Posts by KAR

On Friday 8th April 32 very excited 9 /10 year olds arrived at the rescue centre for a visit. They were from Mustafa Cağatay primary school in Zeytinlik and were accompanied by 2 teachers and their Head teacher Dr. Sait Coşaner.

Not only had they brought donations of food but between the children they had collected an amazing 1615 tl to donate to KAR for the animals.

They had a look around the dogs and the cattery, found out about the centre and took it in turns to walk some of the dogs if they wanted to, which they really enjoyed.

The Education team gave the teachers a pack of their workbooks called `The Happy Pets workbook ` and the team members were delighted to see photos of them enjoying the workbooks in a lesson. When the workbooks are completed they go home to the families to see and are in both Turkish and English.

A big thank you to The Head teacher, staff and children for coming to visit the animals at KAR and their wonderful donations. We hope to see you again.

Being an office angel is a bit like working in a circus.

Lion Taming – First job in the morning is to feed the local street cats. The most I’ve seen in one go is 13 but usually there are 6 or 7. There is plenty of hissing and spitting goes on as they all want feeding first. One of them, a long haired tabby, is very vocal. You would think they hadn’t been fed for a month the way they carry on and they will try to convince you all morning you still haven’t fed them! This one likes to eat straight out of the cup as you pour the biscuits into the bowl. Once the biscuits hit the bowl they’re not so interested any more, but will eat them eventually. Strange!

Acrobat/Contortionist – We loan out cat traps, cages and baskets to people to help them catch cats in order to take them to the vet for treatment. Saying we are short of storage space in the office is an understatement. Our stock of traps, cages and baskets are kept in one of the toilets and are stacked from floor to ceiling if we have none out on loan. You can always bet though, that when someone comes in to borrow one of these, the one they want is the one tucked away right at the bottom or stacked high above my head. I’m not the most agile person I know so this can be quite a challenge and often ends up with me in clambering, not very elegantly, over numerous contraptions.

Usherette – One of the main qualifications you just absolutely must have to be an office angel is the ability to make a good cuppa and carry it up 2 flights of steps, together with any cake or biscuits one of the volunteers might have brought in with them, without spilling any. I’m good at this, but then I have had lots of practice over the years.

Clown – Volunteering for a charity that deals with animal welfare can be harrowing at times and some of the things we’ve all seen or heard about are enough to make your blood boil and your stomach churn. All these instances are dealt with absolute professionalism but sometimes we just need to let off steam in order to maintain our sanity. I thought I looked very fetching in the bright red wig we’d had donated as I pretended to be on a catwalk strutting up and down the shop area, but I’m not so sure the customer who came into Gladrags was of the same opinion.

Juggler – There are never 2 days the same here in the office. You just never know what is going to end up on your desk that needs “sorting” NOW and I love it (well most of the time anyway). An average day (is there such a thing?) in no specific order, can be balancing the expenditure, answering emails, making a fuss of four legged visitors, answering the phone, making coffee, updating our Social Media presence (those little cartoons you wake up to every morning?? Yes that’s down to me, sorry), buying in pet food, organising rubbish bins for the centre, booking in cats for neutering, loaning out traps and cages, feeding the office cats, paying bills, taking in donations, shopping in Gladrags and dealing with anything else that lands on the desk.

I love my role within Team KAR and really do feel like I am making a difference.

If you’ve got a spare few hours on a regular basis you should try it. There’s so many different areas of the charity you can volunteer in there’s bound to be one that’s right up your street! “

The figures are in and have been duly checked and double checked and we are very please to announce that in March we neutered a total of 38 Street Cats (14 female and 24 male). Well done to everyone concerned, to our clinic team, our cat catching team and to you the public for caring about the well being of the street animals and bringing them to us for neutering.

We continue to run our successful Street Cat Neutering Scheme. If you know of a Street Cat(s) that needs neutering please get in touch with us either by email on kartrnc@gmail.com or by telephone 05338694098 (Monday to Friday 9am to 1pm) and we will arrange to put you on our “list”. We ask for a minimum donation of 150tl per cat to pay towards the cost of the various medications we administer when the cats are undergoing their operation.

Please note this scheme is for Street Cats only and not for your pets.

We would like to say a great big thank you to everyone who has taken the time and effort to bring donations of clothing, linens, homewares, newspapers etc for us to sell/use for the benefit of the animals in our care at our Rescue Centre. We take anything (and I do mean ANYTHING). We’ve had corner baths, drum kits, water coolers, drawers, lighting systems, suitcases etc as well as clothes, newspapers and household linens. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Without you we couldn’t do what we do!

You can bring YOUR donations to our office Monday to Friday 09:00 to 13:00 or to our shops in Girne Monday, Wednesday and Saturday 10:00 to 13:00

Thank you.