 Welcome to Healthy Planet, the show for people who care about their health and the health of our planet on the ThinkTech Livestream Network series. I'm your host, Dr. Grace O'Neill. Joining me today is Holly Hollowock, president and founder of the Popoki Place Oahu Cat Sanctuary. Welcome, Holly. Thank you for being on the show. Oh, thank you so much for having me. This is important. I'm glad you invited us. Thank you. Well, I'm so thrilled to be having you. So, can you tell me about how you started the idea for the sanctuary and everything? Well, it goes back to when I was working at Weinberg Village, Weinmanalo, as the director there. It's a transitional housing for homeless families. And I walked on the property and there were cats everywhere, along with chickens, but cats everywhere. And I'm like, what are these cats doing here? Well, it turns out there was a colony of about 50 cats living there. And they were in pretty poor condition and they were eating rice that was being tossed out the window for them. But the kids loved them and I cared for them. And so I eventually started feeding them, trapping, neutering them and taking them to the medical if they needed it and just having them live there. And so for 17 years, I cared for the cats. And the parents and the children helped me trap them when we were gonna take them and name them and cared for them, it was wonderful. And then when I wanted to retire in 2020, my board decided that we were gonna close our agency and give it back to the state and let them put a new agency in Weinberg Village. And so the state told me I had to remove all the cats or they would. And I knew what that meant. So I started searching for how was I gonna save these cats I'd been caring for for all these years. I couldn't see having them put down all of a sudden. So I started asking everybody I knew how to do it. And I found out that there was this huge network of people all over the island that are actually going out every day, feeding in colonies and trapping and neutering. And I started learning the depth and the breadth of the issue and how important it is and how there was no place to take them. That there are a few sanctuaries in people's backyards or their homes or somewhere near where they are. But they're all full, they can't take anymore. And most people just trap neuter and release them back to where they are and then they care for them every day. And I'm like, okay, but I can't do that because they can't stay at the village. What am I gonna do now? And so one day my husband and I were on Maui and we decided that we would go check out the Lanai Cat Sanctuary that somebody had told us about. So we took the expedition from Lahaina and went across. And this is the wonderful Lanai Cat Sanctuary as it is now. It started out at 12 cats in a small little horse corral. But over the years, they were given four acres of land from David Murdoch, who used to be the owner of Lanai. And he gave them this land in the middle of nowhere with no water, no electricity, no anything. And they ended up having, they have over 600 cats. They've helped about 3,000 cats over the year. And they're all cats from the island of Lanai. And if you go back to that picture just a second, if you can, you can see the different enclosures there. They're all outdoor enclosures. So what's nice about them is the enclosures are completely encircling the cats. So the cats are safe and the smaller ones are quarantine areas for when they first come in so they don't give other animals the diseases. Everything is done in containers. There's a Kapuna area and a kitten area and FIV area. And it turned into a cherished tourist destination. People come from all over the world and they just go straight over to Lanai. And it's mostly not Lanai residents or Lanai guests. It's actually people from, they'll go to Maui and fly over or Kauai and fly over somewhere just to be there for the day. And they'll spend the whole day there and they just love it. And the cats are healthy and happy. And I said, you know what? I have to do this. I have to bring this to Oahu. We need exactly this. And I went there for their 10th wedding, their 10th anniversary in November of 2019. And I announced them, I want to start Papogi Place. And they said, great. And so they've been supporting me and helping me. And we've been working on what I can do. They've been giving me ideas and suggestions and they're very supportive of the idea. So that brought me to starting the 501C3 and getting my board. I have a wonderful board. And I have people in all walks of life from Malia Wishes with Wall Wall Studios. She's a branding agency. She's done all of our wonderful branding and slides and logos and stuff. Irivella Ray is with the City and County Recycling, retired. Dr. Keele is from, she's a medical interpreter from, of Spanish as a professor at UH Manoa. And then I have my other wonderful board member, Ivana Hearn, who is a Compass Real Estate founding member for Hawaii. And then Tom Holowak, my husband, who is also a logistics genius and helps organize a lot of the things I've done