Demand for cats at Battersea Dogs & Cats Home is outstripping supply because cats fit in better with the busy lifestyle of Londoners. In the North of England the opposite is true so cats are being relocated from Yorkshire to London.
This is a very nice state of affairs to be in for an animal rescue center. The head of catteries at Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, Rob Young, has said that:
“More and more people are coming to our rescue centre in search of their new feline friend and we are finding that we don’t always have enough cats to meet our customers’ demand.”
I was surprised to read it because so often you read the opposite; unwanted cats being euthanized despite being healthy and excellent companions. But it seems that in the South of England more people are turning to domestic cats as companions because they are considered more suitable to their busy lifestyles. And that to me presents another problem because in truth I am not sure that cats are suited to being left alone all day because their owner is busy at work. In fact I know they are not. But that is another discussion.
Rob Young says that many moggies are happy to be left alone for periods of time and because of that potential pet owners are choosing cats (presumably over dogs) as they fit in nicely with their city lifestyle.
As a consequence, Battersea Dogs & Cats Home have entered into a deal with a cat rescue organization in the North of England, in West Yorkshire, called Yorkshire Cat Rescue. In the North of England they are struggling to cope with a huge number of homeless and abandoned cats whereas in the south people are queuing up to adopt one. Quite a contrast.
Cats are being shipped down from the north to Battersea; I presume in vans. They travel down the A1 to London which, to international visitors to this website, is a major trunk road running north-south, the length of England.
Cats Protection Director of Operations, Mark Beazley, said that they have been aware for a while that Yorkshire has a surplus of unwanted cats but that transferring them from areas where homing is difficult to areas where there is a big demand can be a great way of finding homes for these cats.
I am fully aware that in America, because of the large distances traveled, there are a number of aviation companies involved in animal rescue services in redistributing cats and dogs from one rescue organization to another in an effort to rehome them. In America this sort of transportation, relocation effort is carried out on a grand scale and very impressive it is.
P.S. Battersea Dogs and Cats Home is one of the world’s best-known animal rescue centres and perhaps the oldest. It was founded in 1860 and they started to take in cats in 1883. They opened their doors in Battersea in 1871. They have been on that site ever since. They have cared for more than 3.1 million animals in that time. Inside their grounds, in the center, is a small building which I believe is the world’s first cat shelter.
Source: The Telegraph Newspaper.
