MID-LEVELS, Hong Kong – Even just a few people working diligently can achieve impressive results to help struggling or suffering animals. That's an easy conclusion after meeting Michelle Temple and Marian Banaghan, co-founders of Hong Kong Alleycat Watch (HKACW), a society dedicated to helping street cats and other felines.

“Without a doubt,” Michelle said. “We've accomplished a lot. Over the years, we've found homes for thousands of cats.... As soon as people notify me about any case of a cat needing rescue, I’m onto it, like a fly onto shit -- excuse my expression.

“Sometimes it gets stressful trying to fit in a full-time job so I can pay my own bills (she's a manager for a relocation company) while also helping cats. Often it's difficult to multi-task enough to get everything done when there are lots of rescue cases.”

Urgent situations, with cats' lives in jeopardy unless they receive shelter and priority assistance, may come in clusters. So why go to the trouble? What do Michelle and Marian receive in return for their huge efforts?

“Absolutely, we get gratification,” Marian said. “It's all about our success stories, all the differences we've made for the animals and the people who adopted them. The people often come back and thank us.”

Looking thoughtful, Michelle considered the question a little more. “I'd love it if animals never needed new homes,” she said. “Every time it saddens me when animals are given up, but I'm always glad when we can help them.”

Technically, HKACW began in 2003. “That's when Marian and I met and got the ball rolling,” Michelle said. “Then there were a lot more cats on the streets.”

Actually, Marian has strolled along the sidewalks since 1997, always feeding the cats she encounters and defending their “general welfare and health”.

“My husband and I had a shop on Hollywood Road (Hong Kong Island)," she said. "At the back, I found a street-cat colony and started to feed them. A veterinarian told me it was pointless to feed the cats unless I arranged for them to be neutered too. So I started my own trap, neuter and release (TNR) program before the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and the government grasped the idea.

“In those days, we'd just trip over street cats. There were so many. Not so much anymore.” That's thanks to TNR and re-homing efforts. Since 2000, tens of thousands of cats have been trapped on the streets and de-sexed. Many fewer kittens are born there.

“Later I worked as marketing manager for a recruitment company,” Marian said, “and Michelle took over for me at the end of 2002 when I left. That's how we met. She noticed that I had cat-food stashed under my desk.”

“What an amazing chance meeting,” Michelle said. “Marian acted like ‘the cat-woman of Hong Kong-side', and by then, I already had three cats and a dog myself. When walking Beefy, my dog, down by Bonham Road, I often found cats or kittens and fed them. With so many cats living on the streets, there was a definite need to help them.”

When the two women teamed up, their activities soon mushroomed. “We're passionate about animals,” Marian said. “Truthfully, I'm not sure that we love cats more than we do other animals. I started to help cats because they were there and in need. So I focused on them. But along the way, Michelle and I have helped a lot of dogs too.”

“That's right,” Michelle added. “We try to save whatever needs saving.”

For years, they operated HKACW almost alone. The main assistance came from a small network of people willing to provide temporary foster homes for needy cats. “We always need reliable foster parents,” Michelle said.

Recently, several more stalwart cat-lovers, notably Elisa Stannard and Suzanne Maio, joined the team. “Every person counts,” Marian said. “We never can have enough.”

As a life-long, avid cat-fancier, Michelle personally cares for many of the rescued or ailing felines. Then she leads the effort to find them permanent homes. One room in her Mid-Levels flat contains cages and stacks of cat food, like a feline dormitory. She calls it the Kitty Inn. “The cages are for quarantine purposes when a cat falls ill or new ones arrive,” she said. “Cats don't live in them.

“Usually I'm sensible,” she said. “I don't want to bring more cats into my home. Enough animals (three dogs and 14 cats at recent count) live there now. But if there's an urgent need, what else can I do?

“We'd take on even more cases if we had a proper boarding house or centre for cats. Unfortunately, we don't. To have a proper adoption centre someday would be a dream come true.”

With so many cats living with her all the time, does Michelle run the risk of being stereotyped as a “crazy cat lady"? “Yes,” she said. “I'm already known as ‘the cat lady’, but maybe not crazy.”

Then Marian pounced, ready to claim the title too. “No, I think I'm seen as more of a crazy cat lady, the way I walk around with bags to feed them,” she said.

Keeping lots of cats is part of the re-homing process. “I've got about eight or nine cats that I probably won't be able to re-home, and so they'll stay with me until they die off,” Michelle said. “It goes with the territory of what I do.”

