Elle Em, also known as Elle Maruska, was born and raised in New Jersey. They are an American currently living in southwestern Spain with their husband and soon 13-year-old daughter. They have a degree in MA in World History "which is obviously very useful for running a cat sanctuary" as Elle says in her introduction to Bored Panda.
Apparently, there are a lot of stray cats in the city, so the shelters are always overwhelmed and there are more cats in the streets than people willing to help them, so Elle accidentally turned their house into an unofficial cat rescue/sanctuary.
Elle describes how their family came into that situation on their Patreon: “When my family and I moved to Spain, we thought it would be fun to foster a litter of kittens. Which then became another litter. And another. And some adults. And more kittens. And more adults.”
Elle tells us more of the history of turning their house into a cat sanctuary. Turns out, their family moved to Spain in 2018 and because they didn't know anyone there, they started "perusing local facebook groups and noticed there was a real need for people willing to foster unwanted cats."
Elle reached out to a few people and offered help, but the "litter of four bottle babies ended up much, much bigger." The word spread about Elle taking care of cats so they even found kittens left on their home doorstep. They really got involved and actively started searching for abandoned cats and helped to control the feral colonies.
Over time, the family got more serious about this matter, "In 2020 we moved into our current home and my husband and I started working on an actual physical sanctuary for our cats. We built a large Cat Area attached to the back of our house and we’ve been improving it ever since. Our most recent project is a smaller, heated area for quarantine purposes, so that we could continue safely helping sick cats."
The family doesn’t keep the cats forever and tries to find them a new home. Elle told us, "My family and I try very hard to find forever homes for the cats in my care and I am so happy whenever I can bring a cat and a family together." They try to find loving families through friends and then their friends, so some of the cats Elle took in currently live not only in Spain, but also Germany and the US.
On their Patreon Elle says that They also try to control the growing cat population in the streets by neutering them, but it is hard as the only help they get is financial and moral support on the internet.
It sometimes gets frustrating, but Elle says that their family keeps going: “helping cats is the little bit of good we can do to make our small piece of the world better.”
Sadly, what Elle sees in the town of Cadiz is a reality in many places in Spain. Elle doesn't think that "Spain has more of a problem than anywhere else. Cats breed very quickly and their populations can grow exponentially. Add this to abandoned pets or irresponsible owners who don’t spay or neuter their cats and you get a very sad situation."
While for most of us, that breaks our hearts that there are many cats without homes, some just want them eradicated as they are compared to pests that smell and carry diseases.
However, there is a more humane method of controlling stray cat and dog populations. It is called Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) and as the name suggests, people trap cats to perform the neutering surgery and then release the animals after their wounds are healed. Depending on an animal's condition, they might vaccinate them to prevent them from spreading diseases.
Elle is also familiar with this method and likes "to focus on spaying and neutering strays--the fewer kittens, the fewer cats."
Most often the cats living on the streets are feral so they aren’t capable of adapting to living in a cage in a shelter or in a home. Living on the streets is all they know and know well, so they gladly go back to their territory. That is why the last step of the method is 'return.'
But what is most important, they can’t breed, so the population keeps declining. Unspayed cats can have up to 18 kittens a year, so if a city is inhabited by 1000 of such cats, by the end of the year, the cat population might increase up to 18,000. Controlling the birth rate is key for humanly clearing the streets of cats.
Usually TNR is conducted by an organization, but Elle is doing it alone; however, even their own effort can make a difference and it also might inspire other cat lovers to join. Elle needed some inspiration of their own and started a wonderful thread of cute cat photos and stories of them being their annoying selves.
The thread got almost 30k likes and 5k comments. People seemed to love the idea of sharing what their cats were up to in the form of an AITA, which is a Reddit format of people describing a situation and asking if they were a jerk for behaving in a certain way, as they all played along.
Elle revealed to us that she loved reading through the thread and shared with us which stories amused her the most, "The stories are all hilarious and they really demonstrate how much people love their cats-even if we may not love every single thing they do. From cats that eat their fur to prevent the Big Ugly Cats stealing it, to cats who like to sit on their dog friends, to cats who may or may not have cost their roomates a security deposit. There are so many creative ways for cats to obviously be NTA."
Which AITAs did you like the most? Upvote them and share your own AITAs from your cat’s perspective in the comments!
