Cat sanctuary hopes for more visitors to help its budget
By Diane Ako
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LANA’I, Hawaii (KITV) — A shelter on The Pineapple Island takes in cats, and is now up to 680 of the feral felines. The Lana’i Cat Sanctuary says it’s growing its business again after pandemic restrictions impacted their visitor count, and its budget.
At first glance, it doesn’t feel like 680 cats live at the Lanai Cat Sanctuary. But take a closer look, because they are everywhere: cruising in the trees, napping in the rafters, on the ground hiding in the bushes, and pretty much everywhere in between.
There are old cats. There are new cats. There are lots of cats. Janice Trumpeter and her husband have wanted to come here for three years and finally made it out frpm Denver. “It’s a unique place. There’s not many places in the world like this where you can come, that they take care of so many cats, they know them by name, feed them great diets, and let them relax the rest of their lives,” she says.
Executive director Keoni Vaughn hopes to see more visitors soon. “Pre-COVID, we were at 16,000 visitors a year. Now we’re 10,000 to 12,000 a year.”
The shelter costs $950,000 a year to run, and “95% of all our donations are from out-of-state and off island,” he details.
He’s gotten creative, selling cat merchadise at the shelter and now online, as well as some other programs. “We’ve created an adopt-in-place program where you can select and sponsor a cat. If you want to rent a piece of PURRadise from us, you can rent a cat house and have your name on it,” lists Vaughn.
There are regularly held cat-yoga fundraisers, and a QR code to donate. All of it, to support the mission of saving both Lanai’s cats and native birds. “We bring in cats where native birds are ground nesting, relocate them back to the sanctuary, where they can spend the rest of their life or until they get adopted,” he says.
More on the Lana’i Cat Sanctuary at lanaicatsanctuary.org.
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