The Story Behind the Backyard Catz Colony

After starting to help with a South Auckland cat colony recently Animal Liberation Aotearoa members have started to manage another small cat colony living in Grey Lynn. We came across these cats after reading an article in the local paper, Harbour News.

The article read:

A woman battling with 15 feral cats on her property is at her wits’ end after being refused help.

Grey Lynn resident Rosalina Solomona-Kali says her property has become home to a growing number of cats during the last several months.

She says her two sons are constantly sick with colds, allergies and flea bites and her sister’s two young children contracted scabies while on a visit from Australia last year.

"They just came out of nowhere and before you knew it they were breeding," she says.

"I can’t understand it because we’re not feeding them."

Ms Solomona-Kali started phoning the SPCA in October last year, in the hope it could help with the problem.

She says she was told her only choice would be to hire trapping equipment for each of the cats from a pest control company, at a cost of $50 each.

"I’m from a low-income family, I can’t afford $50 each for 15 cats that aren’t mine," she says.

Ms Solomona-Kali has also contacted the Auckland City Council and the Auckland Regional Council who both said they are unable to help.

She also sent a letter to Auckland mayor John Banks pleading for help.

A response Mr Banks on March 6 confirmed there is no legal action the council can take as the cats have no owner.

In the letter Mr Banks suggests methods such as using Zoo Poo fertiliser and placing mirrors or bottles of water around the garden to scare the cats away.

Mr Banks calls the trapping of cats "emotive, expensive and not without problems", and says it is also often an ineffective and only temporary solution.

But Ms Solomona-Kali says there is such a large number of the cats, she doesn’t think minor measures such as mirrors will work.

She says the skittish, un-tamed cats, some of which are very young kittens, would be difficult to catch without professional help.

The situation has left her feeling exasperated and helpless, she says.

"I’ve gone through all the right pipelines and no-one wants to help me."

When contacted by the Auckland City Harbour News, regional council biosecurity officer Andrew Stein confirmed it is unable to help as it only deals with feral cat populations in rural areas.

SPCA chief executive Bob Kerridge also suggested that Ms Solomona-Kali contact a pest control company who would trap the cats

But after calling several pest control companies in the wider Auckland area, the Auckland City Harbour News was unable to find any who could help.

We responded to this article in the paper by offering to desex, vet check and feed the cats until we find them permanent homes.

This blog will follow their journey, please check back regularly to see what the cats are up to and how you can help.

Meet Chicken

On Sunday while travelling through the countryside near Whangarei we found a brown shaver hen pecking in the grass on the roadside outside a free range egg farm. We picked her up and put her in a cage in the car. She spent the rest of the afternoon with us driving round. We gave her the very imaginative name of Chicken, maybe we had been in the car too long but think it suited her quite well.

In the early evening we dropped her off at her new home where she will be able to live out the rest of her natural life.

Why take a hen from a Free Range Farm you ask.

Even though hens on a free range farm are not in cages and can move around they are still only there to make profit for the farmers. When hens on both battery and free range farms stop laying ‘enough’ eggs to be profitable they are all sent to slaughter. So even a so called ‘free range’ hen who could live for 15 years has her life cut short to only a couple of years.

Naturally hens live in very small flocks however on many free range farms hens are forced to live in flocks much larger than that, some even over one thousand birds. This causes stress to the hens and makes it hard for them to form hierarchies, which are an integral part of a hens social structure.

Living in larger groups can also lead to hens becoming aggressive and peaking each other. Like on battery hen farms many ‘free range’ farmers remedy this situation by cutting the tip of the hens beak off; this is known as de-beaking. This procedure is carried out when the hens are chicks and is very painful as there are many nerves in a hen’s beak. Glenrocks Free Range farm where Chicken came from used this practice.

Many free range egg farms source their hens from the same hatcheries used by battery hen farmers. The parents of these chicks are factory farmed and live in over-crowed sheds in conditions much like those of broiler (meat) chickens. When fertilised eggs are laid they are taken from the mothers and placed inside incubators until they are ready to hatch. At this point the eggs are placed in draws until they hatch. Half of the chicks will be males, who obviously cannot produce eggs. At one day old the chicks are sorted by gender; because the males are not economically useful they are killed; either by gassing, neck dislocation or instantaneous fragmentation (which basically means being minced alive). This is the same for both the battery hen and free range industry. For every female hen in a battery hen cage or on a free range farm there is a chick who was killed because he made the misfortune of being born a male.

Cats To Be Put To Sleep - Not If We Can Help It

Last week we were contacted by a man who had been left three older cats when his father died. These cats did not get on with his cat and so were forced to live outside. Furthermore he was moving and could not take the cats with him. He took the three cats into Animal Welfare in the hope that they could rehome them. However given the cats age he was advised that they would likely be put to sleep if left with Animal Welfare. Many thousands of adult cats was killed every year because most people only want kittens.

