Spaying one of the feral cats
Spaying one of the feral cats
Seventh Neutering Project, Alvor (Portugal), February 2006
Vets/Nurses: Kate Southall MRCVS, Debbie Howe VN, Corinne George VN
Trappers: Ian MacFarlaine VN, Kerry Stubbs VN, Jennifer Shairp VN
Local Help: Peter Lee Lander, Nora Bakker, Katrin Lamiere, Linda Pixley
We carried out the Kismet Account’s seventh Portugal trip between 4th and 11th February 2006. 122 animals were treated on this visit. This comprised 120 cats presented for neutering and two euthanased for medical reasons. Of the cats, 52 were male and 70 female (58%).
Background & Main Aims: For this visit we worked in Alvor as we did not have access to the Senhora Da Rocha. As our clinic facilities were quite small, along with low availability of trappers, we limited the trip to one vet and 2 nurses with 3 trappers. The trip came in slightly over budget at £1250.
The Work: We focused on the area around Alvor and extended as far east as Armacao De Pera. These were mainly sites we had not had time to address on previous visits, and we collaborated with volunteers from APAA and Refugio Dos Burros who are active in that area. One site that required a lot of time was a chain of cat colonies along the Praia Da Rocha strip. Most of the cats were neutered and returned with a small number being neutered and passed on to a sanctuary as their site was being redeveloped and they were likely to be at risk if all put back. In total 39 cats from this strip were seen.
We also neutered all the cats from Quinta Nova in Alvor where we were staying, using our apartment (Room 101) as a very large manual trap to capture the friendlier cats. Quinta Nova kindly donated a free apartment for the surgery as our planned clinic was suffering from a leaky roof.
Of the cats neutered, 96 had to be trapped or collected by our small trapper team. This necessitated a lot of hard work on their part, with many late nights and early mornings. The trappers also had the responsibility of loading and unloading the equipment, a major job, special thanks are due to all who assisted with this.
Thanks: Thank you again to the veterinary team from the UK, and also the local volunteers who worked extremely hard. For this trip we received a lot of help from WVS with the recruitment of volunteers and part funding of their costs and I would like to thank Martin Muir of WVS (who has now left) who was always on the ball and ready to help. We also received a huge amount of help, yet again, from Monarch Airlines which was especially important on this trip as we needed to bring equipment back to the UK which took us way over our luggage allowance, which Monarch kindly waived and organised. We received lots of help from the Zoomarine vet staff again, thank you Helena and Ana. Finally thank you to the Marchig Animal Welfare Trust for their unstinting support and enthusiasm since 2002 and without whom this may well have been our last trip for 2006!
