LucyBalu's #allpawsahome goes Vienna!

LucyBalu's roots — how it all started at the animal shelter

As you all know, LucyBalu has its roots in animal welfare. It all began in 2015 with fitting out the Munich animal shelter, or rather its 50 cat rooms. Started as a pro bono friendship project by our foander Sebastian Frank, our very different cat furniture quickly drew attention there. The first enquiries came in, Sebastian thought about how this obvious gap in the cat-furniture segment could be filled — and the rest is — as they say — history. And of course this story is far from being fully told.

All Paws A Home — an animal-welfare initiative

What do we mean by that? Among other things, our shelter initiative All Paws A Home! Ever since we were founded, we have made it one of our missions not only to remember our roots in animal welfare, but also to honour them. Our goal is to fit out animal shelters and animal-welfare organisations with cat furniture. We are firmly convinced that our furniture can create far more space and options for cats, particularly in cramped areas like shelter rooms, than conventional bulky scratching trees. Because the room's third dimension is automatically made available to the cats — offering more climbing, scratching and sleeping options — the animals' wellbeing is improved. By the way, one of our absolute hearts-on-our-sleeves concerns: cats that are visibly happy! What's more, LucyBalu's cat furniture is significantly more hygienic and easier for shelter keepers to clean than the wooden or plush furniture otherwise used.

How does the #allpawsahome animal-welfare initiative work?

So how is our initiative meant to work? On the one hand, we select shelters that have been suggested to us by our community and fit them out with our furniture. On the other hand, we have Sandra — our vet and former shelter manager — on board, a colleague who knows the animal-welfare scene in Germany well and regularly points us to shelters in need or to interesting projects. To really be able to help effectively, it isn't enough to donate just two or three pieces of furniture; we want — where possible — to fit out entire rooms and thus turn them into more liveable places for the cats. Through various projects, such as the 2022 cat calendar and our Cat Model Contest, we hope not only to draw attention to our heart's project, but also to actively win over you — our community and all cat fans — for our initiative.

The 2022 cat calendar — a pro bono project

As a brand with its origins in the animal shelter, it is important to us to carry our values out into the world with a special project. We want to direct attention to a topic that unfortunately keeps being forgotten. To carry this message, we teamed up with 13 photographers, for whom their cat is not just a companion but a fully-fledged family member. Photographers who share our values and ideas about animal welfare.

The calendar is meant to show how lovely it can be to live together with a four-legged friend.
But it is also a call to think of all those animals who have not yet found a "Forever Home".

Because we used all the profits to fit out the Vienna animal shelter with LucyBalu's cat furniture.

But how did we arrive at the Vienna animal shelter? 

The Cat Model Contest 2022

In 2022 we decided, during the Cat Model Contest, to declare a certain sum of money as an in-kind donation for every vote cast — meaning: everyone among you who voted in the CMC indirectly donated to animal welfare. Every vote contributed to the final donation total, because LucyBalu donated for each vote. Even before the wonderful contest began, we had sat down and discussed which shelter we wanted to supply with donations afterwards. After Hamburg, Trier and Starnberg, we were on the

lookout for an animal-welfare organisation that has a lot of cats and might accordingly need help. And anyone with a bit of insight into animal welfare knows — that applies to almost every shelter! So initially we had an enormous wealth of choice.

Through our unique cooperation partner and well-known influencer inkstaboy we quickly found what we were looking for and reached an agreement. Florian, as he is called in non-digital life, is a cat fanatic and has a big heart for animals. On top of that, he lives in Vienna. He supported us with great photos for our Katzenkalender 2022 and was also a jury member at our Cat Model Contest. What could be more obvious, then, than to choose a shelter in his home city of Vienna?

Not only does Vienna have one of the biggest animal shelters in all of Europe. Tierschutz Austria, as it is officially called, is also the oldest shelter in Austria and looks back on decades of successful animal-welfare work, projects and overseas missions. As soon as the decision was made, we got in touch with Vienna — and an instant friendship was born. The local team was incredibly friendly, open and extremely grateful for any kind of support. We hit it off right away and agreed — this is going to be a great project!

