A CASTLEMAINE vet is heading to Greece this weekend to volunteer for a cause very close to her heart - a two-week street cat desexing program.

Dr Yvette Berkeley is one of a number of international volunteers part of the Nine Lives Greece network, a group of people passionate about helping to reduce Greece's stray cat population.

Last year, the program helped to desex 960 cats.

Volunteers achieve this through trap-neuter-return projects, but also help to improve the street cats' quality of life through daily feeding programs, veterinary care and adoption programs.

 Dr Berkeley said the stray cat population in Greece was "massive" and Nine Lives, which is funded purely by donations from the public, could send her anywhere.

"The first time I went to Greece I was about 20 and the amount of cats suffering or walking around without a back bone, eyes hanging out was shocking," she said.

"In the past, when I get there... people would give me bunch of Euros and two cat cages and off I go.

"Then we'd just work and catch the cats, and that's how we'd work."

This will be Dr Berkeley's fifth trip to Greece as a volunteer for the organisation.

"This trip I go to Kefalonia in the Ionian sea above Corfu. And then we go right to the other side, near Turkey," she said.

"I'll take a whole lot of drugs, eye drops and stuff that’s needed."

She said every island had a dedicated community of expats, mainly from the UK, who had helped to set up animal health programs "off their own bat".

She said despite the fact that the Greek people loved cats and the fact the strays were tough creatures, cats often struggled to survive.

"These cats in Greece are really robust, they require double the anesethic," she said.

"They’re survivors on the street and they have their operation on the table and then just walk off into the olive groves.

"Over summer they get fed by the tourists, then in winter they starve."

She said the overpopulation problem stemmed from traditional attitudes towards desexing.

"Traditionally the Greeks didn’t really like to desex because they thought it was interfering with God’s plan with nature," she said.

But she said modern Greece had changed its attitudes and people were welcoming of expat organisations like Nine Lives.

"It’s done in consultation with them rather than just having a lot of expats going in and saying what they need," she said.

"We work with Greek vets as well."