NEWS AND COMMENT: The news media does not fully explain the situation but the story is that an animal charity has rescued 70 Bengal cats from a “horrific breeding situation”. It is very rare for a cat breeder to fail so catastrophically.
We don’t know whether the breeder was an informal Bengal cat breeder or whether he or she was registered with a cat association and her kittens were also registered. I don’t think they were. But if they weren’t they wouldn’t have papers to prove that they were purebred Bengal cats.
They look like Bengal cats but that is not enough. I would like to know more. It tells the story of how a breeder can get things badly wrong because these cats were in poor condition. They have the usual eye infections such as conjunctivitis and the usual worm and other parasitic infestations symptomatic of an environment that was out of control and unhygienic.
The Warrington Animal Welfare charity is calling for donations because this is a massive input of rescue cats in one go.
Of the 70 cats rescued, 28 were adults; the remaining being kittens. The charity say that all of the cats are suffering from cat flu by which they are likely to mean the herpesvirus.
This can lead to secondary bacterial infections in the eyes which if neglected can lead to blindness and often does for feral kittens.
The cats were underweight indicating the obvious namely poor nutrition. Taking in 70 more cats they describe as a “mammoth undertaking”.
All the cats need neutering, vaccinating and extensive veterinary care to rehabilitate them. They need money to do this and say that “If anyone can help us to raise money to provide a wonderful future for these 70 poor souls, we would be extremely grateful.” Click this link to take you to their Facebook page.
Comment: it’s hard to make sense of this because we all know that there are too many unwanted cats already in the UK; particularly at the moment with people surrendering cats that they adopted during the pandemic because of inflation and increased veterinary bills and food costs (and because they shouldn’t have adopted them in the first place 🤔).
A survey last year by “UK Pet Food found that 13% of the participants to the survey (equivalent to 3.7 million households) had relinquished a pet in 2022.” The quote comes from The Times newspaper.
The back story is that there are too many cats and kittens at shelters while at the same time this irresponsible person was breeding Bengal cats which they no doubt tried to sell at exorbitant prices.
Sometimes people purchase these sorts of cats without obtaining the proper documents to prove that they are purebred and without obtaining verification that they are vaccinated in good health et cetera.
People should be very cautious about purchasing purebred cats and do due diligence with great care. And never transfer money upfront to a person you don’t know and have not met as a deposit.
