HydraArk has published a first aid booklet with useful medical

As we all know, there is no veterinarian on the island. Many times our fellow citizens contact us asking for help for animals in need. So we decided to create a first aid booklet. With the help of doctors Irini Resou and Eliza Gescou, who have been visiting the island in recent years and have helped many animals, the booklet became a reality.

In it you will find general information on how you can help our dear friends. The leaflet can in no way replace the vet. You should always communicate with them and follow their instructions. You should also check with them about any information you may have found on the internet and also any advice given to you by friends and acquaintances. Often the wrong piece of advice can do more harm than good.

The brochure can be found at the following points:

• Pet shop
• Isalos cafe
• KEP
• Dimitra’s market in Kamini

It will also be posted on our website in Greek and English and later translated and printed in English.

Please note: If your pet continues to be sick for days after you have treated it (having consulted a vet), you should take the animal to a vet clinic or bring a vet to the place where it is. By law, neglecting a pet in many cases can be considered abuse.

Why spay/neuter Hydra’s cats?

Female cats can start breeding from the age of 5-6 months and normally give birth to an average of 5 to 6 kittens, 2-3 times a year. For each female cat that’s an additional 10 to 18 cats per year. Due to overpopulation many of these kittens will develop diseases and suffer a great deal before they finally succumb.

Easy access to food allows an increasing number of cats to breed with the immediate consequence of increasing their population. Overpopulation means the death of the weakest cats and the spread of disease. The solution is sterilization.

The “sterilize first and then feed” approach enables the building healthy colonies. Kittens born in a controlled population have a better chance of surviving and becoming healthy adults. Neutering reduces the number of sick cats suffering from cat flu or eye diseases.

Please also bear the following in mind when you happen upon newborn kittens without their mother:

A mother cat will often leave her kittens for twenty-four hours or more. She may be looking for a safer spot, she may be resting and/or foraging for food, or she may be enticing away males. Since a female cat, once it has stopped nursing kittens, will go back into heat, males may smother her kittens so that she will be ready to mate again.

Whereas our instinct may be to take and “rescue” the kittens, it’s important to consider that the mother cat might come back for them. Finding them gone will cause her immense distress. Taking the kittens may actually endanger them, as kittens removed unweaned from their mothers have a much lower survival rate, and they will not receive the necessary antibodies from their mother’s milk for their immune systems to develop properly. And the mother will shortly go back into heat and have another litter within a couple months.

Therefore, it’s best to intervene only in the following instances:

• Babies have been abandoned in boxes next to bins or tied in plastic bags and thrown away.
• Kittens are on the street or in a dangerous place where they might be trampled.

The mother cat would not leave them in such places.

If you find kittens in the trash or obviously removed from their mother and abandoned, please contact the police immediately (22980 52205). They need to come to the area to investigate the incident and then file a report.

Whoever takes the newborns from their mother and throws them in the trash commits a crime. The Law 1197 (1981) provides that “whoever kills, abuses or threatens animals protected by applicable law or abandons them, shall be punished in accordance with Article 8 of the Penal Code”.

It is also illegal to transport a mother cat with her babies to another location. It is certain that the cat mother will want to return to her area and may abandon the kittens or not be able to take them with her. This endangers both her own life and the lives of the kittens. Law 3617 (1992): “No one may subject any animal to unnecessary pain, agony or stress. No one is allowed to abandon their pet.”

Please understand the HydraArk has no shelter, and our volunteers are few and already overrun. If you decide to intervene and take in kittens, we can offer advice, but we will not be able to take them ourselves. We can post them on Facebook looking for a mother cat to raise them, but there is no guarantee that we will find one. In that case the kittens will need to be bottle-fed until they can eat solid food (at about five weeks of age). If you are able and willing to take on that commitment, please see Newborn kittens for details and instructions.