The 70 felines of Syros Cats are capturing the hearts of travelers from all over the world.
Dressed in a skirt and tank top appropriate for the searing summer heat, Tamsin Noronha seems like your average 26-year-old holidaying in the Greek Islands in search of a tan, somewhere to down cheap cocktails, and maybe even a summer romance.
But here in Syros—part of the Cyclades group of islands, and a four-hour ferry from Athens—Noronha is on a vacation with a difference. She’s spent her morning helping take care of around 70 cats, dutifully doling out their breakfast, then doing their dishes and laundry, as one of three volunteers spending a month or more on ”workation” at one of the island’s cat rescues, Syros Cats.
Now, as the cats lazily emerge from their afternoon naps for their evening meal, Noronha is chasing down one in particular: Frosty, named for his white fur, who is missing his ears and nose thanks to severe sunburn. Once Frosty is located and fed, Noronha moves on to medicating his friend. “Come here, gorgeous,” Noronha murmurs patiently, pipette in hand, as he stubbornly turns his head the other way.
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Without a sign or address, Syros Cats is situated on a narrow winding road near an olive grove, sunflower patch, and field of goats. Volunteers can stay in a room either in the main house or in one of the self-contained single-room cottages, free of charge, with Wi-Fi, utilities, and breakfast included. The deal is you need to help out with the cats for four hours each morning and an hour in the evening and to commit for at least a month.
The rest of the time is yours. The cool, clear waters of Kini Beach are a 10-minute walk away, and its beachfront restaurants with tables on the sand are a hit with locals and tourists alike. There’s a bus that goes to the equally beautiful Galissas beach, while in the island’s south, Posidonia, home to the glamorous Ono beach club, is less than a 20-minute drive.
Trips With Meaning
The experience Syros Cats offers is appealing to a generation of travelers who want more from their holiday than a sunburn and hangover. Seventy-six percent and 77% of U.K. and U.S. travelers, respectively, want to take a vacation that supports local communities, according to American Express’s 2023 Global Travel Trends report. Meanwhile, a recent global study of 15,000 people by digital device maker Lenovo found that 61% of travelers deem giving back and making a positive impact on the local community as “very important” when it comes to a working holiday experience–rising to 68% of Gen Z and 67% Millennials. Time out from work for volunteering is particularly important to Gen Zers, who are more likely to have done charity work than any other age group.
Noronha is one of those travelers. The mural artist from Goa, India, volunteers back home to help sick and injured dogs, cats, and cows, while also collecting beach waste to transform into art. She found Syros Cats on the volunteering abroad website Workaway and applied immediately, attracted by the learning experience and her love of animals. Just two weeks into her time at Syros Cats, she’s not only learned all the cats’ names, but she’s been to a different beach every day and has started a mural on one of the cottage walls.
“My typical vacation would be relaxing and swimming on a beach in the Mediterranean, somewhere like Croatia,” says Noronha. “I’ve never done something like this before, and I love it.”
Cat Caretakers
Syros Cats is run by British ex-pat and former teacher Jacky Storey, who had envisioned a more relaxing retirement spent writing. Storey, now 76, came across Syros when looking for a family-friendly destination to take her now grown-up children when they were younger. They returned to Syros so often that the family ended up renting houses on the island, settling into the property that is now Syros Cats (which used to be the village bakery) in 1994. The closure of the butcher’s shop next door meant that the 20 or so stray cats that had, up until then, enjoyed free meat scraps simply turned up at Storey’s door instead.
That opened Storey’s eyes to the overall poor state of the island’s stray cats–of which there are thought to be around 10,000–as well as to how quickly cats can multiply. She worked with a local vet to set up a low-cost neutering clinic for them and other strays around the island, which then sealed her fate as their caretaker.
Volunteers helped Storey build a shed to house cats who needed to heal from the surgery, as well as weak kittens. That, of course, led to a rising food bill which she needed to fundraise for, which in turn required setting up a charitable organization. Once the number of cats reached 100, Storey set up an adoption program and more formal fundraising, plus a volunteering and neutering program, launching Syros Cats in 2013.
Since then, around 300 workationers have stayed at Syros Cats, helping neuter around 5,000 cats. Many have become long-term supporters via donations or adoption. With the rise of remote working, Storey has noticed an increasing interest from digital nomads working in fields like translation, online teaching, web development, and data analysis.
While there’s no maximum age limit to take a workation at Syros Cats–indeed, Storey sees a lot of demand from people in their 60s–she has had to implement an over-25s policy to ensure volunteers have enough initiative and resilience to take on their share of chores. Certainly, for those looking for a more relaxing cat experience, God’s Little People cat shelter at neighboring Delfini Bay, famous for its viral cat caretaker advertisement and Netflix documentary, has holiday villas available to rent and a cat cafe that runs on weekend evenings in the summer.
Storey tries to manage expectations by saying what’s on offer at Syros Cats is not much of a vacation but then goes on to list how workationers can and do embrace local life. “Some of the volunteers get into the social scene and even date local people. They go hiking in the winter. There’s a swimming group and cultural group–we’ve got lots going on,” she says.
Syros Cats workationers often have dinner together, and Storey’s breakfasts have become infamous. “Breakfast is probably the best thing ever,” says Noronha. “Sometimes there’s porridge, vegetables, beans on toast, cheese puffs. It’s like a brunch, so there’s no room for lunch.”
Some workationers stay beyond their initial month, like Jo Richardson, a 32-year-old former healthcare worker from Dublin, Ireland. Richardson arrived at Syros Cats in 2020, just before the onset of COVID. When lockdown restrictions were announced, she preferred to stay than return to Ireland, feeling she was needed more on Syros than back home.
Three years on, and Richardson is now the manager, assisting the vet weekly with the neutering program. She’s made friends with locals, is learning Greek, and has taken on weekend shifts at a hotel to make some money until Syros Cats can raise enough to pay her an official salary on top of its yearly running costs of around €20,000 ($21,750).
“I just love cats and the autonomy they have here,” Richardson says, talking while spooning out dinner portions.
“I like seeing all the different personalities. There are ones with diabetes or kidney failure that are not going to cooperate with medicine every day. There are ones that are initially not interested in you. Those are the ones that seem to really appreciate it when you do something like clean their face, and suddenly their nose is clear, and they can breathe again. Then they give you a little head bump to say thanks.”
A New Way to Travel
Despite some cats in her care even being on a drip, Storey prefers not to euthanize them unless they are in severe pain and already close to dying. Some who arrive at Syros Cats in a sorry state are happy to return to where they came from once they’ve been nursed back to health. There’s Zorro, a ginger tomcat who was found last year with a leg wounded so severely, it needed amputating–which came with an €800 vet bill (around $870).
Luckily, the family that brought Zorro to Syros Cats was part of another workation program on Syros. A company called Boundless Life, which includes a package of apartments, co-working space for working parents, and in-house school for their children, typically accommodates travelers for three months. They encouraged other families in the program to donate and collectively managed to cover Zorro’s medical fees.
Boundless Life children, who come from all over the world, now regularly visit Syros Cats on field trips, learning about the need to take care of others and how to creatively fundraise. Some families have even sponsored a cat, and Storey hopes to work with them more closely, from one workation program to another.
But to those who stay at Syros Cats, it’s more than a working holiday. “I dropped a volunteer back at the port last week. She gave me a big hug and said she’d had the best month of her life,” says Storey.
As for Tamsin Noronha, it’s shaped her outlook on future trips abroad.
“I really like the routine, and it’s a nice way to meet people,” she says. “I don’t know if I can go back to my old holidays now.”
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