Over the past eight years, Richard and Joan Bowell have been taking in dozens of stray cats at their home on an island in Greece. While they have 65 cats on their property, they also care for a nearby colony of feral felines.

The Bowells first started taking in cats back in 2010, when they came upon a stray who had given birth to two kittens on their property. As they started to find more strays all over the island, they took them in as well, as they could not bear to watch them go hungry.

Since then, Richard and Joan have turned their property into a cat sanctuary that they call “God’s Little People.”

“A wise man once introduced me to the term ‘God’s Little People’ when talking about animals,” said Joan. “The words are so endearing and so full of kindness and compassion that they’ve stuck with me ever since.”

In the past eight years, they have taken in so many cats that their property can no longer handle the amount of felines. On top of that, the Bowells would like to move to New York so that they can open another sanctuary. That’s why they decided to post a job listing on social media to see if they could find someone to manage God’s Little People. They never expected this many people to be interested!

Back in August, Joan took to Facebook to post the job description, hoping that she might get a dozen applicants at most. She explained in the post that the job involved countless veterinary appointments, cleaning up vomit, distributing medications for the chronically-ill felines and providing food and water to 55 cats. In addition, the person who took the job would need to give tons of love and affection to the cats.

Whoever got the job would get a small salary in exchange for getting to live rent-free on the Greek island.

The job listing quickly spread like wildfire, and Richard and Joan were stunned when they received 35,000 job applications from 90 countries in just six weeks.

Richard and Joan said that the amount of responses they got has helped to restore their faith in people.

“This is bigger than just a job on a Greek island,” Richard said. “There’s a kind of wish for people to return to some level of humanity at a time when things are degenerating into such inhumanity.”

The Bowells eventually chose Santa Barbara resident Jeffyne Telson for the job. Jeffyne is a 62 year-old woman who has found homes for 3,000 cats over the last 20 years thanks to her own animal rescue work as founder and president of ResQcats.

The Bowells liked Jeffyne as soon as they met her, calling this “a match made in heaven.”

Find out more about this in the video below!