What we do
The Beverley & Pocklington Branch of Cats Protection was formed in August 1985 and exists to help cats and their owners. Each year we find new homes for around 400 unwanted cats and kittens. The branch covers a large area from Holderness, the outskirts of Hull and as far as Scarborough. We are involved with the inner city problems on some of the Hull estates, including multi cat households and feral colonies, as well as trapping and neutering feral cats in rural areas. Some people think it is acceptable to dump unneutered cats on farms and numbers soon get out of hand because farmers do not consider it is their responsibility to pay neutering costs for cats which do not belong to them. We operate a policy of trap, neuter and return although we are successful in relocating some feral/working cats to suitable new outdoor homes.
We do our best to take in unwanted cats and kittens but this is not always possible due to space constraints and we often have a waiting list which can become very long during the summer months because cats with kittens living outside take priority over cats with owners who just wish/need to rehome them. We currently have 21 purpose built outdoor pens plus several fosters who foster indoors – often shy or feral kittens and hand rears. We also work with the York Adoption Centre at Huntingdon who kindly help us out, space permitting.
One of our main aims is to encourage the neutering of cats and kittens. All adult cats homed by the branch are neutered and microchipped and the adoption fee for kittens includes the cost of neutering and microchipping at our local vets at the age of four months. We offer neutering vouchers to people on low incomes/benefits and have recently run a three month neutering campaign to neuter and microchip cats and kittens belonging to people on low incomes for just £10.00 per animal. We also offer advice to people about their cats to the best of our ability – sometimes people just want to talk about their cat!