Neutering feral cats on the Greek Island of Paxos
Paxos Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) trip Sat 13th to Sat 27th October 2007.
Our journey to Corfu went very smoothly, despite our heavy luggage, full of equipment and drugs we would need. We spent the first two nights of our trip in Corfu town. It was great to finally met up with Linda and Lindsay (the ladies that set up PAWS) for dinner on the evening we flew in, having only communicated on email and on the phone previously! On Mon 15th Oct, they had arranged a meeting with the Corfu town vets, Yannis and Nikolaos. We had some good discussions with them and they offered some useful advice about techniques, suture materials and patterns. We also bought some drugs and equipment we hadn’t been able to buy back home in time.We took the ‘Flying Dolphin’ hydrofoil ferry over to Paxos, a lovely warm sunny day, then took a taxi to where we would be staying. We never thought that 4 very heavy suitcases, 4 people and a driver could fit into 1 car, but the skilled taxi driver had obviously had a lot of practise! A steep road then presented us with glorious views over Gaios, the coastline and Panayia and St Nikolaos islands. We were surprised how green it was and how many olive trees there were! On we went through Gaios ‘town’ as the locals referred to it, round a right-angled bend in the road and onto the harbour front road, turning off in front of ‘Genesis’ restaurant and bar and up to Katina’s apartments. There was a conveniently placed orange tree on the path to our apartment-we almost knocked ourselves out! Our ground floor apartment consisted of 2 rooms, the living area/kitchen & the bedroom plus a small bathroom and a balcony leading down into the garden of olive, pear and orange trees, where we would later be working. We could even see the sea and Genesis bar!
Linda and Lindsay took us on a lovely round walk of Gaios and we met the aptly named ‘Paxi’, a stray collie cross dog who we were to see on most days. He became our 1st patient, needing a good shampoo and matted fur removing from his neck and rear-end! We met several of the local people – Dawn, Fay and later on, Alekos, the neighbouring ‘Genesis’ restaurant owner, along with Emma, his wife. We ate a very tasty meal at Genesis that evening with Linda and Lindsay and began to see the extent of the big cat population on Paxos as they started to surround us begging for food! We were surprised how friendly they were!
Our 1st working day was Tues 16th Oct – Our 1st patient was a geriatric Westie that needed to be euthanased due to a dislocated hip. We then started neutering cats, but encountered a problem; the new clippers brought over from the UK for this trip had no blade, so they could not be used for clipping fur to prepare the surgical site. We adopted plan B, using a number 10 surgical blade to shave fur by hand! This was quite time consuming.
We spayed two cats on that first day and we were surprised by the very good body condition most cats were in and how fat they were! I made the decision to spay all of the female cats midline (under the belly rather than flank/side). That way, if any were pregnant or had a pyometra (infected womb) or other problems, it would be easier and quicker surgery. This is also how the Greeks (and most of Europe except the UK) routinely spay their cats. Our general anaesthetic protocol was using Domitor-meditomidine 80µg/kg and Ketaset-ketamine 5mg/kg by intramuscular injection via a crush cage. We gave every cat a thorough clinical examination, flea treatment if needed (Frontline-fipronil spray), tapeworm treatment (Droncit – praziquantel), long acting antibiotic (Duphamox LA-long acting amoxycillin), analgesia (Rimadyl-carprofen). Feral/street cats were also vaccinated against cat flu (herpes and caliciviruses), enteritis (panleucopaenia/feline parvovirus) and chlamydia. We used Vicryl (dissolvable) stitches in all 3 layers: muscle (continuous and simple interrupted, as advised by the Corfu vets), subcutaneous (fat layer, continuous) and skin (simple interrupted and sometimes tissue glue). For each cat we neutered (male or female), we cut a tip out of the top of the right ear, an internationally recognised symbol in order that neutered cats were then easily recognisable from a distance, without having to capture the cat again, which would cause it further stress. Once the surgery was finished, every cat was injected with an antidote to one of the anaesthetic drugs used (Antisedan-atipamezole). We did not have any anaesthetic deaths and no post-operative problems that we know of eg. with stitches etc.
