In Greece, and particularly in the rural and island areas of Greece, many people are against the sterilization and feeding of cats because they believe that when a cat is sterilized and well fed it will no longer hunt. The cats in these areas are important elements of keeping the mice population under control, but, unfortunately, this attitude has created colonies of unhealthy and malnourished cats who give birth twice a year to litters of kittens that often do not survive. The truth is that the ancient nature of a cat is to hunt whether hungry or not.
The coordinator of our Center, Litsa Passari, took five kittens at the age of two months to live in her garden. This family of cats has food available twenty-four hours a day, they are sterilized and vaccinated and they are fat and healthy. But, everyday they bring gifts to Litsa—mice that they will play with for hours and finally eat or not—but the mice are definitely no long able to bother Litsa’s neighbors.
Below are photographs of her lovely kittens, sterilized and well-fed, engaged in a thousand-year-old activity—the hunting of small creatures.
