04/09/2026
We’re taking a break!
Our team isn’t sure yet whether it will be temporary or permanent, but we do know that we won’t be able to get through the impending kitten season with the resources we currently have.
We started the year in a strong position, but our resources have been steadily depleted and we haven’t been able to bounce back.
So, for now, we’re taking a breather, regrouping, and working out what needs to change for us to keep serving our community sustainably.
The reality is that it’s tough out there, and being a charity doesn’t make us immune to the economic climate. In many ways, it makes us more exposed to it. We rely heavily on supporters and funders, as well as adoptions, and all three have declined recently while requests for help have increased significantly.
We’re not alone in this. Many animal organisations are facing the same pressures, but we don’t have product sponsorships to free up funds or significant reserves to fall back on. We simply have to work with what we have.
We’re incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved in just a few years:
• Almost 2,000 (700 so far this year) cats have received help
• Almost five tonnes of pet food have been distributed to whānau in need through our Pātaka Kai
• We’ve helped desex a lot of cats for owners doing it tough, with the aim of lightening future loads
• We’ve taken on large-scale welfare cases, including one involving 113 cats on a single property
• We’ve bailed out over 50 cats this year from other rescuers who’d gotten in over their heads. The lucky ones who didn’t require immediate euthanasia on welfare grounds took months to rehabilitate.
But all of that comes at a cost.
Adoptions have dropped. Inmates are staying with us longer, increasing the cost of each animal's care, and the cost of getting a cat healthy, desexed and ready for adoption now routinely exceeds the adoption fee.
Grant funding has become increasingly difficult to secure, particularly for the operational costs that keep a shelter running. Finding funding for animal charities has always been hard – funders struggle to place a financial value on the mahi we do, and when those grants are for operational expenses rather than projects where societal impact can be measured, it’s even harder. At the same time, everything from food and litter to insurance, fuel, software, veterinary care and other day-to-day expenses has increased.
Some projects have also grown far beyond what we initially expected. In a number of cases, situations were more extensive than first understood, and we’ve had to absorb thousands of dollars in euthanasia costs to mitigate ongoing suffering because once we make a commitment, we follow it through. That’s what we do.
And perhaps most importantly, the way our community are able to support our mahi has changed. The desire to help is still there. What has changed is people’s capacity to do so. For some of our supporters, the small regular donation they once made is now simply not a financial possibility. For others, that money may now be the difference between their own pet seeing a vet or putting food on the table.
We completely understand that. They’re fantastic people who genuinely want to support us but they’re doing it tough too!
So, for now, we’ll continue working through our existing waitlist, and our safety-net commitment to our previous inmates remains in place but we can’t responsibly say yes to new requests for help until we have a clearer picture of what the future looks like.
This isn’t a decision we’ve made lightly. It’s one we need to make if we’re going to have any chance of continuing our mahi.