in my life and makes my dreams come true. And then we have the beautiful Leslie Whitton who is with the La Jardana Academy. And she started a little cat colony caregiver there and named it Pono Papoke and has gotten the students involved in caring for the cats and learning about the problem. And the more I found out about the problem, the more I discovered that birds were being endangered and monk seals were being endangered by cats roaming around. I didn't know any of this, but this is so critically important that I started saying, we need Papoke Place more than ever. We have to protect the birds and keep them from being extinct. And I love birds. And so does the board. We all love birds. And we also love monk seals and spinner dolphins. And we want to protect the ocean as well. And we believe that we don't want any sick birds or sick monk seals caused by cats. That's one too many. People wanted to start culling them and they talked about, there was a legislation going out a couple of years ago where they wanted to make it a rule that they could cull all the cats in the whole state. And it's unrealistic. It's impossible. You're never gonna kill them all no matter how hard you try it. You'll be having unintended consequences. So then I realized, we believe that you don't kill one species to save another. You find a way to save them all. That's how it's gonna work. So Papoke Place has grown in our vision and our plans from a tiny little place to help a hundred cats to a very large sanctuary that can be open to the public. And they could actually, here's our vision. As you can see here, we have taken the Lanai cat sanctuary and grown it because we're so much bigger over here on Oahu. And we'll have the similar things in there. We'll need all of those. But we'll have, I wanna get enough land that when we start, we can start small, but we'll have room to expand as time goes and money goes and the more money we get in, the more cats we can help like that. So do you have any potential donors yet? Or how are you his money for the land? Well, that's the hardest part of all, of course. Engaging donors to help with this issue is big, but we have a beautiful website and you can go to our website papokeplace.org to donate anytime. The address is also on there if you wanna mail a check and you can go through PayPal. And so we have found donors that way. A lot of people have donated to us that way, but they also have written checks to us. We have had angel donor come and really give us our seed money and we're very grateful for her. And then we've had more large donors come. We've just got a pledge for $100,000. So we're getting there. We have another donation of $10,000 and then we have people we love are recurring donors who will maybe give us $50 a month or $100 here and there or $500. We've done Facebook fundraisers, but really if we were trying to get land from the state and we've talked to the DLNR, we've talked into the Department of Ag, we've got senators, governor, everybody involved that wanna help us because they realize this is a big problem. And so far we don't have any, but if we buy land, we'll have to pay for the land. So we need more money for that. So how much we need is really dependent on whether we have to buy land or get free land or lease land. I really feel like, I mean, it would be great if you guys could get money from the state because I mean, they would actually decrease some of their other problems like the monks and they can put less money into doing that because of the toxo and then, and with the native birds. Exactly, well, what he's showing you is that there's an overpopulation here because people aren't staying in Newt or enough and that's been going on for centuries actually. So the cats are all over the place. So now people are trying to catch up and a lot of people don't understand that trap, neuter, it does, we do release them back to where they are because we have to right now, but it reduces the population. You won't have more cats from every female can have hundreds of cats. It can exponentially go out and out and out. So the more cats you neuter, the better it is. And then back to the bird one, if you can get there, what happens is the seabirds nest in the sand, right in the sand. So the cats living along the beach and the shores, they'll go after those birds and we don't want that at all, of course. So we're talking to the DLNR about when we get our land that we wanna prioritize those cats. We wanna take the cats from the ocean, the park, anywhere that the DLNR identifies a colony of cats or cats alone, just give us the cats, we'll take that cat, give it a healthy life and that'll protect the birds and the monk seals. Yeah, and I feel like, I mean, I don't know where the state would give you land, but where would be the ideal location for a sanctuary like this? It would be obviously away from the beach, right? Cause so the cats would attack up the monk seals, the sheer water, birds and everything. Right, obviously we don't want it right next to the shore. It can be up the hill always because all of our cats are