Feline rescue in the digital age: groups that find homes for cats through Instagram and TikTok

It is often said that cats are independent, that they manage on their own. The idea circulates as an absolute truth, and there is some truth to it: there is a mystery in them that humans have not yet fully deciphered. Just look at how they watch us from a corner, motionless, with a certain detachment. It’s as if they were judging you and several generations of your ancestors. But that supposed feline independence has a precise limit, which is the front door. Inside the house, a cat meows to ask for food, to have its litter changed, or becomes a trembling ball seeking refuge under the blankets on a freezing night. If a domestic cat finds Lima’s damp winter unbearable, how will those who sleep on the street, soaked by the drizzle, feel the cold?

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People who end up dedicating much of their lives to rescuing stray cats usually always remember a specific animal that was the beginning of it all. A cat that served as an emotional trigger. In the case of Éricka Valle Riestra, that animal is named Katto: a small white Persian, absurdly photogenic and with so much charisma that she became a militant ‘cat lover’. “Before, I used to say cats were aloof, that they damaged furniture,” Éricka recalls. But Katto came to the house and demolished all those prejudices with the efficiency of a cat discovering a new curtain or a pretty vase to break.

Her daughter, content creator María Paula Polanco, known on social media as Mapi, decided to open an Instagram and TikTok account for him, Katto The Cat, which at first was a game, until the reality of feline abandonment completely changed it. The first rescued cat to arrive at the Polanco home was Mariposa. She arrived shy and today walks around the living room like a feline empress. But the strongest case was Baco, a tuxedo cat (black and white) that mother and daughter saw eating garbage a block from their house. After much thought, they captured him and found him a new owner. Without realizing it, they had entered the world of animal rescue.

In that process, they discovered something obvious to anyone with eyes: Lima is full of cats that no one sees. “People don’t look, they don’t pay attention to abandonment,” Éricka sums up. “But once you start looking, you can’t stop.” What came next was a transformation. Their house in San Isidro began to function as a feline transit station. There were bathrooms converted into makeshift quarantine areas, nights spent watching over a kitten that didn’t want to eat or a very distrustful feral mother. For those kinds of cases, they apply the so-called love therapy, which in their version has managed to tame even the most elusive kitten.

Today they estimate they have helped more than 300 cats documented on Katto The Cat’s social media — the account where they look for homes for rescued animals — although Éricka suspects the real number far exceeds a thousand if you consider old adoptions and those that were never published. Thanks to Mapi’s knowledge of administration, marketing, and content creation, the account began to go viral. She understood that a good photograph can save a life and that even the name you give a cat can influence its adoption. Thus, they began naming litters with unusual concepts: in one, for example, the cats had wine names like Malbec, Sauvignon, and Merlot. A black kitten named Night Fury, because of his resemblance to the character from “How to Train Your Dragon,” received hundreds of inquiries as soon as he appeared on TikTok. “Everything enters through the eyes,” she sums up.

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More fronts of cat rescue

More than a hundred kilometers from Lima, in Asia, another woman began to notice the same problem. Inés Stoessel spent seasons by the sea when she started to observe a growing population of abandoned cats around the Boulevard de Asia. There were litters among the parking lots, animals with eye infections, untreated wounds, and domestic cats that seemed to have been left behind at the end of summer. The situation repeated every season. “I thought the only way to stop this was to catch and sterilize them,” she recalls. That’s when she began organizing rescues, campaigns, and adoptions that later gave rise to Gatitos del Boulevard, the organization she leads. Her shelter today houses between 50 and 60 cats and has facilitated the adoption of more than 1,000 animals.

The stories of Katto The Cat and Gatitos del Boulevard end up intersecting, as always happens in these invisible networks of women who rescue animals in Lima and its surroundings. They all agree on one thing: the underlying problem remains the same. People continue to abandon animals with painful ease, and the lack of sterilization continues to fuel the cycle of stray cats. But perhaps what affects them most is not rescuing sick felines, but hearing from people who want to return a pet because they discovered too late that an animal is not a toy. There are few cases, they say, but they always hurt. Adopting is also taking responsibility. //

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Where to adopt

Before buying a cat, rescuers recommend first looking toward adoption. Thousands of animals await a second chance in shelters, foster homes, and independent rescue networks. Those thinking of adding a new member to the family can check Instagram or TikTok accounts like Katto The Cat, Gatitos del Boulevard, Corazones Gatunos, Mishis Kennedy Oficial, and Fundación Rayito, among many others working to find homes for abandoned cats.

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