hiatus for our kitty-dreams at Love Kuching

We took a short one-week break off major cat rescue projects to re-group and re-think Love Kuching's future. If you have been loyally visiting our blog for the past week you would have noticed a lack of updates. Not only did we need the time out to think through and re-strategise, I also fell majorly ill and needed a bit of time out to convalesce. In any case, the week of rest is over and here are some of our thoughts that we would like to share with you, our loyal supporters.

It is when the going is well that we need to strategise, not when times are tough. Times are indeed tough for there is news wafting about regarding private catteries having financial difficulties. But for Love Kuching Project, we are doing fine. However, we believe that passion for animal rescue needs to be coupled with economics. We do not intend to be a short-term animal rescue group that runs out of funds or people or dies for a lack of vision. We are in this mission for the long haul. Hence we need to plan for the long-term and after a pow-wow, here are some of our plans and thoughts.

A bigger foster home: a private cattery
We are reaching levels of a consistent rescued cat population that requires a bigger space. This means we have to expand beyond the walls of the foster lounge of our current space. This means we need to rent a facility that can shelter more than our current shelter-intake rate. In this way, we will be able to care for more cats-at-risk than presently. It will also be more convenient for adopters and visitors to come by and interact with the cats. At the same time, the risk of us using our home as a foster home for rescue will be removed, as Andy and I are living in a H-db flat.


Financial sustainability: a social enterprise
In order for a us to lease a space that can be used as a cattery for rescues, we will need to expand beyond a total non-profit group into a social enterprise in order to cover our increased overheads in rental, fixtures and fittings, electricity, even salaries / volunteer compensations. This means that in order to sustain a cattery, we will need to foray into private cat boarding as a revenue generation source. Based on rough estimations we need to provide luxury private cat boarding at a rate of 14 cats a day to cover the expenses necessary to keep the cattery for rescued cats afloat.

Resource sustainability: a full-time worker
It has come to a point where I find myself working almost to the brim at Love Kuching, and even then there is always more to do. This means that eventually, in order for us to raise the bar of service in our cat rescue group, something has got to give. At present, it is my own job. In order for me to be able to continue doing what I have been doing - caring for the cats, feeding and medicating them, bringing them to the vet, fund-raising, planning TNRM projects, administration and accounting, publicity, liaison with adopters, liaison with donors and sponsors, writing the blog, handling appeals for cat rescue help, volunteer management - the list is endless - the answer can only be that I will eventually need to do this full-time. Hence I will need to be an entrepreneur (one of my many hats in my illustrious career) that will enable me to run Love Kuching without it interfering my honest living. Hence social entrepreneurship with a nominal compensation for whoever it is that will run Love Kuching full-time is the only way we can go about our mission for the long-term, be it myself or someone else that can fill the shoes.


Given all that we have mentioned above, we are setting in motion plans to put our vision in place. In the meantime, we will keep doing what we have been doing. If what we have shared has piqued your interest, do feel free to contact us. We would love to have someone to share our ideas with, if not to gain support, to gain some critique and insight so we can keep going.

Now that the short hiatus is over - look forward to more blog posts!