Cat Sanctuary for Safari Vets

Members of our Yoga + Beer community are traveling to Kenya with The Village Experience this September. We are raising money for an amazing collaboration with Safari Vets in Shela Village.

Safari Vets currently provides veterinary services to rural communities around the Lamu Archipelago in partnership with Safari Doctors mobile medical clinics. These organizations focus on a “One Health” method which recognizes that human health is connected to the health of animals and the environment. They provide medical care for over 2,000 people and 200 animals every month throughout 15 rural villages in Lamu.

These vet clinics focus mainly on the cat, dog, donkey, and livestock populations. The vet assistant works to vaccinate animals, protect them against fleas, ticks and mango worms, prevent zoonoses, and educate the community on animal welfare. These clinics are the only access to veterinary services these villages will ever encounter.

Safari Vets is in the process of setting up a permanent veterinary office in Shela Village and hiring a full time veterinarian. This space will operate as a full fledged veterinary clinic, a pet food supplies store, and a Cat Sanctuary.

The Cat Sanctuary will be launched to take special care of the abandoned and sick cats of the village. With the onset of Covid, families that would usually care for and feed the stray cats could no longer afford to do so. Many well wishers in the village and around the world stepped up and took on feeding the stray cats and sponsoring spay and neutering clinics to try and control the population. It’s time for a more permanent solution as the village attempts to bounce back from the economic downturn and again take on the care of these animals.

The Cat Sanctuary will include 10 wire cages, special kitenge fabric beds, food and water bowls, a supply of kitten formula and food, and a supply of bottles and syringes. They also need a few plastic carrying cases to move the cats around the island. We would then create a small fund for medicine and surgery for these animals so the vet can properly attend to them.

We appreciate any and all help we can get in achieving this goal and helping Safari Vets get their Cat Sanctuary up and running.