Cyprus cats out in the cold
Tala – At a cat sanctuary set in picturesque hills near Paphos, on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, volunteers are grappling with a surge in abandonments they blame on the coronavirus pandemic.
“There has been an increase of about 30% of previously owned, loved and looked-after cats that have been left behind” as people depart the island, said Dawn Foote, 48, who runs the Tala Cats rescue centre.
Some among Cyprus’s large expatriate and dual resident communities have retreated home as the economic squeeze has tightened, she said.
“People at the moment have just got no money, and it’s expensive to get a cat to another country – you’ve got passports to pay for, you’ve got transport carriers to pay,” Foote said.
“It’s heartbreaking,” she told AFP, saying abandonments were rising island-wide, in part also due to locals no longer being able to afford pet food or vet bills.
Evidence of cats’ domestication in Cyprus dates back further than anywhere else, including Pharaonic Egypt.
In 2004, archaeologists announced they had unearthed the remains of a cat and a human deliberately buried together 9 500 years ago at the Neolithic village of Shillourokambos.
That’s about 1 500 years earlier than the previous record find – also in Cyprus – in the form of a feline jawbone.
Abandoned cats just “don’t know how to survive”, Foote said. “A lot of them want to give up.”
The government imposed a nationwide lockdown from 10 January, Cyprus’ second since the pandemic began, after Covid-19 infections surged.
The closure of restaurants – choice locations for feline scavengers – has further compounded the misery for many of the island’s feline residents, whose numbers dwarf the human population, according to at least one animal welfare organisation.
Meanwhile, the rehousing of animals has become more difficult, a trend confirmed to AFP by a dog sanctuary near the capital Nicosia.
Fewer cargo flights, higher transport costs and the repeated closure of sanctuaries to visitors are making it harder to win would-be owners’ hearts.