Kawerau cat rescuer Emma Lewis has stumbled upon a novel way to help fund her cat rehoming operation.
By Diane McCarthy of Local Democracy Reporting
It all began a few years ago when she knitted a novelty Christmas gift for a friend. The distinctively phallic-shaped, catnip-filled cat toy was meant as a joke, and her friend, and her friend’s cat, thought it was such a hoot that she was asked to make more.
“She paid me to make another one for her other friend. Then that friend posted photos of her cat playing with it on social media and next thing I knew they were getting quite popular. I thought, ‘hey, this might be a way of helping fund my cat rehoming project’. People think they’re funny and cats absolutely love them.”
It was something she could do in her downtime, while not busy at her fulltime job or caring for, or out rescuing, cats.
Lewis sells the toys, mostly on trading website Trade Me, for $20 each and puts the funds toward feeding, desexing and veterinary care for the many cats she rehomes, also, mostly via Trade Me.
Though she charges $150 to adopt a cat, this doesn’t go far to recouping the costs of neutering, caring for and rehoming the animals, which come out of her own pocket.
She grows her own organic catnip which she dries and sprinkles through both the stuffing and the double lining of the toy.
The “cat willies” are not the only shapes she knits. She also has a popular line of ping-pong sized balls that sell a little better than the todger-shaped toys, which, she admits, require a certain kind of sense of humour.
Lewis said she “accidentally got into cat rescuing” through adopting the stray, injured and neglected cats that wandered into her life or that she discovered on the streets. She started actively rehoming cats when their number became too high for her to provide them a home herself.
While this takes up a lot of her time, caring for and finding homes for the cats all over the Waikato and Bay of Plenty, sometimes as far away as Wanganui and Wellington, she said she was lucky that her employers were very supportive, and she worked alongside other local rescues to help tackle Kawerau’s stray cat problem.
Kawerau no longer has an SPCA based in town and organisations such as the Kawerau Alley-cat Trust (KAT) and Ktown Community Animal Welfare Society (CAW) do their best to keep the stay cat population in Kawerau in check and rescue those that are neglected, injured, sick or hungry.
Lewis operates her cat rescue separately to these organisations, funding it herself, and through her cat toys and occasional donations.
On its website the Bay of Plenty Regional Council said the council "supports responsible cat ownership which includes microchipping, de-sexing and keeping cats contained at night".
It also talks about the benefits of microchipping cats.
"Unlike cat collars, which often come off, microchips are reliable. Microchipping makes it easy for vets, animal shelters and councils to identify cats, and return them to their owners if they become lost or separated, or trapped during pest control programmes."
Anyone wishing to purchase Ms Lewis’s cat toys or donate money or even wool can contact her by email at cattykitsnz@gmail.com.
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