What makes a cat tough to re-home? Usually, it's health problems or personality issues. “With kittens, you can't guarantee they'll be friendly,” Michelle said. “With older cats, you know if they're friendly, there and then, or not. Tiny kittens, even nurtured exactly the same as others, may turn out to be wild. That's why I have my cat, Weirdo. She was part of a litter, and I homed two of her siblings. But Weirdo doesn't like humans much. She's not nasty or vicious, but how could I re-home her? When people came around, she'd hide.”

It's important to better educate people. “We want to encourage tolerance towards animals in general,” Michelle said. “Along with other animal-welfare groups, we also want to educate the public in responsible pet ownership.” Therefore, HKACW often sets up information booths at community fairs.

A scornful tone enters Michelle's voice as she mentions the reasons that people often give for relinquishing pets. “They'll say: ‘We've had a baby', ‘We have too many pets', ‘Someone has allergies', or ‘A friend gave us this cat, and we can't keep it'. Then they ask us to take the pet and re-home it.”

Even with valid reasons to no longer keep cats, responsible folks should make new arrangements for the pets themselves – not foist the task onto HKACW or a similar group. “That's why I get frustrated,” Michelle said. “Too many people think they're busy. Their pets aren't the top priority, and so they leave them to us.”

Pet-owners who may leave Hong Kong someday should set aside money each month into “a kitty fund” to finance the move for their pets too. Relocating isn't cheap – not for humans or animals. “With a company managing the procedures, it can cost HK$14,000 to move a cat and up to HK$30,000 for a dog, excluding quarantine costs,” Michelle said.

If people always thought things through properly, they never would want to relinquish pets. “The sound of a cat purring is medicinal,” Michelle said. “Pets calm people. Just stroking an animal's fur can lower a person's heart-rate. Keeping pets definitely benefits human health.”

Maybe pets even possess a few special powers to transform their humans into better people. “Generally, the people I know who don't have animals in their lives are quite selfish,” Michelle said. “They're fussy and materialistic. They don't want anything dirty or out of place. Once you have pets, you let go of such notions. You won't have a perfectly clean and tidy home anymore.”

Some animals also help their humans to solve problems. “When I walk dogs after a busy day, it's fabulous,” Marian said. “That's when I can think about my day and solve things. It gives me great satisfaction. It's therapy.”

Like most animal-welfare groups, HKACW urges people to spay or neuter their pets. “It takes just one person not to spay a cat (or even just delay the procedure), and we may get up to eight kittens to re-home,” Michelle said.

With equal vehemence, Michelle, Marian and their colleagues advocate TNR programs as the best way to control the numbers of street animals. Hong Kong applies TNR much more successfully with cats than with dogs. Street cats previously trapped, “fixed” and released have the tip of an ear snipped off to identify them so that none undergo the procedure again.

For cat-cruelty cases, HKACW urges witnesses to call the SPCA hotline. Another call should go to the police.

Privately funded, HKACW accepts donations and holds fundraising events. A pet-food company donates cat-food. The biggest expenses arise from veterinary bills for everything from standard checkups, de-worming and vaccinations to medicines and emergency surgeries. On average, HKACW needs HK$10,000-15,000 per month, but the costs fluctuate widely.

“If a cat breaks a leg, suffers kidney failure or needs blood, then our expenses aren't average anymore. With one street cat recently, we paid HK$3,000 for dental care to remove its teeth.”

All donated money goes to meet the needs of animals, especially injured street cats or kittens needing medical care, Michelle said. “Generally, we've been lucky in finding people willing to donate.”

As a cost-recovery mechanism, the non-profit HKACW charges a HK$1,000 adoption fee to cover “the bare essentials”. Any cats up for adoption will have had medical checks, spaying or neutering, de-worming and vaccinations. “We also absorb any other vet bills before the adoption,” Michelle said. “Basically, we always run at a loss. There's no profit in this.”

Although many people may like to feed street cats, the diet may lack nutrients. “We supplement the diets of these cats, and feed those that no one looks after, by giving them a daily helping of dried cat food,” Michelle said. “Wet (canned) cat food is a luxury that we also may feed as an occasional treat.”

Therapy time! 'When I walk dogs after
a busy day, it's fabulous,' Marian says.



Street cats come running as an
Alleycat Watch team arrives with food.


(Some photos courtesy of Hong Kong Alleycat Watch)