We head to the Vienna animal shelter...

In October 2022 the time had come — we were able to travel to Vienna for two days and, with the proceeds from our 2022 calendar project , install our furniture for the cats in two large cat rooms. Preceding this were many phone calls, plans and, above all — anticipation! Because this project really means a lot to us, and in Vienna we were met with open arms, ears and doors. Straight away in the morning we got going with Dani, their marketing and donations contact. We were allowed to see the cat rooms the furniture was intended for. The large pallet of brand-new goods from our warehouse had arrived two days earlier. Of course we had chosen the furniture carefully. Not only did we want lounging options with the STRAIGHT or the WAVE — cuddling on the SWING and in the CAVE, climbing with CATWALK und JUMPER or the STEPS  were all meant to be possible. And on the side, the keepers would be pleased too — because since almost all our furniture is mounted on the wall, the floor would stay clear — creating less work when cleaning the rooms. One particularly lovely side effect for us visitors from Munich — we were busy stroking kittens first thing in the morning. And adult cats. And purring tomcats. And, and, and… Punctually at nine the busy helpers from the shelter team joined us. Caretakers and cat keepers had been preparing for days and thinking about the ideal way to install the furniture. The rooms had even been specially repainted — so you can see, there was great excitement all round.

The shelter manager Stephan took a lot of time for us — that is, for Sandra and inkstaboy — who of course wasn't going to miss the chance to get to know the shelter in his home city behind the scenes. On a tour, we were able not only to see the incredible number of animals (the shelter houses just under 1500 animals a day in total), but also to visit some residents who are relatively atypical for shelters. Among other things, monkeys, rare breeds of pig and caimans populate the vast grounds.

It immediately became clear: as in almost all shelters, money is tight here too. As an organisation dependent on donations, the shelter often has to save. We were absolutely delighted, because: our help was going to land exactly where it was needed. The before pictures show clearly how much has to be improvised in shelters. Because everything runs on donations, it is impossible to set fixed budgets for the individual areas. A problem that almost all animal-welfare organisations have in common. When we asked Stephan, we learned that every year almost 600 cats are rehomed via the Vienna shelter into "forever homes" — a huge number that makes it even clearer that behind each individual animal there is an individual story.

We were completely floored by so much input and grateful for these interesting insights. And while we were still standing with the goats and geese, the call came — the first pieces of furniture are already on the walls — and it looks great! In the early afternoon, that is, after hours of drilling, hammering and screwing, the moment finally arrived. The first big room was finished, cleaned and waiting for its new residents. The team showed us the cats that were going to move into the big room first. Six orphaned street kittens, who had been found in Croatia and brought to the shelter by the team as part of their overseas animal welfare work, were able to move into the first finished room. We are not exaggerating when we say that quite a few people watched with delight as the little ones made their first, still tentative attempts at jumping and climbing on the furniture. The CAVE was an instant hit, and cuddling up on the SWING made immediate sense for all the cats. Using the STEPS and figuring out what exactly JUMO was all about were investigated intensively over the following hours.

The second, smaller room was also moved into straight away. Bounty, the little black-and-white kitten, almost smuggled herself onto the train back to Munich due to an acute cuteness overload… but in the end reason won out for Sandra… and her eighteen-year-old cat Scampi, who has absolutely NO interest in new housemates. At the end of the day, everyone involved was happy and tired — a great combination

For us at LucyBalu, it is clear that we now want to push our initiative forward and make it known even more than before. Whether through donations, sponsoring or through you, our customers, we hope in 2023 too to run at least one big donation campaign. But other ideas on animal welfare also occurred to us on the drive back to Munich — so stay tuned, we will report on them here soon!

We would therefore like to use our 2023 calendar project to give something back again in 2023.