gonna be enclosed, they won't be roaming all over and they will be using litter boxes, which we will be, we're gonna have big outdoor litter boxes and it'll be made out of pine needles and other chipped waste that helps is also recyclable and we will be removing all of the litter every day from those boxes. So it won't be running off down the ocean. We have looked at every single place around the island that's available on the D on our list. We gave them a list of 14 locations that we wanted and unfortunately all 14 of those locations came back as being used for something even though it's not on the map, on the tax map key. They said, but keep looking. We're willing to give you land. Keep looking like, oh God, where else is there? So we were really frustrated and then we found a piece of land in Cunea for sale. And so we're interested in that. So we're thinking, well, if we have to buy that we need to raise a million dollars to buy that. So that's a million dollars on top of the half a million that we need to build the sanctuary. So that's a lot of money. But if somebody wants to help us with that obviously if we can find those angels we're reaching out to angels. Now we're trying to talk to anybody with money who's interested in helping with this cause that wants to make it solve it and be a part of it. If they helped us buy the land it would be like maybe we would name it after them. Papoke Place, a Wahoo Cat Sanctuary, so-and-so's park. Because it's gonna be a lovely park. And it would be named after people. It's why you can name like different parts after different people too, like. Exactly. And then there'll be all kinds of naming opportunities within the park itself, within the sanctuary itself. Cute little places. We're gonna have fun little places where you can take your picture for Instagram and you can sit with the cats under the trees and pet them and love on them because we'll have lots and lots of cats. And some will be adoptable. You can take them home or you can adopt them in place by paying $50 a month or whatever to care for their food and their everything. So that's part of what we're trying to accomplish. And can you show, Michael, can you show the picture of the litter box where she had talked about the litter box and everything and how it's not gonna be communicating with the ocean? I guess we could talk a little bit about this too. The kind of fencing that you guys are gonna have. Right. These pictures, this picture and the one before it are from the Lanai cat sanctuary. I have a lot of pictures from there. This shows you the type of fencing. It's a straight up fence about six feet, six or eight feet. And then across the top is another couple of feet with fencing across. So even if the cat is smart enough to try to climb up, he can't get around the top and get out. And it's very secure. And it's large enough. The thing I really wanna point out is that the cats will be living in a natural environment. They'll be on grass, they'll have trees to climb. They'll have little places to climb around and be up out of the ground. But they won't be in cages on cement slabs. I don't want that. We want it as natural as possible. And that's the beauty of being in Hawaii. We have that. We can do that here. We can't do that in Utah. You can't do that at Best Friends because you have hawks and eagles that'll swoop down. So you have to have them enclosed all over the top. But we have the luxury of having them just make sure the cat can't get out and everything else will be okay. And then we have those litter boxes, which I mentioned. And you can see from the cat, actually decided to go to the litter box right when we were taking the picture, which I thought was funny. And that's a naming opportunity right there on the wall. You can see they named it after somebody that they knew one of the joke and bought that for a friend of theirs. And so they use pine needles. They have so much Norfolk Island pine over there. They crushed it up and are using it for a natural litter. And then every day they go in and they clean the entire sanctuary, hose everything down, make sure it's all clean. No litter anywhere, all fresh. And no, you know, who. And it's all beautiful for when the guests are open. It's open every day from 10 to three, seven days a week, 365 days a year, because they're already over there feeding the animals and caring for the animals. So why not let guests come? And I agree with that. I think we wanna do that same thing too. We wanna try to have it open as soon as possible. As long as we can, not all day because I don't wanna be respectful of our neighbors. Wherever we end up, I'm sure there'll be neighbors somewhere. We're looking at land in Waimanalo also. If we can get rural land, the Department of Ag owns a lot of that land and other ag land, but they're not too interested in letting us have it yet. So we're trying to find out. If we can get land from the state, it would probably be ideal because that would save a lot of money and it would be them investing in helping us, right? And I think they want to make this happen. We