Food for Old Kona Airport Cats
Donation protected
Aloha to all cat lovers! I retired and moved to the Big Island in January, 2020, and almost immediately discovered the Old Kona Airport Gardens with its paved walking/jogging path. I soon discovered that there are dozens of cats--many feral, some friendly and affectionate--living in this park who rely on volunteer feeders for their food and water and that one of their faithful feeders had recently passed away. I soon found myself carrying bags of dry cat food to feed the always hungry cats, and by February, I was carrying in both wet and dry cat food every day from 6 am to 9:30 am giving each cat its own bowl with a mixture of wet and dry food. The reason it takes so long to feed the cats is that there are about nine cat colonies in different areas of the park and in addition to the cats, the park has hundreds of ravenous mongooses who also want the food. If I don't stand there with the cats and keep scaring off the mongooses, the cats run away and get nothing to eat. Until I moved here I had never seen a mongoose and had no idea how vicious they can be. They growl and hiss and even shriek to scare off the cats, most of which are afraid of them.
During Covid 19, the spay/neuter clinics sponsored by AdvoCATS could not be held in the large event pavilion at the park and instead were held at a private home. Naturally fewer cats could be "fixed" at each clinic, and so a number of litters were born. I personally know of one mama cat who had 3 litters of 4 kittens during a 9 month period! (Happily, I was able to trap both her and her male counterpart and have them both fixed!) Over the nearly 5 years that I have been feeding the cats, I have found that people lose their jobs and find that they cannot afford to feed their cat(s) any longer so they dump them off at the park--sometimes even whole litters of tiny kittens (which I am happy to say are mostly adopted after being fixed and microchipped)! BOTTOM LINE as of 2024: My husband and I are now feeding 60+ cats every morning at a cost of more than $500-$600/month from our Social Security income which definitely was not in our budget! Not to mention the vet bills! We go through at least two 30-pound bags of Meow Mix each week at $33/bag (when we started feeding 4 years ago, it cost $21/bag); and 25 cans of Friskies wet cat food/DAY at $0.85/can (which originally was $0.50/can). Quite frankly we could not afford to keep feeding the cats without financial support from kind and caring cat lovers like you since you are reading this! So that is why I set up this Go Fund Me. I don't mind spending 4 hours each morning feeding the cats plus the time shopping for the food. But we are going further into debt each month and the credit card bills are growing. Anything you can donate would be very much appreciated! I thank you and the cats thank you!
Organizer
Ina Barnett
Organizer
Kailua CDP, HI