Many pet owners can no longer afford to care for their cats or dogs with sanctuaries seeing “massive increases” in rehoming requests.

Animal rights activist Romina Frendo described the situation as “a nightmare”.

“It’s like an epidemic of people giving up their pets for various reasons that include financial difficulties, moving to a new place that does not accept pets, leaving the country and health reasons,” she said.

Mary Cassar Torreggiani, from the SPCA, explained that, as from the beginning of the year, they were seeing many more cases of abandonment.

“This is a big issue. People can’t cope with the upkeep of their pets and one of the biggest problems is the increase in clinic expenses,” she said.

Over the past months, pet food prices had increased and clinic costs also spiralled.

Animal activist Maxine Borg, who also helps rehome animals, agreed.

“There have been massive increases in requests for rehoming. Mostly it’s cats. I get about 15-20 requests to rehome cats every week,” she said.

Borg said that, over the past months, pet food prices had increased and clinic costs also spiralled. A pack of milk sachets that previously cost some €16, now sell at €30.

Cat feeders stepping down

Borg and Cassar Torreggiani agreed that people who adopted pets underestimated the financial costs of having a pet and were returning them. Apart from that, they faced many cases that involved elderly people who could no longer keep their pets, either for health reasons or because they were moving into a care home, and relatives could not afford or were not willing to take on the pets.

Cassar Torreggiani said SPCA was considering supporting the Food Bank to offer support with pet food – as this was not covered at the moment. But funds were limited.

Frendo added that cat feeders were also finding it difficult to cope with the expense of feeding cat colonies and some were stepping down.

A recent study by the University of Malta’s Faculty for Social Well-being showed that financial problems are the most stressful to the Maltese. The data showed that 17% of Maltese – that is almost one in every four people over the age of 18 – experienced serious financial problems.

It’s like an epidemic of people giving up their pets for various reasons

Out of those who faced such issues at some point in their life, 68% described the stress levels as ‘very high’.

Living in Malta is expensive. Last year, a KPMG analysis showed that property prices in Malta shot up by 40% since 2017, growing at a rate of roughly 6% each year.

Meanwhile, food inflation dipped by 1.2% between January and February, as a government scheme to cut prices of up to 400 food items by 15% came into effect. But food prices remain 5.5% higher than they were a year ago.

And, in the face of all these rising costs, wages are not coping. New EU data showed that Maltese workers earn less per hour than those in all but four EU countries. In a damning indictment of Malta’s salaries, data published by Eurostat showed that workers in Malta earn just €14.2 per hour before tax, less than half the EU-wide average of €31.8.

This follows an economic outlook report for Malta carried out by KPMG, which showed that wage increases over the last two years were entirely eaten up by rapid inflation, essentially leaving workers worse off in terms of purchasing power and rendering average real wages stagnant since 2018.