just have to get all the pieces in place. And there's a lot of red tape and bureaucracy whenever you do that. I've been working on this for four years now and I've been talking to the state for two years now. And if I have to go any longer, it could take another year before I actually have land and think of all the cats that I could be helping in the meantime. So we're trying to get, do it as quickly as we can. In the meantime, Papoke Place is an idol. We get a lot of requests for help. So we've been giving advice on where to do trap neuter, how to help with kittens. We've been rescuing kittens. We do foster care for kittens, not very many because right now we're still doing it in our homes and it's not ideal. So we want to, we're spending all of our energy and time on creating Papoke Place, doing the meetings and whatever it takes to keep moving the ball down the road. We had a wonderful meeting with the Humane Society Board of Directors the other day to get their support because the Humane Society is very supportive and we're excited and we hope to partner with them for the spay neuter. We work with a lot of agencies. I should have given you a slide of that. There's a lot of non-proper organizations on the island. Beautiful. There's Cat Friends. They are trapped neuter. So people trap the cats the night before, bring them to Cat Friends the next day. They do all the spay neutering. And then they've done over 3,000 a year for the last several years, just on the clinics and then they do it on their own. So Cat Friends is very important as well as the Gen-E2 spay neuter clinics, both in town at the Mo'ili campus and the new EVA campus. They're gonna be doing a whole lot more spay neuter for us there. Then there's Toe Beans and Dreams, which is a wonderful cafe that takes kittens and you can go there and have lunch and take home a kitten. Or you can go to Lucky Pause kind of close to where the Humane Society original campuses and Lucky Pause Animal Sanctuary or Animal Foundation has rescues, spay neuter, they do adoptions. Plus they have a boarding facility. So if you wanna go on vacation, you can drop your kitten off there or your cat off there and they'll take care of it for you. And then we have a lot of other organizations. There's Cat People of Oahu, which works exclusively with cat people all over the island in all kinds of ways. Alexis Jamieson does a fabulous job organizing that. There's Catopia. There's Foster Kitties. There's Rescue Kitties of Hawaii that sends kitties to the mainland. There's Pono Papoke. There's all kinds of groups, wonderful groups. And I'm sorry if they're listening and I missed you. I forgot to say you, I know there are literally thousands of people out there every day going out every night feeding the cats. And the reason feeding is good. I should mention this. Some people say, don't feed the cats, it brings more cats. Well, that's not true at all. What happens is when a caregiver feeds them, they see whether they have an ear clip or not. If they don't have an ear clip, that means that cat has not been neutered. So that caregiver thinks, oh, I better plan to trap that cat. So they make an appointment to get it fixed. They trap it and do all the process. When they come back, then they release it to where it's been living because it knows where it lives and it recovers well. They handle it well. And so every time the caregiver feeds, it's checking for new animals that need to be fixed. So they're helping the problem. What makes them have more cats is unfortunately there are people who don't like cats and see cats in their neighborhood, which might be a pet. And they'll trap that cat, and they'll move it, cross the island, cross the state, I mean, cross somewhere and dump it in a colony. So there'll be more cats, but they're dump cats. They're not more litter cats. We're preventing litters. So that's why there's, yeah. It's sad. Does it feeding them though? If you're feeding them, that means like, I don't know, I mean, don't cats eat birds? Like couldn't they potentially like, decimate the native bird population as well, like, right? I'm glad you asked that, because of course we are not gonna stop with their natural instinct, but if they're being well fed, they're not interested in birds or rats. They have what they need. They might do it for fun, but not usually. I was feeding my cats for 17 years, and I think I saw two birds get caught in all that time. And so they get food. We feed them twice a day. They were always getting something to eat. So they don't go out and need to hunt like they do if they're starving to death and not being fed, which some people don't understand. If they're not being fed by humans, they're going to go find those birds. And that's when the toxo happens, because if they eat a sick bird or a sick rat who has toxo, they can get it. Now, I wanna point out, not all cats have toxo. Not all cats get the disease at all and are not a threat to anything. But it's the one cat that'll eat a sick bird or a sick rat that has toxo, and then they get it, and then they release it in their excrement. And