About Us
Who we are, Our inspiration and Our objectives

Who we are
We are a small group of individuals trying to improve the life of animals on Corfu, hence, the Agni Animal Welfare Fund has been set up in association with Agni Travel in order that friends and visitors can make donations to help the islands stray animals.

We helped several cats during 2004 with donations received from friends who visited Agni during the summer. The offers of help came about due to the little cat that lived around Agni beach. With her distinctive and attractive looks many people noticed her. I spoke to one or two of her admirers and mentioned to several people that she had been spayed the previous winter, which was why she had no kittens and looked so well compared to the other female cats. Some visitors who came to Agni towards the end of the season noticed how well the little cat was compared to her sister and female colleagues and felt they would like to pay to have some more of the female cats spayed to give them a better chance of survival and reduce the number of cats needing help. 

Our inspiration
During that year, a friend had suggested to myself and Nathan the possibility of setting up a charity or fund in order to help Corfu’s stray animals and along with the offers to help some of the Agni cats, it became apparent to us that there was support for the animals and that visitors would be interested in helping and supporting an animal welfare fund. This inspired us to go ahead with a neutering programme that we had been discussing for some time.

Hence ‘Little Cat’ became our inspiration and is now the Mascot for the Agni Animal Welfare Fund.

Our objectives
Our primary objective is to reduce the number of kittens born in the summer by spaying and neutering the cats with the donations made to us and to discourage the excessive feeding during the summer. With less cats and kittens around to find food at the end of the season, the better chance they have of surviving through the winter. The few people that are around during the winter are more inclined to help one or two cats whereas they find it impossible to feed 20 or 30 of them. In areas where we have spayed and neutered cats we will make sure that they have food.

We would like to ask visitors not to feed the cats in the villas and apartments during the summer months, if the cats do appear to be hungry or starving place food in a location where we can continue to feed them during the wintertime. Overfeeding causes the cats to become very fertile and produce excessive amounts of kittens.  At the end of October the cats find themselves out on the streets with no food at all. Please donate the food and money to us and we will continue to feed the cats during the winter months too.

The Agni Cats

The cats find much of their food themselves in the summer, and if the Taverna owners put the scraps out for them at the back of the Tavernas they will not then hang around the tables begging and pestering visitors. Not everyone loves cats and even those that do may not want to be pestered by cats and kittens whilst they are eating at the Tavernas.

Help and support has been given in the past to some of the stray dogs and we would like to be able to continue with some support towards the them using the Agni Animal Welfare Fund  wherever possible. The situation with dogs is a little different from the cats, neutering of dogs is generally done through rescue centres and costs more than for the cats, so it is our objective to try and help the rescue centres through the Fund. Unlike the cats, the dogs are more unlikely to cope with living wild, so many are moved to Rescue Centres in Europe where proper homes are found for them. However there are cases, where dogs cannot cope with living a domestic lifestyle and have had to be returned to where they have been found after being neutered. Molly's Story is a good example, read her story on her own page.

The AAWF also supports Corfu Donkey Rescue, we help out at the stables if time permits and neuter and care for all the barn cats. Any donations we receive for the donkeys is passed on to CDR.  They now have their own website and if anyone wishes to help them further then please visit their website at www.corfu-donkeys.com

There are already Greek people concerned with animal welfare on the Island and we would like to involve as many Greek people as possible. It is our intention to use Greek vets and we need local people to help with feeding. Many Greek people cannot afford to pay neutering costs or even feed the strays but that does not mean they would not like to be able to help.