Our First “Workaway”

About three months into our trip, we were starting to get bored of being tourists, feeling unproductive and lacking genuine purpose each day. We’d often wake up in the late morning and wonder “What now?” We’d heard many great reviews from people we’ve met travelling about Workaway and WHOOFing. We signed up for a membership with Workaway.info as a couple for about $30 for two years. Right from the workawy home page they state their philosopy is “A few hours honest help per day in exchange for food and accommodation and an opportunity to learn about the local lifestyle and community, with friendly hosts in varying situations and surroundings.”  We thought this was absolutely perfect, plus the workaway site was very user friendly and its reach went worldwide.

Check out our profile:

We knew we wanted to work with animals and children at some point on our trip and found a great opportunity in Nepal to volunteer with a gentleman who had a facility for handicapped children and another shelter for dogs. We were very excited because we have a pug back home and we’ve been missing Murphy a lot, so we booked our flights for April 27th. When we heard about the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit on April 25th we were very concerned. We immediately decided that regardless of whether our Workaway host still wanted us to come and work or not, we were going to Nepal and would volunteer with the disaster relief groups. We contacted our Workaway host but did not hear anything back from him. We followed the news and started to realize that the situation around Kathmandu was quiet dismal and we would likely become more of a problem if we went there without some prior organization. There was nowhere to sleep, communication systems were down, and fresh food and water were scarce. We decided it was safer to not go to Nepal at this time, but had peace of mind knowing many humanitarian relief groups and volunteers were already mobilized.

So although we were disappointed the opportunity in Nepal didn’t work out we still wanted to serve a purpose and help. We found an opportunity at Cat Beach on the island of Penang, Malaysia specifically in a small fishing village called Teluk Bahang. There were only a couple requirements:

1. Must like cats!
2. A few hours of honest work in exchange for food/shelter.

We were one for two on the requirements, we are hard workers and were ready to get our hands dirty! Liking cats had never been something we had the opportunity to explore since we both were dog lovers our whole lives! However, in general we are compassionate animal lovers and also enjoy meeting new people. We were really intrigued by Tevy, the lady who was running the cat sanctuary, an American expat woman, writer and teacher who was now living in Asia.

We stayed at Cat Beach for one week and worked with two other volunteers, Jo and Lizzie, from England. It was a unique experience that really needs to be felt rather than talked about. After spending that much time with over 100 hundred cats and 21 kittens (my last count before leaving), we both grew to love cats; Asian cats have so much more personality than Canadian ones. We also learned so much about cats and the environments these cats were living in, including:

• Why do cats in Asia have short or kinked tails? We thought they might have been chopped off and eaten or ran over by vehicles. But once we started noticing that almost all cats had short or kinked tails we figured these couldn’t be the answers. Although there are many stories floating around about why these cats are like this, they all funnel down to it being genetic selection or evolution over time but the cats are being born like this.

• A cat’s diet should be about 25-30% protein and a kitten’s slightly higher. However at the cat sanctuary, due to the number of cats we had and not enough food, we have to mix the cat food with rice which dilutes the protein content to less than 20%. Rice is a filler and in small portions can actually be good for sick cats but when the diet is mostly rice, the cat can actually become malnourished from lacking protein, even if it’s eating large amounts of the rice.

• We had a daily, endless war with house flies at the cat’s feeding times. We started to research how to get rid of them and learned it’s important to eliminate the flies at the source! At Cat Beach we tried sticky fly paper, vacuuming up flies, setting up water traps, hosing everything down and trying to be quick and clean about the feedings but none of these seemed to truly help the fly situation. We learned that a lot of the scraps and leftovers from the feedings were being washed off the plate, down the drain and directly under the house. So the source of the house flies, the very place they were being bred and fed, was right underneath the house.

Aside from our 5hrs of work per day we did at Cat Beach, there was also plenty of time to be entertained by playing kick ball with the locals in the backyard, interacting with the handicapped kleptomaniac (Will ironically had his soccer ball stolen), watching the giant Monitor Lizards in the streams, checking out the crazy caged monkey in the backyard, conversing with local people, and watching chickens frolic and lay eggs in the sand. Cat Beach was a dynamic place and there was always something going on or something to do! In the evenings when we were ready to relax, you could enjoy a refreshing swim (in potentially jellyfish infested water) with gorgeous sunsets or enjoy a casual drink with the rest of the gang while listening to cats who climbed into the ceiling whailing outloud. And once you were ready to venture outside the village there was Batu Ferringhi (where we were swarmed by flying termites in a restaurant which is abnormal) or Georgetown to visit. Both places are more touristy with restaurants, nightlife and boutique shops but definitely worth a visit.

Although a lot of the time at Cat Beach was fun and lighthearted, there were also challenges. There were several different personality types working towards a common goal and sometimes those mindsets clashed so we had to work together to move through those issues. We were recently refreshed on some tools from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and when Tevy approached us and asked for our advice on certain dynamics at the sanctuary, we embraced the opportunity to give her feedback. Tevy has a strong heart and her intention is to help the numerous stray cats in Penang. She does the very best that she can with the time and resources she has but at the end of the day, she cannot do it alone and needs volunteers! So it’s very important to have a good relationship with the volunteers and for everyone to show respect and consideration. We were happy to hear that the dynamics in the house were stabilizing and one of the other volunteers was planning to stay for an extended period of time and help Tevy out. Jo had recently spent nine months at a cat and dog sanctuary in Thailand and was bringing with her a wealth of knowledge.

Other challenges at Cat Beach were cats or kittens passing away every few days. During feeding times there were millions of flies that swarmed the house. There was unglamorous work to be done such as cleaning up diarrhea, afterbirth, and dead kittens … no point in sugar coating it because this was the reality of the situation. And it was important to understand the sanctuary is in its first year of development so it was very basic, third world conditions we were working in. But challenges aside the good outweighed the bad.

One of the opportunities we had was to watch Carolina give birth to three beautiful kittens. It wasn’t Carolinas first time giving birth to a litter and you could tell she was a champ at it. Cats are nothing liking humans when they give birth, they don’t make a single peep, they don’t need anyone at their side, and they clean up (ie. eat) their own mess. Like we said Carolina was a champ! Also within a few days she was already adopting other runty kittens or kittens that were orphaned so they could get some milk and nutrition.

Check out our Youtube channel to watch Carolina give birth!

On our last night at Cat Beach we were actually quite torn to be moving on. We had built relationships with the people and fell in love with many of the cats (RIP Stormy). But we needed to celebrate our first Workaway experience, and what a memorable one it was, with a few drinks and a sleepover party with 30-odd cats. 
They say cats have nine lives but in reality they don’t, they are like us, and they only get one chance. We hope that we gave some of these kittens and cats a fighting chance in the short time we were there. When we get back home to Canada we’d like to continue to help with cats and either foster or adopt … Add them to our crazy life and the farm!

If you’d like to learn more about Cat Beach or donate to them, please follow the links:

Workaway profile

Facebook page

GoFundMe donations

Our first Workaway experience was great and we can’t wait to do more! Our next Workaway is housesitting at a farmhouse in Turkey during June/July. We will be training two 7-month old puppies, taking care of 23 chickens, two peacocks, two beehives, and an orchard of cherry trees. Stay tuned ….