or: How small the world is!
On October 25, 2024, we received a large amount via PayPal from an unknown donor with the following text: “For Andros, whether neutering, food or medicine. Thanks from F. to I. and friend.”
As we always like to know how people find out about us, our treasurer asked in his thanks for the donation, as usual, how the donor found us and how she had met our two friends on Andros.
A few days later, we received an email with the explanation:
F. was on vacation on Andros. The fact that so many street cats live there made her sad from the very first day; she had never seen this on other Greek islands. She bought food every day to feed the cats in some places around her hotel and in the village. One day she even met our Greek friends H. & I. and got talking to them about what they were doing. And the people at their hotel also feed them twice a day.
Finally, F. wrote: “Please take my donation for Andros. There is hardly anyone there, especially now in winter. You can use it however you like. I know how much a castration costs, but you can also use it for food, medication or other things. Thank you so much for your work!”
You can imagine that we were firstly very happy about this donation and secondly also delighted that once again a tourist did not look away and even met our friends H. & I.!
On her photos, which we are allowed to show here, you can even see cats that have been neutered with our support!
But that’s not all.
On December 14, we received another donation for a neutering sponsorship from the same tourist. She had asked her mother for this as a Christmas present.
Jörg has an overview of the neuterings that are currently pending, and fortunately there were still neuterings going on these days, although the year was already slowly coming to an end. So he suggested a cat and sent a few pictures to the donor, who then chose the name Tinka for the animal.
So we would check future Andros reports to see if Tinka appeared in them and inform F. – just as we do with all neutering sponsors.
That seemed to be the end of the matter for us.
But another surprise awaited us some time later.
On February 24, 2025, we received a donation, this time via the association account, with F.’s name as the sender, but with the purpose: “30 € food donation from class 5a of the school …”
Jörg dug out the email correspondence from October 2024 and used his detective instincts to find out that it could possibly be the same tourist from October. F. confirmed this and explained in an email how the donation was made on behalf of her school class:
„The children at our school always organize a Christmas market together with us. All the profits are collected. We then discuss together what the children want to do with the money.“
And what was the result? The school class decided almost unanimously that they wanted to donate half of the profits. How great! What a commitment from these primary school children! In addition to the Berlin animal shelter, a refugee hostel and a children’s hospice, the children’s money also went to Cats at Andros. Jörg sat down at the computer to create a little thank-you note that F. wanted for her class:
But now everything got even more interesting!
Until his suspicions were confirmed, Jörg didn’t know where F. lives or works, only that she’s a German tourist who donated to us last year. But he knows the school, which is less than a ten-minute drive from his home, because many years ago his wife ran the neighboring daycare center, which looked after the school’s after-school children.
What a small world it is!
When he wrote to F. about this curious circumstance, he received the following reply: „Oooh how great!!! Would you like to come and talk about animal welfare and your work? Maybe even spontaneously on Shrove Tuesday?“
Holy crap!
Now good advice is dearly needed! Jörg not as a teacher, but at least as someone who has to get fifth graders interested in an important topic? When he is anything but a teacher and, according to his better half, also a detail-obsessed explainer? Will that work?
But with Erich Kästner’s famous phrase “There is no good. Unless you do it.”, Jörg firstly took heart and secondly the computer mouse harder to create a PowerPoint presentation suitable for pupils – with lots of cat pictures, of course, as the class had probably already asked if they would get to see any, and with two or three film clips.
Because when do you ever get the chance to report on your organization’s animal welfare work? This opportunity simply had to be seized!
So Jörg showed up at the agreed time, was warmly welcomed by F., and led into the classroom, where the agenda for Shrove Tuesday, disguised as a „project day,“ was already written on the smartboard:
- Fun with Mrs. x
- Cats at Andros with Jörg
- Fun with Mrs. y
Wait a minute… no fun with Jörg? No, because it wasn’t supposed to be a show with funny cats; the serious aspects of animal welfare should also be taken into account.
So he opened the laptop, connected it to the smartboard, and started the presentation (here as a time-lapse video)…
…and an intensive hour with inquisitive, interested children who already had a pretty clear idea of what animal welfare means and asked many questions flew by.
With children, many of whom have pets of their own, some from animal shelters or even from animal welfare organizations abroad.
With children who not only saw the obvious, but also asked questions that went much deeper. For example, how can one endure being confronted with animal suffering so often?
We are very grateful to class 5a for their donation, and also grateful for the invitation to talk about what drives us and to show what these and all the other donations are achieving!
It was wonderful to experience that a generation is growing up here that will certainly not look away, just as their teacher did last fall on Andros, our cat island.
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