A photograph of our first adopted cat sits on top of a drawer.

Beside it is his urn. 

Like a guiding star, Nip has led me to a path paved with many more stars—and food bowls. 

A ginger star among headlights and streetlights  

In 2018, my Mom and I started caring for community cats in Makati. We fed cats at the condominium, placed water bowls in discreet places, and made sure feeding areas were spotless. 

As months passed, we met other cat-feeders who became our friends. 

One cold November night when we were walking back home after an errand, we spotted something small that was about to cross the street.

Passing headlights revealed that it was a ginger kitten!

After checking if the coast was clear, I dashed toward the side of the road, grabbed the kitten, and held him close to my chest. Luckily, he was used to humans, because he didn’t jump off.

We brought him to the ground floor outside the lobbies, but it didn’t feel right if we just left him there. He even had dried paint on his head and back. We said we would foster him for a while, but we all know how these stories go: Nip became the first ever feline friend we ever brought indoors!

My Mom and I cared for cats while I was growing up, but they were just outside our home, so bringing a cat inside changed the course of our lives. Hello, fur on clothes, lint rollers, scratches on non-resistant furniture, waking up at 5AM to a living alarm clock, and the tender pitter-patter of toe beans and short claws on the floor!

The whole experience made us easily welcome another kitten from the ground floor just after three weeks of adopting Nip.

Together, they were the inseparable KatNip! 

Caring for them magnified our love for the community cats within the area. 

Cat constellations 

“Kain na!” I say, placing a bowl of wet food in front of a community cat. I do it again and again, until all cats in the designated feeding area have their own bowls. From afar, they look like a constellation. 

Cats are (and they know this!) indeed stars: 1) my life, schedule, and availability in recent years revolve around them, and; 2) they have become a light—ginger, white, combined, tri-color, black, and all their magnificent shades—on both hopeful and dreary days. 

The things I know today about caring and building a loving community are because of them and the people we met along the way. Likewise, I draw inspiration from my Mom for being a good and kind communicator and for setting the example ever since I was young. 

When more cats appeared at the condo, our small group of volunteers decided to weave our efforts together by having fixed weekly feeding schedules, contacting an animal welfare group to seek help in starting Trap-Neuter-Vaccinate-Return (TNVR) at our area, and creating a group chat where we share updates on the cats’ wellbeing and whereabouts. 

These were simultaneously done with arranging meetings with the condo administration. We shared TNVR studies and how other volunteers in Makati were doing it. While the road was long, that part of the journey was necessary. The admin was accepting, considerate, and helpful once they finally understood that TNVR works, for it is the compassionate and humane method to caring for cats and also controlling the population. 

We created an inventory of the cats, brought them to the Philippine Pet Birth Control Center Foundation (PPBCC) for our first batch of kapon candidates, conversed respectfully and kindly with guards and concerned residents when they approached us, and contacted a kind and dedicated home service veterinarian for future community cats.

Over the years, more residents started to donate funds and in-kind goods to support the regular volunteers. 

Gradually, our little constellation of cats included more humans, too. 

Shedding light on animal welfare through komiks 

When Nip is thrilled, his pupils dilate into marbles; little lights reflect on his eyes like faraway stars.

However in February 2023, just hours after I ran my first marathon, my Mom and I drove straight to the vet.

Nip had been confined for weeks because of a kidney problem. No matter how many times we called his name, his once excitable eyes were looking far ahead, as if he was seeing something beyond already.

Despite revival efforts, Nip passed away in the emergency room, while we were at the waiting area. The vet, my Mom, and I wept around Nip lying on the cool steel bed. 

I decided that the love for Nip—and the loss that came with it—should go somewhere. 

Moving on to 2025, my Mom and I have been staying more in the province for a few years. We have Kat, Dylan, Frisky, and Oliver indoors—all community cats. And outdoors, we’re caring for more cats, too!

The experience of caring for Nip and community cats, as well as the observation that solo and group advocates were struggling with funds and needing help, culminated in my first ever comic book published by Komiket last July. Komiks is a versatile and accessible medium which could inspire others, especially the younger generation, to keep creating a more compawssionate world. 

With the guidance of Komiket’s co-founder Sir Paolo Herras, I made Cat Cafeteria as one of the many hands that could move the needle for animal welfare. 

My heart breaks every time I see a kitten trying to survive in the streets, cases of animal cruelty, neglect, indifference, a shelter closing down due to low funds, and a volunteer bearing a heavy responsibility—on top of personal matters—on their shoulders by themselves.

To sustain TNVR efforts and calls for adoption, we can only go so far when we’re alone. It hasn’t been easy for my Mom and me either, which is why I hope that through Cat Cafeteria, people can see that every good act, no matter how small, is still a pinprick where light could pass through on the long dark veil of hatred and callousness.

With empathy, understanding, patience, compassion, sensitivity, respect, responsible pet ownership, and individual and collective efforts supported by the national and local government, I hope that we can save all of the cats or give them a fighting chance. 

Sometimes, I would think: how would my life turn out if we didn’t run an errand that cold November night? We wouldn’t have met Nip, there probably wouldn’t be any Cat Cafeteria, and I wouldn’t have met all the incredible selfless inspiring people I know today. 

The cats have connected all of us. 

On the night we retrieved Nip’s urn, I took him on an evening walk, the once chonky boy light in my arms. 

Staring at the night sky, I thought of him and the cats and people he led us to meet. 

We can only go up from here, for it is written in the stars.