We were glad to have Greek mobile phone whilst there – it proved very useful on a number of occasions. That 1st night, after we’d all gone to bed, we were called out to a kitten that had been in a road traffic accident and was paralysed. We woke Linda and Lindsay up and they drove us to the location. Unfortunately, we had no choice but to euthanize the kitten. An upsetting start to the trip but at least that kitten didn’t suffer.
By our third working day, the weather was still fine and word had got around the island that we had arrived! People came to chat and collect cat baskets like there was no tomorrow! We ran out of baskets at one point! Some people even brought us 4 cats back in 1 basket! Emma gave us so much help with catching cats, making us refreshments, going to the shops for us and translating from Greek to English and back again for those pets we saw that belonged to Greek locals. Sandra, a German lady living in Paxos also helped up on several days, again catching cats, helping to bath a cat and spreading the word to others about our presence. Several of the locals who brought cats to us also very kindly brought us refreshments! We worked almost every day from 9am until it got dark at around 7pm.
We frequently had to keep cats inside the apartment overnight-1 cat didn’t recover to our satisfaction post castration so he was monitored & successfully released fit and healthy the following morning. We ‘hospitalised’ and gave an antibiotic course to 1 female local street cat we named ‘Lucy’ since she had a respiratory tract infection and was therefore not fit enough at that point to undergo a general anaesthetic. By the end of the course, she was much better & we operated on her, only to discover she had a pyometra (infected womb) and an umbilical hernia (a hole in the body wall, a birth defect). She recovered well and was successfully released on our last day in Paxos.
There were several old sayings we heard whilst in Paxos ‘white cats give you cancer’, ‘you won’t have children if you have cats’ – and as a consequence of this, a lot of couples/families get rid of their cats before starting a family. The only thread of truth in this statement is regarding toxoplasmosis, a parasite that can be picked up from handling cat faeces, but more commonly, from handling soil whilst gardening. If a pregnant woman gets infected, there is a risk that the unborn child may have birth defects. There was a fair amount of opposition that we had been warned about regarding the castration of cats e.g. ‘castrated male cats lose their place in the hierarchy’. We tried to spread the word that castrating a male is far quicker and simpler than spaying a female and also that neutering both sexes helps to reduce the rapidly expanding cat population. In the end, we even had a Greek man come and watch us castrate a cat!
The weather unfortunately turned cold, wet, windy and stormy. One night, there was a massive thunder and lightning storm, so bad that yachts had to be moved during the night away from the quayside. The storm prevented the yachting flotillas from moving out of Gaios for a couple of days. We carried on working, sometimes in the doorway of the back of our apartment and one day inside the apartment!
We spent a day in another village called Loggos, organised by Sandra and Emma, both of whom helped us that day and we also had some tourist spectators for some of the time we were operating.
We saw a number of cats with old eye injuries that had caused either the globe to shrink drastically in size and the eyelids to semi-close or sequestrum formation. Since we didn’t have small enough instruments to perform enucleation (removal of the eye), we ensured there was no infection & sewed the eyelids together of 2 cats.
There were a lot of white cats and many had sunburn on their ear tips. Many cats had ringworm and unfortunately, on our return, both of us had ringworm skin infections! Leishmaniasis is also endemic on the island in the dog population, a ‘tropical’, incurable disease to the UK, spread by sandflies. A large proportion of the cats had visible tapeworm. Some cats had cat flu. We also saw several kittens that were sick or found shivering and cold. We hospitalised, shampooed & treated them as appropriate and found homes for those that didn’t already have a home.
We kept daily record sheets & a daily diary; final figures were:-
33 cat spays
19 cat castrates (total of 52 cats neutered)
7 euthanasias
29 sick/other consultations/treatments
Grand total of 88 animals.
We very much enjoyed our visit to Paxos, despite how hard we worked and how tired we got! Thanks again to Emma for kindly giving up her time to show us around a few of the beautiful sites of the island on our Sunday afternoon off! We raised £240 from donations & selling PAWS raffle tickets before our trip and €625 (approx £445) in donations in Paxos from people who’s animals we had operated on/treated. We have kept in touch with Emma since returning to the UK and have had a meeting with Linda and Lindsay. We hope to return for a further neutering trip to Paxos in 2008. ****************************************************