the problem is for a cat, when the toxo gets into their excrement, the little eggs, it's called otosis, they live in the poop and they don't die. They need to be at like 120 degrees to die. So it can just sit on the ground and then the rains come and wash it in the ocean. And that's why it's so important that we're going to be maintaining the litter, taking them off the landscape and maintaining the litter will reduce the toxo threat. So, that's why the bokeh place is so important. We can't save every cat, but we're gonna try. Yeah, I mean, I'm wondering if it's like with the toxo, is it besides the monk seals, what other animals are affected? You said birds, rats, like how other... Monk seals, birds, rats, they can get toxo. Humans can get toxo, but not from cats. Only time a human can get a toxa from the cat, there's a thing that they say, you know, if you're pregnant, you can get toxo. But you can't get toxo just from owning a cat. You can get toxo if you scoop the litter and get the litter somehow in you or on you. So the idea is if you're pregnant, don't do the litter. Let somebody else take care of the litter for you. Holding a cat is not gonna make music. And an indoor cat, your own cat is less likely to have toxo to give it to you because they're eating good, healthy cat food, you know? So the risks are much lower. But other marine animals, like can other fish get toxo as well or... We have heard that spinner dolphins recently got it and a few died and that's horrible. I love spinner dolphins. I snorkeled with them and just go, they're so amazing in the wild just to watch them in the water. And we, you know, but that's another reason to try to get them off the landscape and away from the ocean as much as possible. But again, not every cat has toxo. But they, monk seals and the other animals cannot get it from a rat pooping or a monk seal pooping the toxo. For some reason, they only live, the otuses only live that I'm understanding in cat feces. Love the topic, isn't it? Let's talk about the fun stuff. Well, tell me how you, you know, how did you, did you have, you always had a cat even before you saw the cats in this installation where you were housing homeless people? Yes. I've had a cat since I was, my first cat was giving me when I was seven. And so I've often on had cats as long as they were. And then at one point I had three cats and that was like, oh my God, I've got three cats. You know, and then when I moved here to Hawaii, I only had one cat. And then the oddly enough, that cat passed away right before I started at the village. And so all of a sudden I ended up with two cats from the village I brought home. And then I started bringing a lot of cats home and recycling them and getting them fixed and getting them adopted. And so then the big thing started and then I ended up with too many cats. But I've been very cautious not to have too many cats in my home. I don't want to do that. I'm not, I love cats. I love them. I think they're hilarious. I know their personalities. They're such loving pets and they make such wonderful pets for families. And I think that if they're well cared for and given a lot of attention and get their medical treatment and all that, they are an ideal pet because they can be left alone. But they're very friendly. They can play games. They can play toss. They're really fun to have around when you get to know them. And, but the pokey place will be wonderful for those people who can't have a cat at home. Like they are not allowed to have a cat but they can come visit our cats and play with our cats. And we're gonna have school trips come out and learn about all these issues and learn about spay and neuter and cruelty to animals is a big problem. Some people are actually hating on cats to the point where they're using them for target practice or doing horrible things. And I don't wanna talk about it, it's too depressing. But yeah, so we try to focus on the positive at the pokey place. And we want it to be a positive experience for the community. Our slogan is a win for cats, a win for native wildlife and a win for the community. Yeah, now that's beautiful. Thank you so much. We're out of time, but we have, so we have to wrap it up. But I'm Dr. Regis, you know, this is healthy planning on a Think Tech live streaming network series. We've been talking with Holly Hololok, president and founder of the Pappoki Place Oahu Can't Sanctuary. Thanks to Michael, our broadcast engineer and the rest of the crew at Think Tech for hosting our show. And thanks to you, our listeners for listening. I'll see you in two weeks for more of Healthy Planet on Think Tech. The show for people who care about their health and the health of our planet. My guest will be Kuro Nago, and we will be talking about Project Genshi Alawai. If you have ideas for the show or questions for my future show guests, please contact me at helptheplanetthinktech at gmail.com. Check out my website at graysenhawai.com or Instagram at Graysolliving365 for more information on my projects, including future show guests. I'm Dr. Graysoneel Aloha everyone.