Feline food drive planned to help nourish P.E.I. cat colonies
Natalia Goodwin | CBC News | Posted: August 7, 2016 8:46 PM | Last Updated: August 7, 2016
'What's the point spay and neutering cats and then letting them starve?'
An organization devoted to caring for feral and stray cats is holding a food drive in Charlottetown this week in hopes of distributing food to hungry animals.
The Cat Action Team, known for getting feral and stray cats spayed and neutered and taking care of colonies, held its first feline food drive last year.
The drive is named in honour of Donna Hickox, who passed away in 2010 and had been involved in the organization since the beginning.
"She always used to say 'what's the point spaying and neutering cats and then letting them starve?' I have taken our stance from that," said organizer Paula Connolly.
Feeding cat colonies
The team used to do a monetary drive for the food, but found that it was more useful to get the food right to the cats.
Volunteers plan to distribute the food to areas where they know there are plenty of cats, and people who help feed colonies can also pick up the food directly.
Connolly said some people who have cat colonies in their area want to feed them, but can't afford it.
Expensive to care for colonies
"I heard stories of some people would buy cat food and then their family would go a little hungry and so we thought that's got to stop," she said
Cat colonies can be very large at times, which adds to the cost.
"We pretty well give food to people that have 10 to 30 cats, some have more," she explained.
The food drive is taking place Friday Aug.12 from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Charlottetown Walmart.