By Leanne at Kays Hill
At the moment at Kays Hill we have 15 kittens, ages ranging from about 4 weeks old to about 5-6 weeks old. We also have 23 cats from 1yr to 6 yrs. Then we have 11 feral cats with ages ranging from about 10 months to 11 yrs.
Some of the ferals may be older but we don’t really know their ages. We have rehomed a few lately but not as many as we’d obviously like to. People have come and looked and said they would be back but they haven’t returned, which is always sad because its a potential home everytime someone comes to see the cats, especially when a person seems to really like a particular cat.
However, there is a home for every cat out there it just sometimes takes a while. We rehomed Meg the other day who is a beautiful long haired all black queen who had been with us forever! She wasn’t really keen on other cats so needed to be an only cat and the only people who had been interested in her had at least one other cat.
At last, last week, a nice young couple came and fell for her, as far as we know all is well up to now. We have a gorgeous ginger queen who came in with her three beautiful kittens, two dark torties and a semi-long haired ginger, (very cheeky) tom.
One of the torties was chosen by a nice family, the ginger boy is going to one of our volunteers and Rosie, the mam, is to be rehomed to a very nice lady so we just have to find a lovely home for the little tortie and the whole family can go off to their new homes and begin to really enjoy life.
Click this for lots of interesting pages about Kays Hill Animal Sanctuary, UK. (opens a new page)
We lost one of our old ferals a couple of weeks ago. We realised she hadn’t been in for her supper so we looked around for her but there was no sign, as she never went too far we weren’t worried too much. Food was left out for her, as well as all the others and we figured she would be back, if not that night, the next morning, shouting hungrily and demanding her breakfast.
When we didn’t see her the next morning we were starting to get worried. We received a phone call from a neighbour to say a cat was on the bridleway at the back of the sanctuary, when we looked, it was Sue. She was curled up, partially under the hedgerow and although our neighbour thought something bad had happened to her it hadn’t.
She was looking very peaceful when Kevin picked her up, curled up as if she had just gone to sleep. She was at least 18 yrs old and had always been feral, she would only come to anyone if she wanted feeding. We hadn’t had her a very long time but she had seemed happy enough here. She died as she had lived, out and about doing her own thing with no-one to tell her otherwise. Bye bye Sue.
I think this place must be full of spirit cats. Over the years we have lost a few to old age: Bramble, Jerry, Katie, Raggy, to name but a few. We lost Karrot last year to illness. Thankfully in the seven years we have ‘only’ lost one to the busy main road. That was little Daisy who was the most feral cat we have ever had, she was ferocious, but tiny! I like to think of them all visiting us from time to time.
The cat we have at the moment we would most like to rehome is Briar. A beautiful tabby and white queen. She is so nervous, but really wants to be friends. She just doesn’t know how to be.
We try to spend time with her and she is better than she was but although she is very pretty no-one to wants a ‘problem’ cat. They don’t seem to understand that in a home environment she would blossom given the chance. Her new home is out there somewhere!!
I have just had a phone call from someone wanting to come and see the little dark tortie kitten. fingers x’d!!!
We are getting so many phone calls from people who ‘need’ to rehome their poor animals for a variety of reasons, we just can’t take in over and over again. We can only take in when we have space. We will move around to try to make as much space as possible but it gets to the time when we just do not have any more space.
We feel guilty, but we always give out other numbers and we obviously put them on the waiting list. The trouble is we know that everyone else is full too. When people get aggressive and abusive towards us because we can’t take in their unwanted ‘pets’ it gets very depressing. Never mind….if we can get more cats rehomed we can take in more. The phrase ‘vicious circle’ springs to mind.
On a happier note the four ferals we have awaiting release in the feral unit are coming on great and it shouldn’t be long before we can release them. The cat in the photo is one of our ferals, Tux.
latest news from kays hill is i’ve managed to break my fingers having a wrestling match with freeno, our 16.3 ex race horse! he has cut his leg and needed the vet. i brought him down from the field, he was’nt happy about that, he HATES being inside.so by the time the vet arrived he had been in the stable about 15 mins, he thought this was a great imposition!! got him out to walk him up and down and could immediately tell how much ‘fun’ this was going to be. walked him to the top of the stables and he stopped, stood as upright as he possibly could, i thought ‘oh dear’ (or words to that effect!!!)and up he went, i heard the bones break, as well as feeling them, the vet asked if i was ok, i didnt want to make a fuss so said yes and went on walking him up and down. by the time we’d finished he’d reared 5 or 6 times and i could have cried with pain!! lol anyway we got him sorted. the vet says he is dangerous, to be honest he is a bit. a couple of years ago i ended up at hospital because of a fractured skull (yes, same horse)he has always been a hell of a handful but this time it may be his undoing as if we cant treat him and his wound dos’nt heal properly we may have to have him pts. its the last thing i’d ever want to do but if i can no longer handle him, no-one else can either, i might have no other choice. he is 25 yrs old (approx) he has been passed from pillar to post for years and no-one has ever dealt with his problems, so as time has gone on things have become habits and now its becoming more and more difficult to do ANYTHING with him. i am back at the hospital in 2 weeks and may have to have an op. 1 good thing, the doctor told me this morning i am not allowed to do anything until i go back to the hospital. HA as if!! anyway, i’m sorry, i know this was not cat related news, but it was just kays hill news. i think i just needed a bit of a moan
After the real life ‘rat’ who deserted her sinking ship and left her 15 passengers behind……
‘sylvia’ how did you come up with that name???
That’s good news about the two kittens Leanne, I don’t know HOW you do it!
I’m still full of admiration for all those older traumatised cats you eventually found homes for after the Kays Hill tlc worked its miracle and they became rehomeable.
Poor hoggie babies. We have none coming here now for the first time since we moved here, but thankfully ‘Sylvia’ the rat seems to have moved on too now we don’t need to put meal worms out for them.
I had no idea, Dan, that you had a Frank Lloyd Wright structure, building, my hero! (Mr. Wright passed away the day that I was born.) I am going to go check out your city’s history, the recycling program [awesome] and the revolutionary street signs, right now. 🙂
We are a landlocked suburb of the city of Phoenix. We have a beautiful man-made lake in the Salt River bed that runs through Northern Tempe. Our most famous landmark is Grady Gammage, a beautiful building designed by Frank Loyd Wright on the Arizona State University Campus. It is where all the Broadway plays are performed when tours come to town. My favorite landmark is the Niels Petersen House built in 1892. It is a beautiful Queen Anne Victorian style home. I was able to see the home twice, once during the off-season and once on the tour itself. There was a skeleton found on the property that was on tour, so we missed it both times. The stairs are so narrow I felt like a giant walking up them. 🙂 Thanks for asking.
I did what I could for the cats, but the work was done by others before we moved here (when I was 12). Being a university city, we had some forward thinking people here that not only took care of our feral problems, but built numerous bike paths, started one of the first city-wide recycle programs in the country (which monies were used to buy the first of our light up street signs that are now at every major intersection and street light in the city) and a clothes exchange, where college kids could drop off clothes and/or pick up new ones. It’s my favorite city in the entire world.
The feral problems I’m aware of are from online sources.