The Kennedy Park (Parque Kennedy) is the colloquial name given to two park units, Parque Central and Parque Kennedy, located at the heart of the touristic Miraflores district, in Lima, Peru. It is also known as the “Cats Park”. The cat colony of the Kennedy Park started more than 25 years ago, when a couple of cats were introduced by priests from the nearby church for plague control.  Those cats reproduced and formed the feral colony. When a group of neighbors started taking care of them, people began abandoning their unwanted cats in the belief they would be well taken care of, thus forming the domestic cats colony. Nowadays more than 150 cats live in the park. The feral cats hide and stay in the trees, while the domestic cats are usually friendly and let people pet them.

Who we are

Our group was created 15 years ago by cat-loving neighbors. GVDF stands for “Feline Protection Volunteer Group” (Grupo Voluntario de Defensa Felina). Natalie Sanchez is currently president of GVDF and gave the group its association status. The group is composed of a dozen of permanent volunteers, who engage in most of the group’s activities, and temporary volunteers who help with one-time activities. Our main purpose is to provide the cats with food and medical care, promote their responsible adoption and prevent their abuse and abandonment. Due to the voluntary nature of our group, funding come from donations. We receive no help from governmental or private institutions, and even less from the municipal authorities of Miraflores. This is why your help is important.

What we do

Our mission is divided into three assignments:

o Taking care of the cats living in Kennedy Park through:

• Feeding daily more than 150 cats living in the park (at least 12 kilos of  balanced food per day);
• Deworming and vaccinating them annually;
• Spaying and neutering all the new cats. About 4 cats a week are sterilized (males and females);
• Providing medical treatment for sick and injured cats. In winter humidity in Lima is high and most cats get colds, for which they must be treated;
• Sheltering the cats during end of year festivities;
• Generally ensuring the cats’ safety and welfare

o  Holding a permanent adoption program by:

•  Attending an adoption booth in the park every week-end;
•  Providing foster care to recently abandoned cats and kittens until their adoption.

o Managing the Huachipa Shelter, where many cats from the park have been safeguarded three years ago.

We gather funds through donations through our spanish Facebook page, by organizing flea markets and selling cat-themed jewelry at the adoption booth.

Taking care of the cats in Kennedy Park

Our issues

Unfortunately cats are not very popular as pets with certain segments of the Peruvian population.

On one hand, some towns south of Lima celebrate annual religious festivities by eating cats. The cats are kept in small cages until the day of the celebration, when adults and children alike tie fireworks to the cats in order to make them race. They are then beaten and slaughtered to be eaten. People from certain parts of Lima are also known to eat cats on a regular basis, which is why we are always on the look-out to ensure that no one comes to the park to take them away without our permission.

On the other hand, cats face prejudices such as them bringing diseases and “being pests”. Some doctors tell their patients that cat hair produce brain or lung cancer, and that a pregnant woman should get rid of her cats. This is also why some Miraflores residents are violently opposed to the cats being in the park, despite not being the animals’ fault. Many would like to see all the cats dead or ”removed”, without trying to look for a humane solution. Unfortunately the municipal authorities of Miraflores tend to be on their side rather than on the cats’, failing to see them as a touristic attraction. GVDF had to face suspicious massive disappearances in the near past.

While we entirely agree that the park is not a place for a cat to spend its life, we are facing another issue: overpopulation and abandonment. Pet spaying and neutering policies are very rare in Lima, which leads to people finding themselves with offspring they cannot take care of. There are no government-funded animal shelters or organization, and there is a growing tendency in Lima to abandon unwanted pets in parks in the hope that others will take care of them. Kennedy Park is one of them and is unfortunately often thought of as a“cat dump”. Cats and kittens are left EVERYDAY in the park, often in a dreadful state, due to the belief they will be well taken for.

In fact, contrary to what many people believe, cats face a wide range of threats in the park, including cat-eaters, veterinary students looking for animals to practice on, being ran over by cars outside the park,stray dogs, individuals taking advantage of friendly cats to hurt them (like burning or cut their whiskers), children scaring them away, massive disappearance for unknown reasons and poisoning. While our volunteers usually check the park after it closes at night, it is very easy to get into and they are too few volunteers to be everywhere at the same time.

Feeding the Cats

Since the Kennedy Park cats are forced to live outside all the time, their food requirements are high: on a basis of 120 g (4.3 oz) of dry food per cat, we need around 20 kilos (44 pounds) of dry food per day for all 150 of them. Various cats currently suffer from gingivitis, which is why eating dry food is painful for them; they must be given canned food if we do not want them to go hungry (around 4 cans of 11 oz per day). Unfortunately, due to lack of sponsors, GVDF usually succeeds in obtaining only 9 kilos of daily food.

Cats are very territorial. This is why we distribute food “by tree”, since each of them belongs to a specific piece of territory. When there are more than a dozen cats at a certain point, food is given in individual disposable dishes. Water is also placed at each food point.

The cats have to be fed daily, and the municipal authorities only allow us to distribute the food at night.  Each day of the week corresponds to designated volunteers, in charge of dispensing the food. Going around the park to feed the cats takes at least 2 hours and a half, and there are always unexpected events such as abandoned cats or kittens, sick cats to be attended, conflicts with aggressive people, etc.

Deworming, vaccinating and defleaing

Sanitary authorities require the cats to be dewormed every six months and get rabies shot once a year as they live in a public area. When funds are available, GVDF also vaccinates the cats with the triple and proceeds to deflea them.

