Lack of a trap didn’t stop these intrepid trappers,
who visited Montenegro before traps were available!

Neither severe allergies not lack of traps kept volunteers Caren and Kenric from catching their cat! And then another, and and another and another…a dozen cats in all! The hamper was bleached numerous times after “accidents”, but it didn’t affect the magic properties that got those cats to the vet! Even now, with traps available most of the time, if there’s no time to collect a trap they run for the Magic Hamper instead!

Caren and Kenric are driven by a horrifying experience during their first visit to Kotor, when a neighbor, furious at yet another batch of kittens in the area, stomped on one and killed it, right in front of them. They had already TNR’d the kitten’s mother and her sibling. But the neighbor’s rage and violence convinced them they needed to do more.

That was in the fall of 2018, just as Kotor Kitties started. They found us on Facebook, and rather than start their own nonprofit spay-neuter program, as they were about to do, they threw their energy into helping Kotor Kitties grow and establish!

Caren tells their story:

The Magic Hamper

When Kenric and I returned to Kotor, Montenegro in November 2019, our only goal was to spay and neuter as many Old Town cats as we could. On our first evening, we made two trips to the vet; each time carrying a cat in the laundry hamper from our Airbnb. We used the same hamper to transport Waxy in 2017, and Kelly Koh and her baby in 2018.

The veterinary staff found it amusing, but agreed that the hamper worked great while we waited for Kotor Kitties’ traps. The inside of the hamper looked like a spaceship. I told Kenric that the cats would warn others about the abduction. Since neither of us is Montenegrin, we laughed at the alien abduction theme.

Kenric didn’t really like carrying the hamper because it required both hands, and the hamper had to be in front of him. With his elbows bent, he looked like an awkward bodybuilder showing off his biceps. The people we regularly walked past on our way to the vet must have found it odd that we had so much laundry. During one of the taxi rides, a “MEOW!!!” from the hamper surprised the driver; everyone laughed.

I liked the hamper because being at least two feet deep, it discouraged the kitties from trying to escape. The floor space was small enough so adult cats felt snug and safe, and remained calm(er). Still, they were not happy hamper campers. It worked well enough that we bought a new hamper to replace the one from the Airbnb that had a hole. Before we even got home from the shop with the new hamper, we scooped Gregi into it. While waiting for the vet to reopen for the night shift, we had to keep Gregi at the apartment. Magically, a pulled-out cabinet drawer was the perfect height to keep the lid closed. It’s our “anti-break lock system”.

With the purchase of few new towels to line the bottom, the Magic Hamper started a laundry list of cats whose lives it transformed.

One evening, a neighbor accused us of stealing her cat, and called the police because “You are not humans! You are criminals!” She did not agree with spaying and neutering the homeless cats. Seeing us remain calm while she was talking to the police probably angered her more. The police never came. She and her son certainly put a damper on our hamper. Actually, we were so shaken, we released the friendly cat in the hamper from that afternoon’s “catch”.

Based on the separate conversations the neighbor had with Dr. Relja, and her son had with Danijela, their cat had gone missing before we even arrived. The son told Danijela that they would put a red collar on their remaining free-roaming cat, and that we needed to send a photo to him of every grey cat we trap to make sure it wasn’t theirs. The following morning, the hamper cat we released came back for breakfast with a new red collar. Phew! A Magic Hamper indeed!