The man did not want to see this happen to his fathers cats and he and Animal Welfare contacted us to help; which of course we were happy to do. When it came time to collect the cats we got some good news that one of the cats, a large ginger male, had caught the eye of the person buying the mans house and he was going to stay with him. This meant we only got two cats, which is good given that we are busy with the Backyard Catz.

We were not told what the cats names were or anything about them really; only that they are about five years old. One smaller girl is tortoiseshell and we call her Splotches. She is timid but this could be because she is underweight and has an infected eye that will probably have to be removed. Splotches will go to the vet soon to have this looked at.

The other one is a very large chocolate coloured female we call Moose. She is very vocal and not too shy. She is also overweight and will have to go on a special diet.

Backyard Catz Trapping and Dexing Begins

Over the last two weeks have begun trapping and desexing the cats at the Grey Lynn colony. There are eight adults and one kitten in total. On our first visit we caught two tabby females, who we subsequently called Possum and Tangelo, and a little black and white male kitten we now call Mr Monochrome.

We had Possum (the larger one) and Tangelo (the small tabby/tortie) desexed, defleaed and wormed the following day. We then kept them at home for a week until they had healed and a bit and to get them used to people. They were surprisingly easy to handle.

As for Mr Monochrome when we got him he had cat flu, was covered in fleas and was very malnourished. Being that he was so little and unwell we decided to keep him with us until he finds a home. He is far to young to be desexed at the moment and even to be treated with normal flea treatment so we gave a flea bath instead.

After a week at home we returned Possum and Tangelo to the colony and trapped more cats. This time we only caught two; a young ginger male and a slightly older black and white male who might be Mr Monochromes dad. We suspect the cats might be getting wise to our trapping plan as they are way more cautious now.


When we feed the rest of the cats Possum and Tangelo were much less scared of us than they had been before they stayed with us.


The two males we trapped were taken home and desexed, de-fleaed and wormed the following day. The ginger one we call Pumpkin and the black and white one we call Mr Monochrome Senior as he is probably Mr Monochromes dad.


They have been here a week now and we will be returning them tonight and trying to trap the remaining two females and one ginger male.

We Finally Made Shelter

Over the long weekend we finally found the time to make the cats some shelter for the winter. We had a old wooden crate used to transport animals on aeroplanes so we modified that a little and then it was perfect.

We also saw one of the little kittens hanging out with the big cats in the tyres and grass.

There Are Five or Six Kittens . . . . .

Hello there fellow cat lovers of the world and greater Auckland

Yesterday we went to meet with our many cat friends including gingey, gingey with white feet, mum cat, mum cats twin with white strip on her nose, two black and one brown triplets, braveheart and the five or six kittens.

This time we had to buy an extra can of cat food as the kittens are now eating solid food. Only one of them came out when we were there but he or she was big all of a sudden.

You probably noticed that we did not get around to making their shelter last weekend as we ran out of time but we will get on to it ASAP. As you have probably seen today the rain has really set in now and we want them all to stay safe and dry over winter.

Love Kelsie

Introducing the Tyre Cats Cat Colony

There are a few people helping to care for a cat colony in South Auckland; this includes caring individuals, members involved in other cat colonies and members of Animal Liberation Aotearoa.

The plan for this colony is to de-sex all of the cats and return them to the colony. Once they have become more tame we would like to place them all in permanent homes.

As far as we can tell there are eight adult cats and three kitten who have been born in the last month. There are two ginger males; one with white and ginger and one who is just ginger. There are two black and white cats; the bigger one is female and she just gave birth to three kittens. The other one is not sexed as yet and have a white spot on his/hers nose. There is black/brown cat with a bushy tail and ginger patch on her front. She is classed as being tortoise shell and is most likely female; we call her Braveheart. Then there are three smaller black cats who are likely to be last seasons kittens. The three new kittens are as yet to be desexed but there appears to be one grey one and two who are black and white ones.

Yesterday we went to feed the cats as we do every Wednesday and we got the pat the cats for the first time YAY! As we sat with the cats we were able to pat them while they ate and we even played games with them and a cabbage leaf. We that was until one of the little black ones took off with the leaf.

We also saw the grey kitten for the first time hiding under a pallet. He or she looks very cute but I don’t think that we will be getting very close to them for a while. They spend most of their time hiding in amongst the tyres and pallets.

This weekend we are hoping to build them somewhere warm and cosy for over winter with pillows and blankets.

We will up date you on the progress of that soon.

Love Jasmine and Kelsie

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