January 2025 - Review of the year - Cats at Andros e.V.

A new year has begun and, as is tradition, we would like to look back with you on our animal welfare work in the previous year.

At the beginning of 2024, we wrote: “Like its predecessor, 2023 was also a difficult year. Even though we fortunately continue to live in peace here, we all felt the consequences of global political events. Price increases due to inflation, natural disasters, new conflicts and trouble spots, and the outlook for 2024 is not much better at the moment.”

We’ll just leave it at that, because there’s nothing to add for 2024…

But, just as in the previous review of the year, we can also highlight everything that we were able to achieve in our animal welfare work thanks to your continued unrestricted support. Quite immodestly, we are a little proud of what we, as a rather small association, have achieved together with you in the past year! We are deeply grateful for your help, be it through your donations, through encouraging words that give us strength, or through grateful comments in our reports!

Let’s look back on the past year together and build on it for another year with heart and hand for our Andros cats!

NEUTERINGS

139 cats were neutered, 96 females and 43 males. This is slightly fewer than the 146 cats in the previous year, but roughly corresponds to the level of 2021 and 2020 and continues to show our continuity in this important area of our animal welfare work.

We were able to award neutering sponsorships for 137 cats (two of the 139 were only neutered at the end of the year) as well as for 8 animals still to be neutered at the end of 2023 and thus finance the neutering!

We are therefore grateful for any help in the future! You can find all information here: Neutering sponsorship.

Here are the 145 sponsorships in detail:

PERMANENT SPONSORSHIPS

As many as 9 cats, 3 more than in the previous year, were lucky enough to receive a permanent sponsorship last year. You can find the complete overview on our German animal pages under the heading Permanent sponsorships.

We are happy about every new permanent sponsorship, because they offer us the great opportunity to continuously support our Greek friends in their animal welfare work! You can find out exactly what is involved and how you can support us on our page Permanent sponsorship.

TRAVELING CATS

Two trips took place in 2024, and as we fortunately had enough free places in foster homes, we also used flight sponsorships for the first time. As a result, we were able to bring no fewer than 9 cats to Germany. This may not sound like much at first, but compared to 4 cats in 2023 and 6 in both 2021 and 2022, this is already a significant increase, and it meant a great chance of a lucky future for each animal! Once again, these were cats that would have had no chance of surviving on Andros as free, albeit cared-for strays:

Neela was already considerably weakened by her many stray years, had to be treated for FIP and had a lump on her lower lip (which unfortunately turned out to be a tumor that could no longer be treated).
Star was found on Andros at the beginning of 2024 with a large wound on his neck, a destroyed left eye and many missing teeth. Presumably all the consequences of an accident that made it impossible for him to continue living on Andros.
Kardoulis was noticed in November 2023 due to a wound on his cheek and his overall poor condition. He tested positive for a bacterium that is difficult and time-consuming to fight and is also infectious to other cats. He was therefore unable to return to the street. When he arrived in Germany, he also tested positive for FIV and FeLV, which proved that our decision to send him to Germany was the right one.
Medea was, like Neela, an Andros veteran who had been with us since 2019 and was visibly suffering from years of cat flus and stray life. Another winter there would probably have taken this faithful soul from us, so she was allowed to leave and has since found a wonderful home.
Pino was estimated to have been born in the fall of 2023 and appeared at a feeding site in May 2024 in a pitiful condition – emaciated, mangy and with ear cancer starting on the left ear, and that at such a young age.
Zorba was found as an abandoned kitten with a crippled left front paw. He wouldn’t have survived like this either, which is why he and his best friend Stella traveled out together to take at least two kittens from our Greek friends, who are constantly having little cats left on their doorsteps or abandoned at feeding sites.
Onni is also a young cat whose cold symptoms did not improve even in the summer despite treatment. This circumstance, his generally poor condition and his bad dental status led to his departure. The fact that he was also diagnosed with FIP after all the travel formalities had been completed made his departure and subsequent treatment here in Germany even more urgent.
Lakis was picked up as a kitten on the side of the road outside a village – snuffy, malnourished and blind. He wouldn’t have survived much longer either. Until his departure, he was first given emergency care and then nursed up so that he could be treated further in Germany and then placed.

Here is an overview of all nine traveling cats:

PLACEMENTS

In contrast to the previous three years, we found new homes for 10 instead of 8 cats in 2024. That doesn’t sound like a lot either, especially as Dusty, Linchen and Pino are not Andros cats, but were advertised by us as part of a placement service. But taking in and placing cats is not the main focus of our animal welfare work, and “cat tourism” just for placement purposes is certainly not. You can find our rehomed cats on the page Lucky furs.

As in 2022 with Yuna and Panda and 2023 with Amira and Silas, we found a home for Klausi and Eddie. They were placed together in May 2022, but came back to us in June 2022 for previously unknown personal reasons of the owner. Of course, we are particularly pleased that they were able to stay together in the current placement!

There are currently six cats still looking for a home, three of them again as placement help. Their advertisements can be found on our Placement page. Here we ask you to share or forward the advertisements.

PLACEMENT HELP

In addition to our own placements, as mentioned above, in 2024 we also offered placement assistance for 12 cats that we were asked to place. Compared to 2023 with 5 placements, this is a significant increase, which shows us that we are also perceived positively as an association and are asked for help with placement.

Although Ayla and Fluse were not placed in a new home, they were lucky enough to be allowed to stay at the foster home, which earned them the title of “foster home failure”.

Dusty, Linchen and Pino found a home with our help, as you could already see in the previous section. Radieschen, George and Brady are still looking. For Max, Minni, Monty and Püppi, the animal rights activists who asked us for help found a home themselves, which of course also makes us happy!

BEYOND THE RAINBOW

Unfortunately, animal welfare work is often characterized by sad moments. Especially when Andros cats like the 23 below leave us.

Even if that was two fewer than in 2023, and despite a further increase in the number of cats cared for with our help, this is only a nice note in the statistics, but each of these fates always touches us deeply.

However, we are comforted by the fact that the strays who died last year did not lose their lives nameless and unseen somewhere. Our Greek friends on Andros, the adopters and a foster home here in Germany accompanied these cats on their last journey and were able to spare them suffering and pain. All of them have found their place in our hearts and we remember them on our website Beyond the rainbow.

FOOD DONATIONS

We continued our partnership with our Greek friends without restriction and not only continued to support them with neutering and medical care, but also with 5 food donations of just over 600 kilograms of food each, which we had been ordering for some time via local dealers on Andros or on the Greek mainland.

TRAVEL

As already mentioned with the traveling cats, two trips took place in 2024. Marie’s parents traveled to “our” cat island at the turn of May/June and Jörg, one of the two association board members, traveled to “our” cat island in August to maintain personal contact with the Greek animal welfare activists and also to lend a hand and find out about the current status. You can also find the two travel reports here in the Andros diary:

Here is the video made during the August trip, which shows you the original and fascinating character of this Cycladic island, which captivates every traveler again and again:

We would like to conclude this review once again with a heartfelt thank you to everyone who supported us and thus made everything possible that we were able to achieve for our Andros cats in 2024!

So that we can continue to care for the cats on Andros and also here in Germany, we would like to combine these thanks with an indication of the various ways in which you can help us: Help with a donation.

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