Spaying and neutering program

Since new, unsprayed cats are abandoned every week, GVDF must constantly take them to the vet. In average 4 cats, males and females are sterilized per week. While male cats are usually returned to the park the same day, female usually remain in foster care for a week so that their recovery be complete.

 Apart from spaying and neutering the cats from the park, we also try to spread consciousness to the public by delivering tracts in favor of spaying and neutering and against abandonment.

Providing medical treatment for sick and injured cats

Every single day people abandon cats and kittens in the park, covered with lice, sometimes with broken legs, pneumonia and other diseases. Cats venturing outside their areas and new cats are often beaten and drawn away by resident cats, thus exposing themselves to many dangers (i.e. crossing the street) and resulting in accidents. In the humid winter many cats get colds and have to be given shots and eye medicine. When they are too small or too sick to be left in the park, those cats are taken in for medical treatment and temporary fostering until they can be adopted. 

 GVDF counts with the assistance of two veterinarians who offer us their services at low prices. However, due to the high number of cats being treated, our debts with them are very high. Furthermore, medicine still has to be bought and is often very expensive. Finding enough funds to cover veterinary costs is always a challenge, which is why we regularly organize a flea market to sell donated objects. The recollected funds go entirely to cover part of our high veterinary costs. 

Protecting the Cats

As stated before, GVDF constantly has to protect the cats against ill intentioned people.

This includes sheltering them during end of year festivities and during the Corso de Wong, an annual parade around the park which ends up with fireworks inside the park itself. Similarly, at Christmas and New Year’s Eve many people go to the park to use their fireworks, including prohibited ones. This is why GVDF volunteers have to gather all the cats and store them in a truck for a day, leaving out the feral cats which have to endure the fireworks and risk their lives running away desperately.

Adoptions

GVDF carries out adoption campaigns every week-end, and so far has managed to place more than 900 cats in a decade. The adoption booth is located inside the park, in front of the church, and is taken out every Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the afternoon, and on holidays. Adoption events are sometimes promoted through reports on local television channels. We are always looking for responsible adoptive persons or families, who must satisfy a number of criteria. Spaying and neutering is a compulsory requirement. If the cats are more than 5 months old, they are usually spayed or neutered before being handed out. The adoptive family must go through an interview in which we try to determine whether the cat will be well taken care of. They also have to bring a kennel with them, and fill in an adoption form with their personal data and address, so that our volunteers can keep track of the cat.

Foster Care

Abandoned kittens can be several months to 1 day old; leaving them in the park at night is almost always a death sentence. Unfortunately GVDF does not count with a dedicated shelter for recently abandoned kittens and recovering cats. This is why some volunteers offer them shelter at their house until they are adopted.  Sadly foster homes are scarce, and space is limited since foster care volunteers cannot accept more cats until others have been adopted, which can sometimes take months. Up to 40 kittens can be abandoned in the park in a week; while an average of 4-5 cats are adopted per week-end, making the situation unsustainable.

The Huachipa Refuge

The Huachipa refuge was created three years ago as an emergency measure, when massive disappearances occurred: up to 70 cats disappeared in one night. Their fate was never known to us. Many domestic cats were then transferred from the park to apiece of land outside the district of Miraflores, with facilities such as wooden cabins to keep the cats inside. The refuge’s rent and other services were entirely funded by a single private donor. The existence of the Huachipa refuge was never made public due to the fear it would incentive people to leave more cats in the park, while in fact the refuge is not made for foster care.

Unfortunately, the person who used to sponsor the shelter is currently going through financial difficulties and will stop funding it in a month’s time, which is why we need to find new sponsors urgently. Since the Huachipa refuge is rather far away from our center of action and makes it difficult to operate, we wish to relocate the cats to a smaller, more affordable place closer to the Miraflores district. 

What we need and how you can help

Due to recent developments regarding the Huachipa refuge, we need sponsors to help us pay the rent for a new place. You can read more about it here.

Furthermore, what we always need on a year-round basis is the following:

• Daily food for the Kennedy Park cats, which requires up to 20 kilos of dry food a day, not including the cats with gingivitis that only eat wet food. An 8 kilos bag of dry cat food costs between S/. 60 and S/. 80 (Peruvian Nuevos Soles), which is about 20 to 27 US$.
• Covering veterinary costs, which include our permanent spaying and neutering program, emergency care and surgeries. Spaying and neutering costs about S/. 40 (10 US$) per cat.
• Medical supplies: vitamins (Felovite II costs S/.40),eye medicine (Tobramax costs around S/.65), shots against the flu (Clamoxil costs S/. 100), deworming medicine (Drontal costs S./ 24 for two units), flea spray, rabbies and triple vaccines, etc.
• Storage rent for the adoption booth.
• Taxi fares to get the cats to and from the vet, foster home or adoptive family, and to the Huachipa refuge.
• Rental cost of a truck to safeguard the domestic cats during end of year festivities and the Wong parade (in July).

We rely on the generosity of donors, passerby and vets who practice social rates, but due to the ever growing number of cats, this is not enough anymore. While we are looking for permanent sponsors, any donation you can make helps. We will send proofs of expense, photos and videos upon request. Furthermore, if you happen to live in or visit Lima, we will be happy to take you around the park to observe the cats.  The idea is to create trust between our group and our donors. Remember that the entirety of the funds collected goes to cat related care since our work is entirely voluntary.

Follow us

You can follow us on our Spanish page: GATOS Kennedy Oficial, where you will see our kittens in adoptions and our work from day to day, and on our English page: Kennedy Park Kittens.

YoutubeChannel (in Spanish): Gatos Kennedy

YoutubeChannel in English:  Kennedy Park Kittens

Twitter (inSpanish): gatos_kennedy