She places in a minimum of 30 hours every week on the cat rehoming centre on East St, subsequent to VetLife, one thing she has been doing ever because it was established in 2000.
She and her fellow 5 volunteers are available to soak up stray and deserted felines of all ages, feed and clear up after them, then discover furever houses.
‘‘Because I love the animals, I come from Greece and we always had animals and my late husband loved animals and he established this,’’ she mentioned, referring to the centre.
John Keeley was an Ashburton SPCA inspector. He and Rallou and the native SPCA committee raised funds and constructed the centre in 2000.
The centre was Ashburton’s SPCA base till the committee determined to interrupt away from the nationwide organisation and kind an unbiased charity in 2017.
Following John’s demise that very same yr, the centre started to focus solely on cats.
‘‘He was a heart patient but he would come every day to feed the dogs, he left the cats to me and the volunteers, but the dogs, he loved the dogs,’’ Rallou mentioned.
Rallou mentioned she continues to assist discover houses for dogs by placing notices on the centre’s noticeboard.
Rallou grew up on a interest farm in her home nation, with lambs, horses, donkeys and geese. Each winter the interest farmers would transfer into the village because it was too chilly to remain on the farms.
‘‘I had a sheep follow me from the village down to the farm every day,’’ she mentioned.
She moved to New Zealand in 1963 as a part of a post-World War 2 association with Greece for bringing young girls to the nation for coaching and work.
Rallou labored at Silverstream Hospital old individuals’s home in Wellington. It was there she met John, who was an orderly.
‘‘So we met there and that was it,’’ she mentioned.
On the day the Ashburton Courier visited Mid Canterbury Animal Welfare Centre, there have been simply two cats needing to be rehomed – a two-year-old and her 10-month-old son named Thomas. The day prior there had been 4 cats, however two had simply been rehomed.
Thomas and his 4 siblings have been born on the centre, after a farmer introduced the pregnant mom in. The farmer had simply witnessed a motorist dumping the cat exterior their automobile door and driving off at Wakanui Beach.
‘‘Just because she was pregnant, they didn’t need her,’’ Rallou mentioned.
Rallou had realised her dream of having the ability to rehome the pair collectively. Last week they went to a cat-loving household who lived on an Ashburton farm.
‘‘I was so pleased, because they were so good together,’’ she mentioned.
There are nonetheless loads of cats for the volunteers to take care of, with 15 resident felines on website – eight barn cats in an connected outpost and 7 older cats within the ‘‘geriatric ward’’, which is 2 furnished rooms.
As nicely as doing this, the volunteers at the moment are getting ready for kitten season, which begins in November. It is the calm earlier than the storm on the centre at present, as throughout kitten season they typically get an inflow of as much as 50 kittens and cats at anybody time, and shall be in search of houses for every one.
Rallou mentioned she was in search of extra volunteers for the centre.
An additional 5 would imply that the present group might take a while off each every so often.
She mentioned the centre was not solely a busy operation, however a profitable one, doing nicely in its job of rehoming cats.
It additionally had good help from its neighbour of VetLife, which owned the land it was on and didn’t cost lease, in addition to neighborhood help within the type of donations, bequests and sponsorship.
The centre features a quarantine space in a separate building the place new cats coming into the centre go.
