GEORGE TOWN, July 19 — Every morning, at 7am, Fouziah Omar loads her motorcycle with bags of cat food and starts making her two-hour journey to work.

The 57-year-old lives only 30 minutes away from her office in Butterworth but she makes it a point to leave home early so she can make multiple stops at food courts, hawker centres, wet markets and open spaces where stray cats gather.

“I make at least 30 stops, going around looking for them but usually they know whenever I come, they can recognise my motorcycle sound so they will immediately come out of hiding,” she told Malay Mail.

Motivated by her love for cats, Fouziah has also taken in 40 cats and rented a space to house them.

“I can’t help it. When I see an injured or sickly cat, I have to take them in and take care of them,” she said.

The assistant manager spends about RM2,500 a month on feeding and taking care of the 40 cats and the stray cats.

“My daughter is already married with her own family, I don’t have any other commitments so now the cats are my commitment,” she said.

A few months ago, in April, she learnt of Catsoterra, known locally as Cats of Penang, and decided to join as a volunteer.

Catsoterra, which was set up in Penang only last year, is a volunteer-driven animal welfare organisation that helps facilitate the sterilisation of stray cats in Penang.

Volunteers who join the organisation pay an annual subscription of RM60 and have access to the Catsoterra online dashboard where they can make appointments online to bring in cats to be neutered or spayed.

All sterilisation costs are funded by Catsoterra but additional costs such as medicines or treatment for diseases of the cats brought in will be borne by the volunteers.

“I have already been doing this on my own previously, using my own funds, and joining Cats of Penang only makes it easier for me to get more cats spayed and neutered,” she said.

Since joining Catsoterra in late April, Fouziah has brought in 29 cats to the designated veterinary clinic, Penang Veterinary Clinic in Gelugor, to be sterilised.

“It is not easy to capture stray cats, some will take months for them to get used to you before you can even go near them to trap them,” she said.

Meanwhile, over in Bayan Baru on the island, office worker Ben Chan has also been feeding stray cats around the market complex at night.

“I took about five of them to the veterinarian to be sterilised last year on my own,” he said.

However, the costs were prohibitively high so he could not do it frequently until he joined Catsoterra three months ago.

“It costs up to RM250 to spay a female cat and up to RM200 to neuter a male cat,” he said.

He said Catsoterra has a good online platform that makes it easy for volunteers to make appointments for a sterilisation procedure.

Once he traps a cat, he would make an appointment for the next day as he would need to let the cat fast overnight first before bringing it to the veterinary clinic.

The 35-year-old said people tend to dump cats around the market and hawker centre complex and even in the mosque compound.

“There are easily around 50 stray cats in this area and if we don’t sterilise them, the population will keep growing,” he said.

He recently took in one of the female cats that had just delivered her third litter of kittens.

He said this means that one female cat can produce more than 15 kittens in three different litters.

“Now she’s still nursing so we can’t spay her yet so I am taking care of her and her five kittens first,” he said.

Once the kittens reach the required age and weight limit (minimum six months and two kilograms), he will bring them in to be spayed and neutered too.

Chan demonstrated how he trapped an eight-month-old male cat, that he named Junior, by enticing it with cat food.

The cat, originally lounging on the makeshift wire trellis in the garden of an open space, had refused to come down even though it recognised Chan. He finally made his way down when Chan offered him cat food. 

Once he caught Junior, he brought him back in a cage as the cat needed to fast overnight before taking him to the veterinary clinic the next day.

“Usually for male cats, after the procedure, I will keep them for one day for recovery before releasing them back to where they were found,” he said.

As for female cats, he said he will keep them for three days before releasing them.

Fouziah and Ben are only two of the 77 volunteers who have joined Catsoterra which has sterilised almost 800 cats.

The organisation has subsidised more than RM50,000 for the sterilisation since its establishment in 2025.

Find out more about Catsoterra here.