Compassionate Coexistence

The situation: An abundance of feral cats.

The solution? Depends on who you ask.

Many facilities adhere to official “management” plans that rely on shooting the cats to death, typically outside of the public eye to avoid outcry. That was the situation at Garner State Park in Texas, where officials shot to death at least 16 cats since 2015 with 0.22 caliber bullets — without noting any evidence that those specific cats were sick, injured, aggressive, or had a proven history of harming the park’s wildlife, and despite a visitor’s offer to help rehome them, according to public records documents.

Convenience killing wasn’t an option for what’s now the Lanai Cat Sanctuary in Hawaii, whose team committed to finding a more compassionate path forward.  

It’s important to note here that the stakes for Lanai are high. The remote island is home to many species of endangered birds, whose adults and chicks can easily become prey to hunting felines. Hawaii’s temperate climate and lack of predators also makes it very easy for cats to breed and thrive year-round.

It’s also notable that Lanai has few resources for animal welfare. There’s no on-site veterinarian, no humane society or municipal shelter, and no electricity (although there is running water), and all supplies have to be flown in or ferried over.  

But rather than succumb to those challenges or resort to killing, a small team of animal advocates banded together, rounded up the cats, and moved them to what’s now an enclosed paradise where the cats are free to spend their days lounging around, receiving proper food and veterinary care, and — just maybe — catching the eyes and the hearts of adopters. 

The 3.5 acre sanctuary is now home to more than 600 cats — about 40 percent of whom typically are friendly enough to be considered adoptable. The remaining 60 percent are guaranteed a lifetime of care at the sanctuary as valued permanent residents. 

That approach resonated with Keoni Vaughn, who is now the sanctuary’s executive director.

“I believe that we created this problem in Hawaii by being irresponsible humans and letting out cats who were not spayed or neutered,” Vaughn said. “It is now our duty to do something about it.”

When I first spoke with Vaughn in 2022, he was busy keeping the sanctuary’s momentum going during the COVID-19 pandemic. When I caught up with him in 2024, he was still as busy as ever — with the Lanai Cat Sanctuary actively taking in feline survivors from the Lahaina fires on Maui while seeing fewer human visitors.

Vaughn noted that the Sanctuary had stepped in to help the Maui Humane Society by taking 200 feral and un-adoptable cats from the burn zone. 

“It was a tough decision, but the right thing to do,” he said. “We felt the need to help, and we are the only facility in the state that has the ability to. Unfortunately, I think it will take longer to recover than it did when we were impacted by COVID-10. The good news is that we are doing our best to stay positive and ride out this storm.”

The following interview has been edited for style and length. To listen to the full interview, check out Episode 7 of the Compassionate Coexistence project here.

To learn more about Lanai Cat Sanctuary, check out their website here. You can follow them on Facebook and Instagram. You can also donate here or sponsor a Lanai “lion” here.

Can you share more about the Lanai Cat Sanctuary’s history and why choosing compassion for both cats and birds was so important?

First of all, the cat overpopulation in general is a national issue because they reproduce at such an alarming rate. In Hawaii, and specifically on Lanai, there is no winter “die off” because of the temperate weather. We also don’t have any predators, like coyotes. 

Kathy Carroll, the founder of the sanctuary, came here on a vacation and absolutely fell in love with the place. A little sick kitten stumbled across her doorstep, and she didn’t know what to do. She started asking around town about finding a veterinarian, and everybody said, “There’s no veterinarian on the island.” So she jumped in her car, drove down to the harbor, and took a 45-minute ferry ride to Maui to find the nearest veterinarian. The cat ended up being fine; the cat is still with her today.

She was talking to the veterinarian, who said that there were a lot of cats on Lanai and wished somebody would do something about it. So Kathy looked in the mirror and said, “Well, why don’t I try to do something about it?”

She rallied a few to volunteer and recruited that veterinarian, and they did trap neuter and return for a little under two years. But then conservationists brought up endangered birds, and how the cats were predating on these precious birds. Kathy asked for time to relocate the cats and then found a horse corral, which she enclosed in netting as an enclosure for about 25 cats.

She started a non-profit to try to raise money, and we expanded. We’re up to about 600 cats today. We take in about 200 cats each year, strictly from Lanai, and we are able to adopt out about 100 a year — mostly to out-of-state adopters.

We will never turn away any cat from Lanai for any reason, nor will we take in more than we can properly care for — and that’s a pretty big statement for us.

How do you ensure the well-being of the cats when tourists come to visit the sanctuary?

About 40 percent of the cats typically become friendly enough to be adopted, and they’ll actually come and wait at the fence when visitors start showing up around 10 a.m. But the other 60 percent are going to be feral; they’re going to hide in the bushes until the people go home, and then they’re going to come out and be happy.

To help socialize the cats, we give out small, pre-bagged amounts of treats for the guests so that the guests can interact with the cats and the cats get some attention. Over time, some of these cats in the bushes look at their friends being fed by these humans and they start trickling in and become a part of that welcoming committee. And next thing you know, they’re up in guests laps and they’re getting pets and all that.

But we care about the feral cats as much as the friendly cats, and while we’re open seven days a week, we only have guests from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., so that the feral cats can have time to themselves and just relax and be who they are.

We do have a place called the Kupuna center for senior cats that’s more of a hospice area. We put these cats with special needs in a smaller area so our staff can monitor them closely and also to get away from the hustle and bustle. We limit how many people could go in there at a time.

What has kept you going when faced with hard times? How do you keep the faith?

It was hard! We don’t have many resources here. You don’t call a plumber, for example, because there’s no plumber to come and fix a leak. So what we had to do: We had to go where there was a phone signal, and I had to look up how to fix a pipe on Youtube. Everything you can think of, we had to figure out on our own. There’s no manual on how to build a cat sanctuary.

I think what’s helped me keep the faith is three things.

One, I feel like we owe it to the cats and the birds; I’m feeling really passionate about that. It’s so much easier to say you can’t do something — but to me, that’s an easy way out. My question is: “Why can’t we?” 

The other reason that I’ve kept going through hard times is my wife. Honestly, there were times when I really wanted to throw up my hands and give up because it was just too difficult and too frustrating. But she said, “You know, you made a commitment. Stick it out.”

And the last one is the staff itself. These are really, really passionate people who were well-balanced and really cared about the mission. And so I want to do the best I can. 

Any final thoughts you’d like to share?

I get a lot of calls, probably four to four to six calls a week on, “Hey, I want to build a cat sanctuary just like yours. How did you do it?” 

Unless you have a lot of ambition, a lot of patience, and know that it’s going to take years, I’d encourage people instead to team up with a local rescue or humane society who may have a lot more resources than you and then create a program and start small. Learn from your mistakes. Or team up with other individuals who also want to start a cat sanctuary.

I think there can be a version of the Lanai Cat Sanctuary in every single community, but every different version will have to adapt to the community. This is a complicated issue, but it’s a matter of sitting down and talking to conservationists, to local people, and figuring out how we can meet together and try something different. If everybody’s too busy arguing or defending their side, you’re not going to get anywhere.

In my opinion, nothing would get accomplished in life if we didn’t try — if we didn’t step outside of the box and say, “Why can’t we do it?” Or “what can we do to try to fix this?”

Just don’t give up.

Special Thanks: Compassionate Coexistence would like to thank Lady Freethinker (LFT) for the permission to reuse some information originally gathered during an investigation into the Garner State Park cat killings and an interview with the Lanai Cat Sanctuary, both originally conducted for LFT. The full Garner State Park findings can be read here. The full feature story on the Lanai Cat Sanctuary for LFT can be read here.