Many street cats are born, live and die, living a life of uncertainty and having no dedicated care or food supply. Historically in Greece, it was very common to see feral cats living out of garbage bins and finding food wherever they could, often going long periods without food or water.
Our aim is to give them a better chance of survival and our priority is to sterilise street cats, leading to fewer more healthy cats. It is not our objective to sterilise EVERY cat that lives on the streets, but to offer a humane population control.
A single female cat and her offspring alone can create as many as 5000 cats in a period of four years!
In 2016, we sterilised around 520 cats in Samos, both male and female. The vast majority of these cats live in the towns and villages around Samos and were caught and returned to their “home” place after the operations. We take great care to make sure that street cats are returned to the place where they are living.
Sterilised cats can be identified by a left ear “clip” which is done during the operation and causes no harm or pain to the cat, but helps us and local people identify which cats have been operated. We sterilise both male and female street cats.
We do not sterilise cats that are too young, sick, weak or injured or female cats that are pregnant and all vet work is conducted by professional qualified vets and supported by vet nurses from Europe and in Samos. 
Our volunteers do not undertake the surgeries. We operate all year with our sterilising programme, with visiting vets from Europe coming to Samos around 4-5 times a year.
During the operations, we also check street cats for any problems, infections, wounds and we will give treatments as necessary.