Unlike many other shelters, there are places such as this totally deserving the title “Eden”. We have just seen one, in this case named “Sissi cat house”. Roughly 130 km outside Prague, in the hills of Českomoravská Vrchovina, not far away from Havlickuv Brod, in diverse countryside stands a village.
Just a couple of meters from the main road passing through, a white shining new building is just being finished. Well, building is simplifying description. Imagine modern generously spaced one floor family house, with all the amenities, built in the middle of meadow on a vast area. One would expect a family with a lots of children, yet the truth is there are only two people living inside of the house, together with 74 cats! A married couple in retirement moved recently into the newly build mansion, spending most of their savings on to building a family house, which would also serve as the sanctuary for abandoned and mistreated cats.
The great living of
Two sides of the square shaped house oriented South and SouthWest have exit / entrance doors from each of the rooms located in the respective side. From every room assigned as the living space for the group of cats, there is an individual exit leading outside the house. Each of the room exting outside, has adjacent a barbwired fenced construction, generously designed in the measures of 7x15 meters, where the cats inhabitating particular room can roam freely, leaving room for the outside walk 24/7. There, living in the green, on fresh air, cats can do whatever they want. Each group (carefuly selected to live together) of the cats occupies room and their respective adjacent fenced outdoor area. The marvel of it is non-traditional habitat is their free movement, providing them great deal of interaction, fun and excitement. This is being supported by carefully set wooden objects as well as treebranches arranged as trails and cover for its inhabitants.
Dedication
You may question, how come that there is the cat sanctuary consisting of over 75 various cats, all of them located in the brand new family house! Now thats what we call “dedication” of those who run the cat shelter! That is also the part of the reason we are here! Meeting the woman, wonderful caring person, who´s idea was to mix own living space with the space of her beloved cats, we start to understand the love and effort she put into making their lives better.
The burden of love and solidarity
Sitting on the outside veranda, being served great coffee and cakes we started to discuss possible realms, where we — Cuddle.Me army could be helpful to ease up her and her husband's project´s burden, we realise that love and solidarity has its real costs. The monthly costs which consist food, veterinary and pharmaceuticals, cat litter, toys, and all other necessary equipment and hardware is 50 000 CZK in average (over 2100 Euro). Considering the fact that most of the costs are covered by married couple personnal savings, we are left with lots of questions about fundraising. There is a paradox which we realized throughout our missions across the Czech republic´s shelters in general. The rule is: The worse the shelter, the more money pour in from the public. From this rule, one can deduce the answer that newly built and fully equipped shelters are not in focus of the general public, as it´s common opinion is falsely shaped by the idea, that these facilities must have the money already. Only a few think about details which determine the need of fundings, and that is the amount of animals in shelter, as well as monthly costs.
The way out
Unfortunately, it seems there is none. But in long term prospect, our general experience is that public awareness is shaped by medialisation and publicity. Contextually, this helps the shelters and similar organizations to reach for potential sponsors with higher success rates, thus generating more money for daily operations. The problem is, not many people running the shelters have enough time or experience to reach out for sponsorships, as it takes time and efforts, which are needed most of the time elsewhere — in daily routine work and care for the animals. And that can be done only with personal dedication and love for the animal friends and pets, like in this case — at the place, we would name “Eden”.
