She Built a Tech Company to Feed 92 Cats

There is a woman in Parekklisia, a quiet village on the southern coast of Cyprus between Limassol and the British military base at Akrotiri, who feeds 92 cats every day.

Her name is Karen Pendergrass. She runs a cat sanctuary called Gardens of St Gertrude out of her home. Some of the cats arrived as kittens, dropped at the edge of her property in cardboard boxes. Some were found sick on the side of the road, brought to her by neighbors who had heard she was "the cat lady." Some wandered in and never left. Ninety-two cats, at last count. The number goes up more often than it goes down.

The sanctuary has never accepted a single donation. Not one euro. Karen and her family have funded everything — food, litter, vet bills, medications, spay and neuter surgeries, emergency treatments — entirely out of pocket, supported by her work running the Paleo Foundation, a food certification organization she founded over a decade ago.

But 92 cats eat a lot of food. And the number keeps growing. And the vet bills never stop. And at some point, paying for everything yourself stops being sustainable and starts being a slow crisis.

So Karen did something unusual. Instead of starting a GoFundMe or launching a donation campaign, she built a tech company.

The Problem Nobody Was Solving

Cyprus has one of the highest stray animal populations in Europe. The island's mild climate and historically relaxed approach to animal control have created a situation where tens of thousands of stray cats and dogs roam villages, cities, and the countryside. Rescue organizations — mostly volunteer-run, mostly underfunded — do what they can. But the scale of the problem outpaces the resources available.

Meanwhile, Cyprus has no centralized platform for pet services. If you need a dog walker in Limassol, you ask in a Facebook group and hope someone reliable responds. If you need a pet sitter while you travel, you ask friends or take your chances. There are no verified profiles, no reviews, no payment protection, no accountability.

And if you are a rescue organization trying to place a cat or dog in a home in the UK or Germany — where demand for rescue animals far exceeds local supply — you navigate a labyrinth of veterinary requirements, EU pet passport regulations, transport logistics, and customs paperwork. Most rescues coordinate this with WhatsApp messages and spreadsheets.

Karen saw two broken systems that could fix each other.

How Tinies Works

Tinies — named for what Karen has always called animals, all animals, regardless of size ("An elephant is a tiny. A bug is a tiny. A Great Dane is a tiny too.") — is a pet services marketplace and international animal adoption platform.

The marketplace side works like this: pet owners in Cyprus search for verified, reviewed service providers offering dog walking, pet sitting, overnight boarding, drop-in visits, and daycare. Providers list their services for free. When a booking happens, Tinies takes a 12% commission.

Here is the part that makes Tinies different from every other pet marketplace on earth: approximately 90% of that commission goes directly to Gardens of St Gertrude and other animal sanctuaries in Cyprus. The remaining 10% covers the platform's operating costs — hosting, payment processing, and little else. There are no salaries. There are no investors expecting returns. There is no plan to sell the company for billions.

The adoption side goes further. Rescue organizations list animals available for adoption, and transport providers offer their logistics services. Adopters browse, apply, and connect — all through Tinies. The platform provides the infrastructure. The rescues and transport providers do the work.

Every booking confirmation tells the pet owner exactly what their commission funded. Not in vague terms. In specific ones: "Your EUR 50 dog walking booking generated EUR 5.40 for rescue animal care. That is approximately 2kg of cat food — enough to feed 10 cats for a day."

Not a Tech Company. A Feeding Schedule.

The distinction matters. Rover, the largest pet services marketplace in the world, was acquired by Blackstone in 2024 for $2.3 billion. Wag!, its competitor, went public and then nearly collapsed. These are companies built to generate returns for investors.

Tinies is built to generate kibble for cats.

"The whole point of this platform is to fund Gardens of St Gertrude," Karen says. "My mom and I have been paying for everything out of pocket. We have never taken a single donation. But 92 cats need to eat every day, and vet bills do not care about your budget. So instead of asking for help, I built something useful. People need dog walkers. People need pet sitters. And rescue animals need homes. The platform connects all of that, and the money feeds the cats."

The giving model extends beyond the commission. Users can round up their booking total to donate the change. They can make one-time donations at signup. And they can become "Tinies Guardians" — monthly subscribers starting at EUR 3/month — with every cent going directly to the sanctuary of their choice. Tinies takes no cut from any user donation. The platform's transparency page shows, in real time, exactly how much has been raised and exactly where it went.

92 Cats and Counting

Gardens of St Gertrude — named for the patron saint of cats — is not a facility. It is a home. The cats live in the house, in the garden, on the walls, in the trees. They have names. Winona P. Franklin. Ninety others. They are fed on a schedule. They are taken to the vet when they are sick. They are spayed and neutered. They are loved.

But love does not buy cat food. And the reality of running an unfunded sanctuary in Cyprus — where vet costs are rising, where new strays arrive every month, where the infrastructure for animal welfare is stretched thin — is that every week is a financial negotiation between what the cats need and what the budget allows.

Tinies is Karen's answer to that negotiation. Not a plea for charity. Not a desperate appeal. A platform that generates value for people and directs that value to animals. A marketplace where the act of booking a dog walker is, quietly and automatically, an act of rescue.

"An elephant is a tiny," Karen says. "A bug is a tiny. A kitten found in a ditch is a tiny. No matter the size. That is what we believe. And that is what we are building."

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Tinies is launching in 2026 at tinies.app. Gardens of St Gertrude is a cat sanctuary in Parekklisia, Cyprus. To learn more about supporting their work, visit the giving page.