This Sunday, Nine Lives Aruba Foundation is having an Adoption Day. This is because currently the foundation is going through a difficult time due to the amount of cats and dogs in their care, according to vice-president of the foundation, Geraldine Toro.
“In all these years we never had so many cats. Right now we have 197 cats and one dog. I don’t know if it’s the cost of living that is going up or what is going on, but everyone is busy abandoning or throwing their cats on the streets”, she indicated.
As a foundation they find themselves forced to take the cats, but now they are reaching a point where that amount is not normal for them as a foundation. Due to this difficulty, they are requesting the help of the community to come to the Adoption Day this Sunday, 6th of November from 10am until 3pm, to adopt a cat or dog. “Because we can’t go on like this. The costs are high because they need food, cat litter, wipes, and trash bags to clean the premises every day, and the donations are barely coming in”, she said.
In her opinion, she thinks that because of the situation worldwide with a higher cost of living, they are not receiving as many donations as before, and they have more animals that need help.
During the Adoption Day on Sunday they will also be selling plants that their volunteers grew in order to raise funds at the same time as the adoption of the cats – and the one dog in their care, named Firulais, who is also looking for a family to adopt him.
Sterilization campaigns are important and also have a price, as Toro indicates. “If we don’t educate our people about the importance of sterilizing their cat or dog, the problem will continue. Because we are sterilizing, but for example if I help a house by sterilizing twenty cats, but two years later the people come asking for help again because they took four cats more but didn’t sterilize those. Those cats had litters again. So it’s not just about sterilizing, we also need to educate our people so that they know that if they adopt an animal, when it reaches six months old it needs to be spayed or neutered so that the animals don’t end up on the street when the owners can no longer take care of them. That is the biggest problem”, Toro pointed out.
She said that the problem is getting worse because they are noticing that lately people are dumping their cats because of financial problems, which is not fair. The foundation has to take care of the cats so that they don’t die on the streets or somewhere else that is unknown to them.
Nine Lives Aruba Foundation was created by two Americans, Terry Daily and Valerie Purdy Pyeron, together with Toro and their volunteers dedicated to save the lives of cats and dogs. They also promote the humane treatment of animals to prevent cruelty and abandonment.
Toro expressed that her foundation is not the only one going through hardship currently. She explained that other foundations that rescue animals are full of puppies and dogs that people have dumped on the streets.
This Adoption Day will take place in Jaburibari 8B, where the foundation was moved last year to have more space to take care of the cats.
To adopt a cat from the foundation, people can approach the foundation and fill in an adoption letter, and the cost is 75 Florins. This includes sterilization by the foundation when the animal is six months old. If the cat is an adult, it will already be sterilized and microchipped. Something they demand from the person adopting a cat is that the cat needs to be kept indoors. Toro explains that “we don’t want to save a cat and then it is left outside and can go on the street, and be hit by a car, or bitten by a dog, and it dies. Because of this we prefer that the owner signs a contract that they are keeping the cat indoors.”
For a dog, the cost of adoption is 200 Florins, because spaying and neutering a dog is more expensive. The cost also covers vaccination. One of the most important requirements to adopt a dog is that the yard where it will live needs to be completely closed. The contract also stipulates that the dog cannot be tied or chained, but needs to be loose.
