaks have displaced Barrancabermeja’s fishing community and poisoned a paradise once full of manatees and jaguars

    Standing on her wooden canoe, a machete in her hand, Yuly Velásquez hacks away at reeds matted with blackened sludge. Close by, a burst oil pipe has released a slick of crude into the San Silvestre wetlands in Barrancabermeja, Colombia’s oil city, choking the water and its wildlife.

    “The destruction is immense,” says Velásquez, president of Fedepesan, a sustainable fishing organisation. “For the fish, the animals and flora, it means immediate death.”

    Continue reading...

  • How a Welsh village saved its forest … and its future

    In an edited extract from her latest book, Hazel Sheffield sets out a new blueprint for community stewardship

    It was a Saturday in February 2020 when the flood came. It had been a wet winter, so wet it seemed that before the month was out, the brown trout of the River Taff might be washed clean out into Cardiff Bay before the fishing season had even begun. But this is Wales. People are used to a spot of rain. No one realised how bad it would get.

    For two days, it hammered on the windows of the houses at the top of the South Wales Valleys, where people tucked in their children before a sleepless night. It poured into the rivers at the bottom. By the time the rain departed again, many people would be standing in water up to their knees.

    Continue reading...

  • The Great Olympic lie: untold story of Winter Games’ huge environmental impact

    Rivers drained dry to create artificial snow, a forest cut down for the bobsleigh track – IOC’s claims to prioritise sustainability at Milano Cortina exposed

    On the foothills of the mountains, by the banks of the river in Cortina, there was a forest. It was full of tall larch trees. Arborists said the oldest of them had been there for 150 years and dendrologists that it was unique because it was unusual to find a monocultural forest growing at such a low altitude in the southern Alps.

    The locals knew mostly it was the place where the old wooden bobsleigh run was, where you went on your walks in summer or autumn, or when you wanted to play tennis on the small courts built near the bottom. They called it the Bosco di Ronco and it isn’t there any more.

    Continue reading...

Eco Health News feeds

Eco Nature News feeds

Copyright © 2026 Eco Hvar. All Rights Reserved. Developed by Orion Informatika.