Nobody moves to the Algarve planning to become a cat person. It just happens. My partner Sandra and I arrived in 2022, first in Lagos and later north of Tavira, and wherever we went the cats found us: kittens dumped in boxes beside the bins, hungry toms appearing at the gate at dinner time. You feed one, and word gets round.
We did what most soft-hearted people do. We fed them, took them to the vet to be neutered and vaccinated, and paid for it all ourselves. It took us far too long to discover the thing every newcomer should be told on day one: every Algarve municipality runs a canil, an official municipal animal centre, where sterilisation of strays is generally carried out free of charge. The responsibility for all those vet bills, and the help was there all along. We just did not know who to call.
And that, we slowly realised, is the real problem. Most people who find a box of kittens genuinely want to help. What stops them is not a lack of heart but a lack of information: which vet, which association, which canil, which number? Guess wrong and helping becomes expensive or exhausting, and goodwill quietly turns into a shrug.
That gap, between wanting to help and knowing who to call, is why we built Stray – Algarve Cat Help. It is a completely free app, released this year for Android and iPhone, with no sign-up and no adverts. Open it when you find a stray cat or abandoned kittens and it points you to your nearest vet, animal association or municipal canil, with contact details ready to call and practical advice on what to do next. We asked the region’s canils and associations for their input while building it, and their generosity shaped what the app became. Search “Stray – Algarve Cat Help” in your app store, or find it on Google Play and the App Store.
The response has been lovely. Since The Portugal News wrote about the app, downloads have climbed and strangers have emailed to volunteer their help, from translations to design. It turns out the Algarve is full of people quietly feeding someone else’s abandoned cats; they just never had a way to find each other.
These days we live near Estoi, and history has repeated itself: every evening we feed a colony of cats on our hillside, a small crowd of tabbies, a marmalade tom and a three-legged black kitten who is entirely convinced she owns the place. Everything so far – the app, the food, the vet bills – has come out of our own pockets, so we have set up a fundraiser for the colony. Every donation goes toward food and vaccinations, and as we grow, we hope to add outdoor shelters so the cats have somewhere dry to stay through the winter.
There is a storybook way to help too. I am the author of a children’s picture book, The Purrfect Rescue, about a family who take in a stray kitten called Whiskers. It is available on Amazon.es and Amazon.com, and all author royalties now go to the colony.
But the simplest way to help costs nothing: download the app, and tell a friend about it. The next time you, or they, find a box of kittens beside the bins, you will know exactly who to call. That single phone call is where every rescue story starts.
Iain Short is the co-creator of Stray – Algarve Cat Help
Stray – Algarve Cat Help is free on Google Play and the App Store.
Fundraiser: gofund.me/29b7cf23e
