Mumbai, India, Dozens of individuals who feed and care for Mumbai's community cats
received an unexpected boost recently, as content creator Sawan Koull distributed 100
kilograms of cat food across the city in honour of his rescue cat Laxmi's recovery from a
serious, potentially fatal illness.
The gesture has its roots in an event more than a year old. On 19 June 2025, Sawan
rescued Laxmi, then a critically ill stray kitten found in a fragile state. A veterinary
examination revealed she had contracted feline herpesvirus, a condition that can prove
severe, and at times fatal, in young or weakened cats. At the time, the veterinarian was
unable to offer any assurance about her chances of survival, given how advanced her
symptoms had become.
For Sawan, the uncertainty of those early days shaped a decision that would define the
following twelve months. Faced with the real possibility that Laxmi might not survive, he
made a personal promise: if she recovered, he would use her next birthday not to mark the
occasion privately, but to give something back to the people in his city who spend their time
and resources feeding stray and community cats, work that is essential to urban animal
welfare but frequently goes unnoticed and unsupported.
Laxmi's path back to health was neither quick nor guaranteed. It required months of
veterinary treatment, careful monitoring, and consistent care before her condition improved
to the point where she was considered fully recovered. Her transformation, from a kitten
whose survival was in doubt to a healthy, thriving cat, became, in Sawan's words, a story
that felt too significant to keep private.
When her birthday arrived this year, Sawan followed through on the commitment he had
made. He arranged for 100 kilograms of cat food to be distributed directly to caregivers
across Mumbai, individuals who routinely feed community cats in their neighbourhoods,
often without formal recognition, institutional backing, or public visibility. These caregivers
form a loosely connected but vital part of the city's informal animal welfare network, stepping
in daily to ensure stray cats are fed and looked after.
"These are the people who show up every day, in the heat, in the rain, to make sure stray
cats are fed," Sawan said. "Most of them don't do it for recognition. They do it because they
care, quietly and consistently, and I wanted this to be a way of saying thank you while also
keeping the promise I made when things looked uncertain for Laxmi."
Sawan described the initiative as serving two purposes at once, a celebration of Laxmi's
recovery and a direct acknowledgment of the caregivers whose efforts often go unseen. He
said the decision to distribute the food personally, rather than through an intermediary, was
intentional, allowing him to speak with several of the caregivers directly and hear more about
the day-to-day realities of feeding stray cats in the city. "Talking to some of the people who received the food, you realise how much effort goes into
something that most people walk past without noticing," Sawan said. "It reinforced why I
wanted to do this in the first place."
Looking ahead, Sawan said he hopes the initiative encourages greater support for stray
animal welfare more broadly, whether through direct feeding efforts, fostering, or adoption.
He added that Laxmi's story, from critical illness to full recovery, is proof that consistent care
can change the outcome for an animal that might otherwise have been overlooked.
"If this pushes even a handful of people to start feeding a stray cat in their area, or to support
the people already doing it, then it's done more than I originally hoped for," he said.