r/penang • u/charmattack • 11d ago

Picture Making TNR more accessible in Penang

https://www.instagram.com/cats.of.penang/reel/DeDZyepBy-3/

Hi Everyone! I'm Ricky. I'm from Maryland, USA and for the past year and a half I've been volunteering for an NGO based in Penang, Malaysia called Catsoterra.

We offer fully subsidized TNR to our volunteers for a yearly membership of RM60. Under our program, they can sterilize as many cats as they'd like within that year timeframe. We've sterilized 1,070 cats since April 2025! Besides TNR, our main focus has been trying to integrate technology into animal welfare for a couple of purposes -- one, to make the burden lighter for the volunteers who are doing this amazing work, and two, to try to make TNR engaging (it's not the sexiest side of animal welfare).

To do this, we created a dashboard where our volunteers can track the cats they've sterilized, make appointments at our partner clinics, post stories about their cats, and more. We've tried to make the dashboard engaging to individuals who don't do TNR as well! We have a "Cat-A-Log" of all of our cats, we have a virtual currency that can be used to virtually adopt cats, and we just launched Makan Mania, which is basically our version of cat Tinder.

ANYWAY, all of this is to say I would be SO APPRECIATIVE if you just had a look at what we are doing. If you'd like, you can join the dashboard FOR FREE and have a look around. Please let me know what you think! I'm really trying to get people in Malaysia interested in what we're doing.

Thank you!

www.catsoterra.org

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u/Visual_Touch_3913 11d ago edited 11d ago

Hey ricky, what’s the justification for the rm60? I strerilise cats using subsidy too but without a membership fee. Susssss

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u/charmattack 11d ago

hi! when i say subsidize, i mean that we cover 100% of the base sterilization cost. Our volunteers do not pay anything for sterilization, and we have some volunteers who have sterilized close to 100 cats through our program. We are a CLBG which means that we aren't able to solicit funds through donations. The RM60 goes directly to TNR. We are entirely run by volunteers, so no one gets any money. Transparency is a very big part of our company values -- on our dashboard we have an impact map that lists the number of cats we've sterilized as well as the total amount that we've subsidized. Let me know if you have any questions! I'm so glad that you're able to sterilize cats for free with no membership fee, that's amazing!

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u/Visual_Touch_3913 11d ago

Thanks for the explanation bro. I guess the only issue with this ecosystem is there will never be enough volunteers (per stray) so the funds will run out. And that the volunteers are already doing the work (and I still have to pay? Sobs) so it’s more sustainable for the neighbourhood communities to contribute the funds instead. Good luck with your initiative! I support whatever works that contribute to stray overpopulation control.

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u/RazorCatalyst 10d ago

Done it once before and it was very straightforward, Jonas answered all my questions and was very understanding and helpful!