Cat calls in a time of Covid

Writer Elaine Davie

The summer holiday season is always a busy time for Hermanus Animal Welfare (HAWS) and there was some concern about how Covid would affect the situation this year, especially since a lot of the usual summer volunteers – mainly university students home on Christmas break and foreign ‘swallows’ – would probably not be available to help out at the kennels and cattery.

According to HAWS Chairperson, Pamela Quinn, in many ways it turned out to be completely different from previous years. On the one hand, they had far fewer abandoned animals to deal with, which she ascribes to the fact that perhaps not as many people travelled to other provinces for the holidays.

However, for some unknown reason, they were inundated in December with mother cats and their kittens – 115 of them in total. The cattery was completely overwhelmed and had some not been fostered and others homed, they would not have been able to accommodate them all. As it is, there are still about 74 cuddly balls of fluff waiting for new homes.

Click below to read more. (The full article can be found on page 17)