Last year our branch found new homes for 78 cats and kittens, in spite of having a difficult year, with a number of homed cats being returned because of change of circumstances. The branch volunteers also trapped, neutered and relocated ten feral cats from a meat factory and we neutered over 160 cats. We had to help a lady with 20 cats, many of them not neutered. Her husband had died suddenly and she had financial difficulties, and so the cats kept multiplying. The sad thing is that there was so much inbreeding that many were born with a very small eyeball, causing constant irritation to the eyes. We neutered all the cats but could not rehome any. The lady has a good sized garden and the cats are quite happy there. We are keeping an eye on the situation. This case does illustrate the need to neuter cats and not to allow them to breed unchecked.

We also took in several problem cats: there was Max who weighed in at over 8kg and could not jump, wash himself or, in fact, could not do much of anything. It took a lot of hard work to slim him down but he now has a loving new home. Another problem cat was Mocca whose full story you can find on the Feature Page. These two cats illustrate our policy of not putting problem cats down and to persevere to give them a good quality of life

We continued to feed over 20 feral cats at several industrial sites and removed several kittens, thus keeping those colonies under control. We are pleased to report that we had no cases of feline aids (FIV) or feline leukaemia (FeLV).But we could have helped at least twice as many Haverhill cats if we had more volunteers and are therefore making an urgent appeal to all cat lovers to offer to FOSTER a cat or kitten in their homes, until a new home can be found for them. All that is required is a spare room in the house and lots of love for a sick, abandoned or unwanted cat or kitten, or even a mother cat and her kittens. Everything else is provided by Cats Protection.

                                                         PLEASE GIVE IT A TRY, YOU WILL LOVE IT.